Kathy Wai tired of the same questions from classmates at St. Mary’s Academy in Portland, so she printed a map of home and stuck it in her wallet for the next interrogation.

Here. This is Burma, she said. It’s a real country. Learn about it.

Wai, now 32, said she still thinks about the surprise geography education she gave high school contemporaries years ago. There was a broader lesson there: Be proud of who you are and where you came from.

The map represented a simple act from the new kid on scholarship at the all-girl’s private school in the heart of a white city in an overwhelmingly white state. But it also served as a sneak peek into how the immigrant from the Southeast Asian country now known as Myanmar would approach her adult life – without fear, head-on and with a focus on advocacy.

Today, Wai is an elected member of the North Clackamas School Board, the youngest person ever appointed to TriMet’s board of directors and a staffer to a Southeast Portland state lawmaker. Twenty years after arriving in Portland as a 12-year-old, she’s built a track record of advocating for marginalized populations through grassroots organizing, but now she’s honing her political skills from inside the halls of power.

The Happy Valley resident said she’s always been an advocate, especially for the newest Oregonians who might not have someone in their corner. It’s why she worked with refugees for years as a Burmese translator and helped organize Asian and Pacific Islander communities – both newcomers and long-established citizens -- in east Portland, Salem and beyond.

Wai brushes off the notion that she is now in a “position of power,” she says, miming air-quotes.

But it’s clear her presence on one of the nation’s most prominent public transportation agency’s boards has turned heads – in the immigrant and refugee community, in TriMet leadership, in Gov. Kate Brown’s office and among transit advocacy groups.

On a board where 7-0 votes are the norm, last month Wai broke ranks and single-handedly delayed a plan to amend TriMet’s code to clarify its fare-enforcement authorities. The proposal came in the wake of a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge’s opinion that found a random fare inspection which led to a David Douglas School Board member’s arrest was unconstitutional. Wai said TriMet was rushing forward with the plan without asking riders, particularly those who are low-income or from communities of color, what they think.

Her vote appeared to catch TriMet staff, and some fellow board members, off-guard.

“TriMet leadership wants the board to act a certain way,” Wai said in an interview, which she described as, “Here’s what we want you to do, and yeah, you should just do it.”

But while Wai said she trusts TriMet leadership has good intentions, she also said she is not one to stay silent about anything, let alone on issues where she sees the possibility for adverse effects on minority riders.

“I think the role of the board member is also to help direct and guide the organization, especially when there’s room for improvement,” she said.

Kathy Wai, the youngest board member in TriMet's history, pictured in a Southeast Portland coffee shop. Wai is pictured with her boss, Rep. Alissa Keny-Guyer, D-Portland on November 14, 2018. Beth Nakamura/Staff

WIDESPREAD ADMIRATION

Wai’s rise isn’t surprising to long-time friends and colleagues. Duncan Hwang, associate director of the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, described Wai as “a unicorn” who seamlessly marries her immigrant heritage with innate relationship-building skills and political savvy.

“I think she has a call to public service. I think she genuinely cares about our communities,” he said.

Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, said he’s impressed by Wai’s work in his legislative district to mobilize the Asian and Pacific Islander community, which has raised its profile in Salem in recent years.

“She’s obviously very good with young people and kind of sees herself as a role model and they see her that way,” Dembrow said. “Her natural instincts to organize at the really grass roots level really helps her.”

Ronault “Polo” Catalani, an Indonesian-American civil rights attorney and long-standing leader in Portland’s immigrant community, said Wai’s presence on TriMet’s board is emblematic of a generational shift.

“The kids have done extraordinary things in the mainstream,” he said of first-generation immigrants in their 30s. “Like raising your hand in class to talk. Like running for public office. This is terribly embarrassing for us,” he said of the older generation.

Catalani called Wai and other young leaders’ ability to argue in public and lose but not lose face a “great redemption” for the sorrow and loss experienced by many immigrant parents who uprooted lives to come to Oregon.

“She’s all of our daughters,” he said.

Transit advocacy groups, which have felt overlooked by TriMet, now see a friendly face on the board.

“She’s somebody who we know that we can trust,” said Shawn Fleek, spokesman for OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon.

Kathy Wai, the youngest board member in TriMet's history, pictured in a Southeast Portland coffee shop November 14, 2018. Beth Nakamura/Staff.

FAMILY LEGACY

Kathy Wai was born in Burma to a close-knit family. Her father was in the military. Her mother came from a highly educated family of doctors, lawyers and teachers.

Wai’s maternal grandfather, Pe Than Myint, was a physician who studied in England and went on to research and advocate for HIV/AIDS patients and opium addicts for decades. His work ruffled feathers in the military dictatorship nestled between India and Bangladesh to the west, China to the north and Thailand and Laos to the east. It was the same military junta that renamed the country Myanmar in 1989.

Wai idolizes her grandfather, who now lives five minutes from her, and still seeks his advice. “He was a young star,” she said. “He had to be careful about what he said because of the government.”

The young family immigrated to the U.S. to escape the military dictatorship. They landed in the Bay Area. Wai was six. The family moved to Portland a little more than six years later.

They left a larger Burmese-speaking community in San Francisco for the relative isolation of Portland. “I wasn’t used to that,” she said. But the family fell in love with the big trees and the region’s natural beauty.

The move was challenging.

“We were people of some standing back in our country,” Wai said of her parents, “to now just immigrants who were just trying to survive.”

But Oregon soon felt like home, and by the time she was 21, Wai had graduated from Portland State University. She didn’t know or realize how much she would use her Burmese language skills or embrace her identity, then she started working at the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization’s Asian Family Center in Northeast Portland.

By then, the American economy was in freefall. The Wai family had lost its home to foreclosure.

Hundreds of refugees from Myanmar landed in Portland, part of a wave of more than 1,500 during the next decade, according to state records.

Sa Hudin was one of those refugees plunked down in an alien world.

In 2009, the 14-year-old Hudin and his two sisters and parents met Wai a couple weeks after arriving in Oregon.

Hudin said Wai came to Franklin High School to help him navigate the maze of classrooms. She went grocery shopping with the family. She stopped by the house to check in. She taught the family how to ride TriMet.

She helped him learn English.

“I couldn’t not be an advocate,” Wai said. “I couldn’t stop with, ‘Oh, are you hungry? Here’s some food.’”

The totality of the culture change was overwhelming. It often left Hudin in tears, but Wai was always there.

“She never gives up,” he said. “She’s always teaching us, never give up.”

Wai continued helping Hudin – and other refugees – with language skills, resumes and job interviews – even after she left the immigrant and refugee community group. She kept those relationships with refugee families as an advocate while working for the Asian and Pacific Islander networking group.

Seeing Wai sit on the TriMet board is empowering, Hudin said. It’s someone who understands his story.

“I can’t even explain how much it means to me,” he said. “She has a wonderful beautiful heart. She’s always there for everybody.”

An early morning MAX train snakes through Northeast and downtown Portland, January 26, 2018 Beth Nakamura/Staff LC-LC-

NEW BOARD

Brown appointed Wai, long-time electrician and union stalwart Keith Edwards, and environmental scientist and design expert Osvaldo Gonzalez to the board in May. Brown said she wanted to shake up the board and add more young and diverse voices.

Just a few meetings in, it appears that plan is working. All three routinely ask probing questions and discuss their personal experiences being profiled or treated unfairly on TriMet. “TriMet does not exist without the public,” Edwards said at the agency’s monthly meeting in October. “We need to understand that.” Travis Stovall, a Gresham businessman who already sat on the board, has shared similar stories.

Months before she was ever confirmed to the volunteer TriMet board by the Oregon State Senate, an east Multnomah County school board member was arrested and involved in an incident on a MAX platform as part of a routine fare-evasion sting.

Wai said she took the incident involving Ana del Rocio “really hard.”

“I felt like this was a young person, a young elected leader who got stopped and arrested in a very traumatic way,” she said.

“It made me pause and reflect,” she said. “Why did that have to happen in the way it played out?”

Del Rocio, whose legal name is Rosa Valderrama, would eventually win a contentious legal dispute that drew the ACLU of Oregon into her corner. Judge John Wittmayer found the random fare stop was unconstitutional, and the ACLU said his opinion called into question the practice systemwide. Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum eventually decided not to appeal the judge’s ruling, and TriMet took steps to codify its authority on the MAX system while ensuring riders who don’t pay fares are aware evasion alone amounts to a citation and not a crime.

At its meeting last week, Wai eventually supported the rule changes. TriMet said it had contacted dozens of community organizations after Wai delayed the initial vote, and the vast majority approved the plans.

Fleek, the transit advocacy group OPAL’s spokesman, said Wai did well by not rubber-stamping the plan at first blush. “We have always seen that as a problem,” he said.

Wai said she feels the wait was worth it because community organizations had a chance to feel heard. “I think we are headed in a good direction in better transparency in how these decisions are made,” she said.

Catalani, the longtime Portland leader, said it’s important not to discount what he described as a “brave” action.

“It’s good stuff, for her to put the brakes on it and feel she’s righteous about it,” he added.

Catalani added it shows Wai grasps the value of her voice and experience.

Wai recently left the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon to work for Rep. Alissa Keny-Guyer.

Dembrow, the state senator, said he will be interested to watch Wai learn the ropes from inside in Salem versus advocating from the outside.

Having somebody who is a TriMet board member working on legislative issues will be “a rare but really desirable connection for us,” he predicted.

Wai said she feels like she carries the voices of so many Portlanders when she sits on the TriMet board.

And she doesn’t forget about her teenage self with the cut-out map in the wallet.

“If I was 16 and knew that there was someone on the TriMet board who looked like me or shared my values or my experiences,” she said, then paused, “what would that have done?”

-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen