Sida Ly-Xiong

Sida Ly-Xiong

Director of Learning & Development

Pronouns: she/her
Started at Nexus: 2019

At Nexus:

I joined Nexus to manage the national Leadership Learning Initiative (LLI), a program we launched in 2019 in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). I am responsible for developing engagement strategies that ensure Nexus’s community-centered leadership approach informs health equity and leadership development efforts at a national level.

About:

My work is an integration of evaluation, engagement and equity. Throughout my career, I’ve developed, coordinated and supported a variety of collaborative initiatives and institutions that want to apply a racial equity lens in their work. I think equity work is fundamentally about growing authentic relationships in and with communities.

I am Hmong and was born in Thailand after the Secret War in Southeast Asia.  My family was sponsored to the United States by a Catholic parish in a small town in Wisconsin where I grew up. I’ve lived in Twin Cities almost all of my adult life. Along with my husband and two kids, we like to get out to a variety of arts and cultural festivals in the Twin Cities and always make time for fishing and being outdoors.

Click here for Sida’s professional bio

INSPIRATION

You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it. – Grace Lee Boggs