THE TEAM
All the interviewers are second-generation Tibetans living in Boston, and include college students, activists, health care professionals, techies, and more. Our group also includes supporters who help administer and fundraise, plus a professional translator. Together, we share a passion to honor, understand, and sustain the experiences and stories of the first wave of Tibetan immigrants, to make them accessible to all readers, and to add to the venerable history of refugees who have resettled and found asylum in the USA.
TENZIN CHOKKI
Chokki was born and raised in India, often remembers her experiences of attending various Tibetan Children's Village schools nostalgically. In 2009, she immigrated with her whole family to Boston where she began high school. Currently, she is a senior at Tufts University studying Child Study & Human Development and Community Health. Being part of this collective community has been crucial because it has allowed Chokki to work alongside community-minded folks to bring forth stories of the Tibetan diaspora upfront. A firm believer in intergenerational power and strength, she believes that a project such as TRS has great potential to build bridges and thus connect people across various backgrounds on values of truth, dignity, and resilience. Although Chokki grew up outside of Tibet, her spirit continues to journey across the Tibetan plateau with the warm support of the stories she has been listening to since she was little - she remains ever grateful for being able to listen and learn from others.
YESHI DOLKAR
Yeshi Dolkar was born, brought up and educated in India. She has a Bachelor’s of Education and masters in Economics and English Literature from Punjab University, India. From 1983 to 2009 she worked as a teacher at the Tibetan Children’s Village School in Dharamsala teaching High School English and Economics while also deeply involved in various educational leadership positions. In 2009, she joined the Dalai Lama Institute for Higher Education, Bangalore, India, teaching undergraduate students English language and also training Primary School teachers in the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language. After completing 31 years of Service at the Tibetan Children’s Village Organization, she voluntarily retired in August 2015. Currently she works as an Academic Counsellor teaching English language to undergraduate students at the Sera Jey Ignou Special Study Center, Bylakuppe, India. As a long time educator Yeshi firmly believes that liberal education is the answer to most of the problems we face in today’s world and that the TRS Project is just the right step in that direction.
JAMPA GHAPONTSANG
Jampa immigrated from India to Boston, Massachusetts in 1978. A graduate of Wheaton College, she has worked at a family-owned restaurant, Sungard, and Harvard University. As a founding member of the U.S. Tibetan Society for School and Culture, a small non-profit organization that supported the main organization in Sweden, she was an active member of this international organization to first build schools inside Tibet. She was involved in a Cambridge-based group that sent Tibetan-American women to the 1995 UN 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing. Over the years, she has held different roles in the Tibetan Association of Boston (TAB) and TAB Sunday School. Traveling to Tibet in the early 1990s was a transformative experience that strengthened her belief in the wisdom of our elders, richness of our culture and history, power of our youth, and hope for freedom inside Tibet. Having experienced first-hand being part of the early Tibetan community in Boston and witnessing the growth of the community after the US-Tibetan Resettlement Project, Jampa is thrilled and inspired to be working in the Tibetan Resettlement Stories: Voices of Boston.
TENZIN DECHEN
Tenzin Dechen is a Tibetan-born and raised in India. She received her master's degree in public health from Columbia University. Currently, Dechen works in healthcare quality research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Outside of work, she has been part of the Tibetan Resettlement stories:Voices of Boston for the past two years. She is moved by the depth of knowledge and history people conveyed through these interviews and cannot wait for everyone to hear these powerful unheard life experiences of the first Tibetan immigrants in Boston, United States.
TENZIN JAMPA SAMDO
Tenzin Jampa is a US Air Force veteran. Studied Early Childhood Education at Cambridge College. He has served as an executive member for the Tibetan Association of Boston. He manages -Pocket Money Project, This Tibetan Life and also part of the organizing members of the Boston Tibet Vigil and Tibetan Youth of Boston. He currently works and resides in Belleville, Ontario, Canada. Jampa believes that it is imperative to gather stories of the early Tibetan immigrants in the US before they disappear. With today’s advanced tools which allows us to capture the moments, we have to utilize it to collect and make our stories accessible to the growing new generations to help understand the struggles of the past and find comfort in them so that stories can be passed down. Tibetan Resettlement Stories serves the purpose of recording oral history to preserve these stories.
TENZIN KUNSANG
Tenzin Kunsang was born in Nepal and at the age of 3, immigrated to Boston in 1996. In 2015, Kunsang graduated from University of Massachusetts Amherst with a Bachelor of Science in Public Health and a minor in Education. She has always been a strong advocate for social justice and has spent many summers teaching underserved youth in Cambridge, with the organization, Phillips Brooks House Association at Harvard University. She currently works at Boston Children’s Hospital as a Patient Experience Representative and is also the General Secretary for Tibetan Association of Boston. Kunsang joined Tibetan Resettlement Stories: Voices of Boston (TRS) because she believes it’s essential to explore the struggles the older generation faced,for this will allow the new wave of younger Tibetans to cultivate growth and understanding of where they came from. She firmly believes that TRS will create ripples among the Tibetan diaspora and help many Tibetans bring their hearts home.
TENLEY PALSANG
Tenley Palsang is a graduate from Wheaton College, and has worked in sales and management for over 20 years. Born and raised in Boston, she was a young girl when the Tibetan Resettlement Project began in 1992 and has been fortunate to see the community's growth , transition, and success. Tenley was an active member of the US Tibetan Society for School and Culture, has served as an executive member the Tibetan Association of Boston (TAB) and coordinator for Boston's Tibetan Heritage Center Project, and collaborated on various other projects for TAB. Her 1993 visit to Tibet was truly life-changing, as she felt saddened, moved and inspired when seeing the struggles Tibetans were facing and the strength they possessed to move forward. She believes that a project like TRS: Voices of Boston will be a permanent and important resource for gaining first-hand knowledge of the experiences and history of Tibetans in exile. As the new mother, she hopes her son will read these stories and gain insight into the rich culture and strong individuals who have paved the way for his future.
YESHE TUNKHAR
Yeshe was born and raised in Boston's north shore, shortly after graduating from Dickinson College, was the youngest elected executive member of the Tibetan Association of Boston (TAB) in 2002. In 2007 Yeshe moved to Stockholm, Sweden where she worked and served on the Board for the non-profit organization The Swedish-Tibetan Society for School and Culture and received her master's degree in public health from Stockholm University. From 2011 to 2016, based in southern California she worked at her late uncle, Lama Chödak Gyatso Nubpa Rinpoche's non-profit organizations, Tools for Peace and Ari Bhöd, The American Foundation for Tibetan Cultural Preservation the latter which she still volunteers for today. Returning to Massachusetts in 2016, Yeshe lives with her mother, husband and daughter and currently works for the Boston VA Research Institute in Jamaica Plain, Mass. Yeshe feels fortunate, to have witnessed the Boston Tibetan community grow from just two families to several hundred and, that TRS: Voices of Boston not only is preserving the stories of Tibetans who settled in Massachusetts but that by doing so future generations, Tibetans and non-Tibetans alike can read the narratives and better understand how the past has shaped the present Tibetan community and the American fabric.
TENZIN tSELHA
Tenzin Tselha currently works at Make-A-Wish Foundation. She went to the Tibetan Children's Village (TCV) and the University of California at Berkeley for school. She is in her 3rd year volunteering as a Tibetan language teacher at the Tibetan Sunday School, part of Tibetan Association of Boston. She loves poetry. She is interested in learning about the formative years of the first Tibetans in Boston and how they have helped shape the Tibetan community here into this vibrant homely community that it has become today. On a lighter note, she would love to hear about their funny 'Fresh off the boat' (FOB) moments.
TENZIN YOUDON
Tenzin Youdon currently works in the Audit Oversight department at State Street Corp. She has over 7 years of work experience in the Corporate Finance in different capacities from Fund Accounting to Client Operations. She came to United State in 1998 through the 1000 Tibetan Resettlement program and that is the one of the main reasons why she is interested in this project. Being a product of this program and having firsthand experience of growing up with a small group of Tibetans to a large enough community, she believes this project will document a historical population shift in the Tibetan diaspora. During her college year, she did a study Abroad in Tibet with School for International Training (SIT). She has been one of the founding members of the Tibetan Settlement Stories: Voices from Boston.
TENZIN YANGZOM
Tenzin Yangzom was born in Dharamsala, India and immigrated to Boston in 2008. She is currently a university student studying Interdisciplinary Studies in South Carolina. She has been involved in the Boston Tibetan community through various projects such as TRS, T.E.A.C.H, and This Tibetan Life.
TENZIN wOEDAN PALJOR
Tenzin Woedan Paljor grew up near Boston and graduated from Malden High School. She is a sophomore majoring in Anthropology with a minor in Chinese at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. TRS has given me the opportunity to meet a diverse group of Tibetans and Tibetan supporters, as well as to learn about my community's history.
RINCHEN YOUTSO
Rinchen Youtso was born in Tibet and fled to India with her parents and two siblings in 1996. She completed her schoolings from Tibetan Children’s Village school, Dharamsala. She immigrated to Boston in 2012. Currently, she is pursuing her Bachelor’s degree in Dental Hygiene program at MCPHS University and works a part time job as library assistant. Rinchen has been a part of Tibetan Resettlement Stories: Voices of Boston for the past two years. She enjoys listening to the stories of early arrivers through oral interviews and believes that these stories would be crucial in preserving the history of Tibetan people’s struggle and hard works.
LAURA ZIMMERMAN
Laura Zimmerman and her husband sponsored a member of the Tibetan Resettlement Project in 1992 and ever since, have been closely involved with the Boston Tibetan community as advocates and friends. In 1994, Laura helped coordinate the group that sent Tibetan-American women to the UN Conference in Beijing ; in the following decades, as an editor and teacher of writing, she worked with Tibetan-American students and writers on dissertations, college essays, articles and books. A graduate of the Harvard Divinity School and long-time Board member of the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, her most recent editorial work is Three Steps to Awakening (Shambala Publication). Now semi-retired, she is delighted to advise and share in the work of the Tibetan Resettlement Stories: Voice of Boston.
