Michelle Tran and her friend Howard Chen donate a personal safety alarm to a senior in Manhattan’s Chinatown in April 2021.
When Michelle Tran is not pursing her MD/PhD degree with a specialization in cancer immunology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, she is busy helping Asian Americans protect themselves against hate crimes through Soar Over Hate, the non-profit she created last March.
Soar Over Hate has since raised more than $100,000 and distributed more than 24,000 protective noise-making devices primarily to elderly and vulnerable Asian Americans in New York City and San Francisco—as well as to the Mount Sinai Health System’s essential health care workers who commute to work. Her organization has established a need-based college scholarship fund for local high school students, arranged community health fairs in Manhattan’s Chinatown, and offers free, culturally competent mental-health therapy—either remote or in-person—in several languages, including Mandarin, Cantonese, and Korean, to victims of anti-Asian hate crimes.
Mount Sinai medical students volunteered with Soar Over Hate to distribute 1,000 personal safety devices, whistles, and booklets about reporting hate incidents to elderly in Manhattan’s Chinatown in April 2021. In addition to Michelle Tran, student volunteers included: Alyce Kuo, Serena Zheng, Axel Epié, Fred Kwon, Rachel Levantovsky, and Matthew Lin.
Recently, Ms. Tran was among 10 “fearless change makers” who were named 2021 L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth by the popular beauty brand. L’Oréal Paris USA donated $20,000 to Soar Over Hate and, in November, flew Ms. Tran and the nine other Women of Worth award recipients to Paris for a special ceremony. On Thursday, December 16, at 8 pm, the women and their non-profit work will be featured on an NBC special hosted by L’Oréal Paris and including guest appearances by Helen Mirren, Camila Cabello, Gemma Chan, and Eva Longoria. One of this year’s awardees will receive an additional $25,000 for their philanthropy.
“Asian hate, unfortunately, does exist,” says Ms. Tran. “I felt very disheartened by what was going on in my backyard and with the people around me who were being harassed, and attacked, and physically hurt, and I wanted to do something. A colleague of mine was attacked on his way to work and he still avoids the subway. The long-term impact of these incidents leaves a mental scar. So we’re helping to address the healing of the community, and we’re empowering youth with scholarships.”
In the fall, Soar Over Hate provided six low-income high-school seniors in New York City with scholarships of between $500 and $1,000, based on their essays about addressing anti-Asian hate.
Initially, Ms. Tran started her charity as a GoFundMe page with the help of teenager Tiffany Yuen. Ms. Tran is Ms. Yuen’s mentor through the organization, Apex for Youth, which partners Asian American professionals with low-income youth. The money they raised was used to purchase personal safety alarms and whistles for the elderly and supported several community events that featured self-defense classes and health screenings.
Michelle Tran in Chinatown
But Ms. Tran soon realized she could continue to pursue her two “passions” of growing her charity and focusing on her MD/PhD studies by combining efforts with her friend Kenji Jones, who ran a similar Asian American grassroots effort. That is when they developed the current line-up of services for Soar Over Hate. This fall, she was thrilled to learn that she had received a L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth award.
Ms. Tran also credits her mentors at Mount Sinai with providing support for her advocacy work. She works in the lab of Nina Bhardwaj, MD, PhD, Director of Immunotherapy and Co-Director of Cancer Immunology, who serves as her Principal Investigator. Ms. Tran is a co-President of the Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association at Mount Sinai, supervised by Nolan Kagetsu, MD, Clinical Professor of Radiology, and Ann-Gel Palermo, DrPH, MPH, Senior Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. She is also a student representative on Mount Sinai’s Committee on Anti-Asian Bias and Racism, which is led by Amanda J. Rhee, MD, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, and James C. Tsai, MD, MBA, President of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, and Chair of Ophthalmology at the Mount Sinai Health System.