About the Office of APINH Affairs
Join the Office of Asian Pacific Islander Native Hawaiian (APINH) Affairs in Building Belonging in Albuquerque.
Grow With Us
Asian Pacific Islander Native Hawaiian (APINH) is Albuquerque’s fastest growing community, representing 62-74 countries and a high rate of business ownership.
For our community, well-being is tied to representation, visibility, cultural identity, and access.
Visibility matters because it’s the foundation for power, equity, and opportunity. Without it, community voices go unheard, city data remains incomplete, and resources are misdirected.
Our vision is to create a digital third place that helps people move from online to in-real-life: a hub that amplifies APINH voices, shares stories, connects residents to local resources, circulates local dollars, and helps shape city data to reflect our community’s real needs. We couldn’t do this without you--so please, build and grow our office with us.
Support our office by subscribing to our Digital Magazine: HONOR Magazine.
Mission
The APINH Liaison Office serves as a connector, advocate, and systems-level strategist advancing the well-being, cultural expression, and economic opportunity of APINH residents in Albuquerque.
Through cross-sectoral partnerships, inclusive governance, and community-centered planning, the Office amplifies APINH voices and ensures access to city services and decision-making spaces.
Vision
To cultivate a thriving, inclusive, and equitable Albuquerque where APINH communities are visible, engaged, and empowered across civic, cultural, and economic life.
Goals
- Improve APINH Civic Equity and Institutional Visibility
- Increase APINH Economic Opportunity & Small Business Support
- Improve APINH Cultural Visibility & Arts Integration
- Guide the establishment of the APINH Community Center
Read about Carlo James Aragón Read about Jacky So
Leadership
Carlo James Aragón
Office of APINH Affairs Liaison
Carlo James Aragón serves as the City of Albuquerque’s Liaison to the Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian (APINH) community in the Office of Equity and Inclusion. He brings over a decade of experience in international diplomacy, public engagement, and community building to the role.
A born and raised in New Mexico, Aragón previously served as a U.S. diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, completing diplomatic assignments in Lebanon and Nepal. In these positions, he led multi-million-dollar public engagement portfolios, worked closely with artists, educators, and civil society groups, and helped expand access to U.S. government programs in underserved regions. His work emphasized building trust, managing crisis communications, and developing partnerships across cultures and communities.
Aragón holds a Master’s degree in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University and a Bachelor of Science in Political Science and Foreign Languages from the University of New Mexico. In addition to his diplomatic service, he has experience in business development, nonprofit leadership, and language education. His professional career is shaped by a personal commitment to community, inspired by his mother, a member of New Mexico’s Filipino community, and his late father, a respected figure in the Hispano community of New Mexico.
Aragón is proficient in Arabic, Spanish, and Nepali—languages he has used throughout his diplomatic and community work to build relationships, break down barriers, and foster deeper understanding.
In his current role, Aragón is committed to uplifting Albuquerque’s growing APINH population. His approach is grounded in the New Mexican value of querencia—a deep sense of belonging and love for place—which guides his commitment to ensuring that all residents feel welcome, seen, and included, regardless of origin.
Q&A: Get to Know Carlo James Aragón
What should folks know about you?
I was born and raised in New Mexico, went abroad to serve our country as a U.S. Diplomat and now committed to serving local communities at home. My work is guided by the values of querencia — a deep love of place, people, and purpose — and by the legacies of my parents: my mother, who served the Filipino community with, and my father, who built trust and connection throughout New Mexico’s Hispano community.
What experience or skills brought you to OEI?
My background in diplomacy taught me how to listen deeply, lead through complexity, and engage diverse communities with respect and intention. I’ve managed cross-cultural partnerships overseas, led public engagement programs in moments of crisis, and advocated for underrepresented voices in government spaces. Returning to New Mexico, I saw OEI as a place where those skills could serve the community at a grassroots level — helping to shape systems that include, rather than exclude.
What excites or energizes you around our office or this work?
The chance to build something that’s both meaningful and lasting. I’m excited by the idea of being in relationship with communities — not just checking boxes or managing programs, but co-creating spaces of belonging, storytelling, and shared power. OEI gives us the opportunity to honor New Mexico’s diverse roots while also preparing it for a more inclusive future.
How do you express yourself outside of work?
Writing is one of the ways I make sense of the world. I'm currently working on a memoir that reflects on my journey through U.S. diplomacy — the people I’ve met, the places I’ve served, and the lessons I’ve carried home. Writing allows me to pause, reflect, and explore how these experiences have shaped who I am and how I show up for my community today.
Where do you find community outside of work?
I find community in the spaces where creativity, culture, and nature come together — whether it’s striking up a conversation at a local art show, exploring a new café, or hiking the trails of the Sandias and walking the bosque. These moments often lead to genuine connections with people who share a deep appreciation for New Mexico’s beauty, spirit, and way of life.
What are some of your favorite topics that you connect with others over?
I love hearing people’s stories about what brought them to New Mexico — and what made them stay. There’s something powerful about the way this place calls people in. I’m especially drawn to conversations rooted in querencia — that deep emotional and spiritual connection to place. Whether someone’s roots go back generations or they found home here later in life, I value the shared love and care people bring to this land and to each other.
What is something you’re currently curious about or inspired by?
I'm inspired by how the idea of querencia—this deep-rooted New Mexican concept of love for place—can be applied to community development. I’m curious about how we can design policies, public spaces, and even housing rooted in belonging, culture, and regeneration.
Jacky So
FUSE Executive Fellow
Jacky So is a systems thinker and non-traditional tech leader passionate about equitable design. As Senior Director of Digital Platforms and Innovation at a digital health startup, she led nationwide programs to increase multi-lingual healthcare access for over 10 million appointments ****and built tools used in over 1 million digital health records. Jacky holds a Master of Biomedical Sciences from Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine specializing in pattern morphology detection, Bachelor in Political Science with a Minor in Biological Sciences and focus in Business from UC Irvine, and is a proud Google Udacity Scholars alum.
During the pandemic, Jacky helped build a new software startup as an inaugural core team member to project manage time-sensitive gaps in the marketplace, often serving as the go-to “Jacky of All Trades”. She led 150+ agile software development projects–collaborating with community clinics, universities, commercial & public health labs, nursing homes, corporations, cities, counties, states, & government entities–all while supervising 15-30 entry-to-mid-level staff within their technical areas of expertise on any given day.
Her lived experience as a first generation (born in the States) Cambodian-American inspires her to help build resources that didn't exist when she was younger. Jacky is proud to call Albuquerque her home with her husband, Ryan. In her personal time, she enjoys 3D printing, vinyl records, Eurovision, rewatching Eagles Super Bowl LIX highlights, and traveling with Ryan and their mascot Pochacco.
Q&A: Get to Know Jacky So
What should folks know about you?
- As a Cambodian-American who belongs to the first generation born here in the States, there’s a lot I had to unlearn about inherited trauma and survivor’s guilt that I view as my superpower. When I build tech, I do it from a human-centered perspective and workflow. I know what it feels like to be part of an “Other” bucket or edge case. I never want others to feel invisible in the data, and so if I’m doing things at scale, that scale needs to include “edge cases” from the beginning and not as an afterthought.
- I believe that I have been able to be so effective as a technologist because I didn’t come from a traditional computer science background, so the way I think about tech is always grounded in making everything as approachable as possible for non-technical people.
- On a fun note, my favorite emoji that I use in everything is the sparkle heart emoji, and if I were a dog, I think my personality would be in corgi form.
- If you see me around, please say hi! I love getting to know people.
What experience or skills brought you to OEI?
- After years of building endless zero-to-launch tech products and workflows, I have been asking myself how else I can show up for my community and build seats at the table in a way that’s needed. I spent the last several years leading big initiatives in health tech that scaled a “whole person” approach to digital care access for over 10 million appointments. Essentially, I was the software implementations and program ops lead on the vendor side of statewide digital health contracts nationwide.
- In tech, whenever we hear the phrase “at scale”, it generally means automating the most common use cases and everything else falls into an edge case scenario. So when things become automated at scale, what happens to all of the people who fall into an edge case workflow? Whenever I’ve had the opportunity to build from a ground-up approach, I make sure it includes edge cases before things become automated at scale.
- One of my honest concerns for our collective future is how to help the public sector keep up with AI/ML in a responsible way. I view my background as a huge value-add that can help look at data in different ways to find stories that might otherwise be hidden from the surface.
What excites or energizes you around our office or this work?
- OEI is the intersection of many areas that impact a person’s well-being, which also impacts how they are able to show up and re-invest in their communities physically, emotionally, mentally, and financially. My personal mission is to leverage my skillset and establish a shared repository of knowledge that can surface what resources are needed for people at this intersection.
- My goal is to understand how to illustrate that investing in people’s well-being yields broad, community-wide benefits. My hope is that through these focus areas, we’ll be able to show how people create value that’s more than how many hours they worked, and when we can all re-invest in our communities, people collaborate to create sustainable spaces where everyone feels ownership and pride in our communities.
How do you express yourself outside of work?
- Disco balls, fuzzy jackets, mood music, meditation, Duolingo, watching DIY tutorials, coding in the dark, relationship building, making random gifts for friends “just because”, and what I call “braindumping”--jotting down all of my imperfect thoughts so I can better organize the logic of my brain.
Where do you find community outside of work?
- Everywhere! We’re in Albuquerque, where people treat you like a fellow human and you can have a conversation with anyone. Our neighbors are wonderful, I meet up with our quirky trivia team friends weekly, I enjoy supporting local food spots and businesses, and everyone at the Uptown Trader Joe’s feels like home.
What are some of your favorite topics that you connect with others over?
- Data, startups, health “techquity” (health tech equity), Eurovision, personal experiences of growing up APINH/AAPI that maybe we didn’t process or openly share about until we were older, international music, investments, business models, cross-sector strategy alignment, human-centered design and workflows, responsible AI, modular and multipurpose product design, architecture, flow of spaces and how they make people feel, sustainable living, #GoBirds, experiences of being a non-traditional student, leading and building neurodiverse teams, diversity of life experiences, mentorship, language learning, continued growth, data mapping integrations, data data data and more data...
What is something you’re currently curious about or inspired by?
- I’ve been reflecting very deeply on this concept of “third places”--the shared space between work and home where communities thrive. Especially in an increasingly digital world, I view Albuquerque as our collective third place. Albuquerque is special.
- I’m proud to live in a city that’s open to innovation--willing to try, learn, and explore how we can re-invest in our communities to create thriving, collaborative third places that feel safer and more welcoming for everyone. Because when we feel a genuine stake in our shared spaces--and those spaces, in turn, reflect care and investment in us--we’re more likely to take pride in where we live and actively nurture it. It’ll take all of us to make Albuquerque a collaborative, thriving model for other cities to look up to, and I’m grateful to be here.
APINH Center Steering Committee
- Kristelle Siarza Moon - Asian Business Collaborative Executive Director and CEO or Siarza
- Sachi Watase - New Mexico Asian Family Center Executive Director
- Lan Sena - Albuquerque’s First Asian-American City Councilor
- Kay Bounkeua - New Mexico’s First Asian-American Legislature