Staff & Board

Karn is the Policy and Alliance Director and works to advance CFJ’s vision for justice by building power through policies and people. Born and raised in Chicago, Karn has been able to work with multi-racial grassroots organizations in Chicago, the Bay area, and Portland. In Chicago, he organized Asian American youth around immigration reform and the DREAM Act. He served as the Director of Student Organizing at Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth in San Francisco, where he organized black and brown youth and working-class families around education justice issues. In Portland, OR, he worked with high school students to start a youth-led organizing group that started and won an ethnic studies campaign for Portland Public High Schools. He also organized with incarcerated adults at Oregon State Penitentiary, to start and win a campaign to build a healing garden inside prison grounds. He also co-founded the Portland chapter of Asians 4 Black Lives, which works with Asian Americans to organize around Black liberation. Karn continues to do this work because he trusts the vision of young people, especially when it comes to education, since they’re the ones who are the most impacted by these issues. Karn is also really bad at cooking but really good at eating.