Advocacy Through Research and Mentorship: Dr. Su Yeong Kim’s Journey to Change

• Dr. Su Yeong Kim’s childhood as an immigrant from South Korea living in the US inspires her work and the research she has on immigrant-origin children’s development 
• Visibility in all spaces, including academia, is necessary for inclusion and real-life changes to occur in the everyday lives of marginalized groups.
• Dr. Kim’s core values include persistence, reliability, and advocating for future generations of academic researchers to reach their goals.

1. Tell us about your childhood and how it shaped who you are today.

I was born in Gangnam, Seoul, South Korea, in the 1970s. My family—parents, older brother, younger sister, and I (the middle child)—immigrated to Southern California after being invited by an aunt living there. My dad, served in the US military together with the South Korean military as they were allies during the Vietnam war. My father was deeply drawn to American culture and the idea of social security, which South Korea lacked at the time. Believing in the opportunities the U.S. offered, he moved our family there.

At the time, my mom was in her late 30s, my dad was in his early 40s, and we children were under ten, except for my brother, who was around eleven. We grew up as immigrants in a large community of other Koreans in Southern California. My parents had limited formal education; my dad finished middle school, and my mom high school. They came to the U.S. as adults, not students, and therefore did not have the opportunity to go to school, learn the language, and become proficient in English. My siblings and I, however, learned the language, went to college, and built our own careers.

My parents sold everything they had, including their house, so that they would have enough capital to buy a dry cleaning business when we came to Southern California. After school, my dad would pick us up, and all three of us kids would help out at the store. We grew up doing schoolwork, eating our meals at the store, and also helping out at the store. That was our everyday experience. That balancing of school and work at the store was a key part of our upbringing.

These early experiences have deeply influenced the kinds of research questions I now explore as a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

2. What motivated you to center your academic career around the experiences of immigrant families, particularly Asian American adolescents? Was there a personal or academic turning point that shaped this focus?

Growing up in Southern California, my parents ran a dry-cleaning business. My mom once tried to start a clothing store in Korea, though it was not successful. Business was always part of our family life, so when I applied to college, I figured I should major in business, as that’s all I knew.

I was fortunate to be offered a really good financial aid offer to attend the University of Southern California. It was an amazing school with so many opportunities. I started as a business major. After a year or two, the classes felt unstimulating. I remember seeing my brother’s psychology textbook during high school and being drawn to reading studies about behavior, motivation, values, and how they shape the way we think and act. I stayed in business because it felt safer for an immigrant family with limited resources, but a friend encouraged me to try psychology.

I took an introductory psychology class and, later, a developmental psychology course, which truly changed my life. I learned how culture shapes children’s development. It opened my eyes to how contextual factors affect learning and development.

Eventually, I joined the psychology honors program, did summer research, and realized I did not want to be a therapist—I wanted to produce the research I read out in the textbooks of my college developmental psychology courses. I applied to PhD programs and chose the University of California Davis for its generous fellowship offer and excellent research opportunities. I was eager to study Asian American families, a group rarely mentioned in the texts I had loved. That absence drove my desire to research communities like mine. 

3. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in your career, and how did you overcome them?

There were many challenges as a minoritized woman in academia. The system isn’t designed for people from marginalized backgrounds to succeed. You have to actively seek out mentors, ask for guidance, and strategize to build opportunities for yourself.

Even my research questions faced obstacles. When I entered grad school, I learned about the Family Stress Model, developed through an NIH-funded, multi-million-dollar study on Iowa farm families, which had been running for over a decade. My advisor encouraged me to use that data, which examined how economic stress in white 1980s Iowa families affected children. But I wanted to study children like me, people of my community and background. I wanted to apply the Family Stress Model to Chinese American adolescents in Northern California, the largest Asian American group in the region, and see if the processes held true in minoritized communities. At the time, while I was pursuing my PhD, i.e., 1996–2003, there was little interest in ethnic minority research, especially on Asian Americans. Still, I persisted. My advisor supported me, and we published our findings in a top journal. That paper launched my trajectory in Asian American research. It took convincing and hard work, but it was worth it to represent the children of my own community.

4. As a professor of human development and family sciences, how has your field changed in the last 10 years, especially in terms of how we understand immigrant family dynamics?

The field has definitely changed. First of all, we did not know anything about immigrant families when I started in the field; there were maybe one or two papers on immigrant families at the time. There was one paper by Ruth Chow on child development in 1994, which was the landmark paper on parenting and Asian-Americans. At the time, we could probably count on our fingers how many studies there were on Asian American and immigrant families. 

In my career, it was difficult to get the work on minoritized families recognized. The top journals in my field repeatedly rejected my papers, often because the gatekeepers of the journals did not understand or value research on immigrant families, having never experienced those dynamics themselves.

Fortunately, many of us who grew up as children of immigrants, like me, went on to college and earned doctorates. As our numbers grew, we began shaping a new field focused on immigrant family dynamics. It was not just Asian Americans; many scholars from marginalized backgrounds—African American, Latinx, Asian American, and LGBTQ—rose into leadership positions within key organizations. They brought deep understanding and made structural changes that opened the door for research like mine to be published in the top journals of our field. It took years, but those collective efforts changed the landscape.

5. If you could go back and do one thing differently in your career, what would it be?

I have been doing a longitudinal study on children who are language brokers. This means children who have to translate for their parents because they may not speak the language of the host culture. I started that project around 2012. Across time, we were able to collect data on those families through multiple grants. We started with 600 families, but at our last data collection in December of 2024, we were down to about 280 families. The one thing I would do differently is have replenishment samples. With replenishment samples, researchers can plan ahead and recruit additional participants to replace the samples that are lost over time. Of course, that takes more funding. I wish I could still keep going with that project, but because I did not plan ahead with incorporating replenishment samples as the study was going on, it is unlikely that I can get another grant to continue studying them because we lost so many participants across the longitudinal study, which tracked them for over a decade.

6. If you could have dinner with a famous historical figure, who would it be and why? What would you ask this person?

There are many important historical figures in developmental psychology, but Jean Piaget stands out for shaping our understanding of children’s cognitive development. Beyond him, two late mentors I deeply admire are Xiaojia Ge and Stanley Sue. Dr. Ge survived China’s Cultural Revolution, left his home to pursue a PhD in the U.S., and became a highly respected developmental scientist. Stanley Sue was an icon because he established the first National Research Center on Asian American Mental Health with funding from the  National Institutes of Mental Health to study Asian Americans’ mental health. 

As many people know,  scientists are trying to find ways  to get their research funded because of recent federal funding cuts. I would really be interested in hearing Dr. Ge’s and Dr. Sue’s perspectives on how we can persevere in these times. I would want their perspective because they were the pioneers. Stanley Sue was the pioneer who learned to navigate the system to get the first NIH-funded research center on Asian American mental health. Dr. Xiaojia Ge was able to survive the Cultural Revolution to become an incredibly successful scientist. I would be curious to hear what kind of advice or strategy they would recommend for today’s scientists trying to navigate today’s funding environment to accomplish their scientific goals.

7. What are your most important values, and how have they contributed to the progression of your career?

I would say the three most important values for me are persistence, reliability, and being an advocate. Persistence is a very important value. There will always be setbacks along the way. Unless you persist, you will not succeed. 

The other thing that I value is being reliable. The students who I see doing really well in their work with me and as students are the ones who are reliable. They put in the time needed to get their work done and are dedicated to fulfilling their goals, and do it on a regular basis.

The third value that I think is really important to me is being an advocate. I have already been in my field for more than 20 years, and I have already reached full professor level. My goal now is to advocate for the next generation. I value advocating for their careers and providing them with opportunities to get to the level that they want to achieve. 

8. If you had to summarize one major takeaway from your decades of research into a life lesson, what would it be?

I am always amazed by people’s sense of resilience. I have been studying marginalized communities, and the popular perception of marginalized communities is that they are so disadvantaged and lack resources. However, it is amazing to hear their stories of resilience, and my research findings show the culture of wealth that so many have to draw upon to become resilient. My study findings show how adaptive and resilient people are. It is just so astounding. The human spirit is just incredible. That is the one thing that inspires me.

9. As someone mentoring future researchers, what advice do you give to students who want to study race, culture, or parenting in meaningful ways?

I urge students to stay committed to their passions. The communities we represent matter, and our work makes a difference. I hope they figure out creative ways to continue getting our work funded to study marginalized communities.

The other important thing I want to impress upon new students is that social science is also a science. Every task, no matter how small, contributes to a larger research goal.

Dr. Su Yeong Kim’s story and achievements are a masterclass in resilience, community building, and the importance of representation. Through her work and mentorship, she is shaping an inclusive future centering marginalized communities. Her story is a reminder that all our efforts add up to collective changes, as small actions can cause revolutionary change.