Hmong Women Lead
2025
"Rooted in Resilience: Leading with Courage, Healing in Community."
This year, we come together as Hmong women from across the country and around the world—each with our own stories, yet connected by shared threads of cultural expectation, generational silence, and the deep desire for healing.
Our experiences may be different, but the barriers we face are strikingly similar—shaped by historical trauma, patriarchal norms, and cultural traditions that have often discouraged Hmong women from seeking care, rest, or leadership.
We are naming what was never meant to be buried.
We lead from lived experience.
We rise—not just for ourselves, but for our daughters and future generations.
Watch the Conference Overview
Meet Our 2025 Speakers
Annie Lee
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Annie Lee is a trauma-informed counselor with over 20 years of experience, a certified circle facilitator, nonprofit leader, speaker, trainer, and co-creator of Hmong Women Today and Seeds4Hope. As a Hmong daughter, mother, and leader, she has journeyed through silence, survival, and ultimately—sovereignty. Her work is rooted in healing, belonging, and the power of communal transformation. Through story, circle, and culturally grounded care, Annie holds space for the conversations many were taught to avoid, guiding others to reclaim their voice and agency within a circle of care. Her work is grounded in love, purpose, and the belief that healing and leadership go hand in hand.
Healing The Sister Wound
In a world that often pushes women to compete, shrink, or go it alone, many of us carry deep wounds of disconnection—what we call the Sister Wound. In this talk, Annie Lee invites us to explore the roots of these wounds through the lens of patriarchy, cultural conditioning, and inherited beliefs. We'll reflect on how competition, comparison, and judgment have shaped our relationships with other women—and how we can begin to heal.
Mindy Heu
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Mindy is an Asian-American Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Colorado. Mindy is passionate about social justice and serving her clients, family, and community at large. She has over fifteen years of experience working with families and professionals in the field of child welfare and mental health. For the past six years she has provided independent child protection case consultations to a diverse array of professionals who have encountered the perplexing elements of the child protection system. She provides clinical expertise support from a trauma-informed and social justice lens.
Let Us Talk Taboo: Child Sexual Abuse in the Hmong Community
Child sexual abuse is a public health problem. The true prevalence of child sexual abuse in the Hmong community is unknown. Consent empowers a child to understand their rights in relation to their own body. Using the correct names of body parts, including private parts of the body, plays an important role in body safety.
Dr. Sendra Yang, PharmD, MBA
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Dr. Sendra Yang, PharmD, MBA is a trained pharmacist with two years of residency experience and nearly a decade of work in clinical and academic pharmacy. She also has extensive expertise in medical communication and information within the pharmaceutical field. Dr. Yang is deeply committed to addressing health education and the social determinants of health in minority and underrepresented communities, particularly among Asian Americans in the Hmong and Southeast Asian populations.
Mental Health and Medications in the Hmong Community
This talk explores mental health challenges and the role of medications in treatment, with a focus on the Hmong community. The session will cover how common mental health medications work, address common concerns and misconceptions, and discuss ways to support culturally respectful care.
Yangmee Lor
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Yangmee Lor is a consultant and community practitioner focused on advancing culturally responsive engagement and community-informed solutions. With extensive experience working alongside Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities, she specializes in building trust between communities and institutions through collaboration and culturally grounded programming. Her work supports the visibility of underrepresented communities, preservation of cultural history, and the development of sustainable, inclusive initiatives across Colorado and beyond.
Rooted and Rising: This Time, We Lead the Story
You don't have to be fully healed or have it all figured out to lead. Your truth is powerful—not for validation, but for transformation. The strongest movements begin in everyday spaces: kitchens, circles, conversations. We're not here to fit into systems that erased us—we're here to reimagine them. Rooted in lived experience, resilience, and community—we rise as builders, strategists, and leaders. This time, we lead the story—together, with courage and care.