Asian Community Alliance (ACA)

Asian Community Alliance (ACA)

Educates, empowers and inspires Asian populations in need, delivering high quality, compassionate, and culturally sensitive services across Greater Cincinnati.

Yen Hsieh

Yen Hsieh
27-year tenure at P&G in R&D (North America)

Yen Hsieh has chaired the ACA board for the past four years. Under Yen’s leadership, funding has increased 8-fold and Yen has applied consumer research techniques to ACA’s program development. When she first started working with ACA, Yen was often told, “This is not P&G, it is a nonprofit.” Yen’s response was “Why not?!” Many P&G Alums have also been actively involved with ACA over the years including founder, Dorothy O’Brien, and fellow Alums Tessa Xuan, Jennifer Nagrath, Angie Pang and Ravi Saggar.

“There were great skills that I learned from P&G that greatly impacted my leadership with ACA. ‘Seek to Understand’ allows you to understand the root of the problem. ‘A solid strategy with measurable results’ is critical to achieving our programming success.” ~Yen Hsieh

Addressing a societal issue among an aging population and leveraging funding from HealthPath Foundation of Ohio, ACA is innovating a non-medical home care training program to train Asian immigrants and refugees. The program will be used by mainstream senior care organizations to provide culturally appropriate services to their clients. Called PANDA – Professional, Accessible, Nurturing, Dedicated Associates – this unique 80-hour nonmedical, home healthcare training program is based on a holistic approach and delivers the following benefits:

• provides employment opportunities
• provides senior care organizations a chance to employ home healthcare workers who understand the cultural norms of elders served
• helps the adult children of the elders cared for remain in their jobs
• helps keep immigrant/refugee elders safe at home

The unique program is a first of its kind in the US and will serve as a model for the senior care industry both nationally and internationally. The program is not just a home care training program but includes a physician mentoring component and a business model. Employees and retirees of P&G will be recruited to teach business skills.

P&G Alumni Foundation grant of $20,000 will be used toward the PANDA home health care training program. ACA formed an aging, care giving 2018 collaborative driving key learning and professional partners to fuel PANDA’s success. ACA estimates 30 individuals will attain employment contributing to greater financial independence as they are deliberately working with senior care employers to place their trainees. Further, ACA has put prior funding from the P&G Alumni Foundation to great use, delivering results within their Digital Literacy Project.