Meet Your Neighbor: Ken Pao

“After I moved to Jackson Heights over a year ago, I kept passing by the Queens Center for Gay Seniors every day. I always thought to myself, ‘wow, it's so awesome they have a whole senior center dedicated to LGBTQ+ elders, how cool!’ Around that time, I also became a lead at NY Pride at Adobe (our internal LGBTQ+ employee group). One of our goals was to organize volunteer activities for our community, so I began to reach out to a few different LGBTQ+ nonprofits with QCH being one of them. I was really impressed with everything QCH was doing with their LGBTQ+ senior and youth groups. After some chatting and planning, we found ourselves creating a whole month of fundraising and volunteer efforts with QCH during Pride month last June. NY Adobe raised over $2K to fund a trolley for the senior group to march in Queens Pride, and a group of Adobe employees also marched in the parade as well. It was great to see how our funds positively impacted the seniors’ participation. We also organized a digital clinic for the senior group where Adobe employees helped them out with any tech and device questions they had. Finally, we conducted a workforce readiness workshop with Generation Q where Adobe employees gave career advice to the youth participants. Our volunteer efforts came together so easily and naturally, making QCH a fantastic nonprofit to partner with.”
- Ken Pao, Curator, Artist Development Lead at Adobe