Celine Qin is a social justice advocate, community leader, and youth trailblazer. Originally from Sacramento, California, she is proud to be nationally-recognized by the prestigious Princeton University Prize in Race Relations and Alexander Hamilton Award. At 13 years old, she founded The Reclamation Project, a grassroots social justice organization spearheading youth-led movements for systems-change, equity, and liberation, which has since mobilized 65,000+ youth changemakers and allies across numerous campaigns and grassroots power-building initiatives. With a childhood rooted in activism and 6+ years of experience in local, state, and national social and progressive causes, Celine has advised nearly $20 million dollars in government and philanthropic partnerships to establish life-affirming resource networks in historically-underrepresented communities, including directly procuring and reinvesting $600,000+ towards multicultural civic advocacy and leadership development programs for young leaders of racial

Bio Statement:

minority, low-income, immigrant/refugee, and other traditionally-overlooked backgrounds. For the past 3+ years, Celine has served as the first Lead Youth Advisor to Asian American Liberation Network, advancing the collective liberation of poverty- and trauma-impacted Asian American and multiethnic communities. Her trailblazing work has been additionally distinguished by the Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations, members of the United States Congress, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of Treasury, California Department of Justice, California Center for Civic Participation, The California Endowment, and leaders across Europe. A serial-dreamer and risk-taker, Celine additionally founded the California Youth Power-Building Fellowship, Supplies for Solidarity Campaign, and National Social Justice Education Coalition, providing a cumulative $70,000+ in scholarships, social-change grants, direct mutual aid, mentorship resources, and liberating education to youth of color throughout local California communities and 23 states nationwide, all while being a full-time student in high school. Celine is also a Statewide Leadership Board Member and Legislative Advocate of the California Student Board Member Association, a statewide coalition of youth advocates representing the rights of California’s 6.2 million public school students. Coming from a first-generation, low-income family, Celine values fearlessness, resilience, and the breaking of paradigms, painting a contemporary culture beyond fragmented narratives and enlivening intergenerational hopes and dreams.

Who am I when the world shakes? I was born to prove my livelihood unconquerable. I was born hungry for agency in a type of world that exists to take it. I was born parched for answers in a system dissipating the richness of a political peoplehood, culture, and resistance. I was born for leadership. I owed myself control to process my uprisings and downfalls. I would demand it, and I wanted to be the one to make it happen.

By the time I became a teenager, the broader meanings of an Asian-American woman existence began to solidify. In the same energy, I immersed myself in the work and prose of Grace Lee Boggs, the Young Lordes and Panthers, Angela Davis, Yuri Kochiyama, Ocean Vuong, Anuradha Ghandy, and Joan Didion. I equipped essay writing and poetry as my catharsis and propelled action watching fragments of my, and countless others’, human experience take the form of sentences, criticisms, and revolutionary reimagining. I knew I was born not one to question shyly within boundaries, but to uproot them altogether in my journey of searching and curiosity. And naturally, that would mean creating entirely new frameworks of my own.

Today, I vow myself to create without defined borders. I break trajectories assumed onto youthhood, for myself, my people, and fellow systems-impacted youth who know firsthand what it means to receive pain and struggle to find oneself in an unfathomably difficult society. I learn every day to stretch the meanings of love.

I found my world in public policy, activism, and community organizing—building connections on the grassroots and touching lived experiences with transformative diligence. I found my world in a perpetual pursuit for knowledge and solutions. I found my world in unwavering solidarity and self-discovery. I found my world in fearlessness.