When Kim Chiang attended college in the Midwest as an undergraduate, it was the first time she felt like a minority. Growing up in the Bay Area and attending a predominantly Asian high school hadn’t prepared her for that shift. She found her footing in Asian American student groups, where others could “relate almost implicitly” to what she was going through.
Years later, as a clinical assistant professor at Stanford Medicine, Chiang noticed something missing from the university’s course offerings. There were healthcare leadership classes, but nothing focused specifically on Asian American leadership.
This fall, Chiang and co-instructor Dr. Bryant Lin launched MED 251/ASNAMST 251: “Asian American Leadership,” a course that brings prominent Asian American leaders from diverse sectors to share their experiences with Stanford students. The course, capped at 20 students, meets twice weekly at CCSR 4205 and has already hosted speakers including Professor Gordon Chang, who co-founded Stanford’s Asian American Research Center, and Paramesh Gopi, co-founder and CEO of SoundHealth.
“This is the class that I wish I had when I was an undergrad,” Chiang said.
The course comes at a moment of increased Asian American visibility in popular culture, with films like “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Everything Everywhere All At Once” achieving mainstream success. But Chiang emphasizes that Asian American representation at the highest levels of leadership remains limited.
“It is not as widespread as it should be compared to the percent of Asian Americans who work in those settings,” Chiang said.
Chiang noted this pattern in the course’s opening session, noting that while Stanford’s School of Medicine has many Asian American faculty physicians, there are far fewer division chiefs and deans. The course aims to address this gap by highlighting leaders across traditionally underrepresented areas including entertainment, civic life and politics.
The speaker lineup reflects this breadth. Upcoming guests include Congressman Ro Khanna, film director Wayne Wang, Netflix Vice President of Product Discovery Rochelle King and venture capitalist Cheryl Cheng. Chiang secured Khanna’s participation through a cold email, a testament to both the course’s appeal and Stanford’s drawing power.
“Being at Stanford, I found that we’re lucky when we do extend an invitation,” Chiang said. “Many people, distinguished speakers, do feel excited by the idea of engaging with our students.”
The course tackles head-on the stereotypes and biases Asian American leaders face. Second-year medical student Andrew Du, the class’s teaching assistant, said student reflections frequently grapple with perceptions around “warmth and competence” — how Asian American women may be perceived as high warmth but low competence, while Asian American men face the inverse.
Du brings his own leadership experience to the role. As an undergraduate at Yale during COVID-19, he led major organizational changes and often found himself “the one Asian guy in the room” at meetings with police chiefs, emergency management officials and physicians.
“How can I lead in a culturally authentic and compatible way?” became a central question for Du — one that resonates throughout the course.
Students explore these themes through weekly reflective writing assignments and facilitated discussions. The course emphasizes that effective leadership isn’t limited to extroverted personalities, drawing on speakers who demonstrate strengths from different personality types.
On the first day of class, Chiang asked students to introduce themselves, share their origin stories and name an Asian American leader who inspired them. The exercise set the tone for a course designed as a safe space for open conversation.
“Especially in today’s climate, [a priority for me] is that we all have some level of trust in each other, not just being from the same community, but being like minded in our hopes and dreams in leadership,” Chiang said.
The 20-student cap — comprising mostly undergraduates along with a few M.A. and MBA students — enables intimacy. It also reflects strong demand. Chiang said she was “pleasantly surprised” by students’ level of interest in the course.
“Courses like this are part of what makes Stanford special — you never know who you’ll meet or what conversations will change how you see yourself,” Avanti Ramraj ’26, a student in the course, wrote to The Daily. “It has helped me see that the ‘promise of stability’ can actually become a form of self-limitation.”
For Chiang and Du, success isn’t measured by traditional metrics. Chiang’s primary goal is simple: if students recommend the course to friends, she’ll consider it a success.
Du has been impressed by the depth of student insights after every speaker session.
“I take away things from every speaker session, and I come away thinking about new ideas,” Du said.