Matt Bowles: My guest today is Justine Abigail Yu. She is a communications and marketing strategist who has worked with organizations operating in North America, Central America, East Africa and Southeast Asia. Her expertise lies in growing enterprises from the ground up through strategic digital marketing, compelling storytelling, and genuine community engagement through a lens of anti-oppression. She is currently the marketing and communications director at Wanderful, a global travel and lifestyle brand that specializes in helping all women travel the world. And she is a senior advisor for Rise Travel Institute, which is a nonprofit organization that promotes responsible, sustainable and ethical travel through education. Justine is also the founder of Living Hyphen, an emerging magazine that explores the experiences of living in between cultures. As a hyphenated Canadian, that is an individual who calls Canada home, but who has roots elsewhere. She is a fierce advocate for equity and anti-oppression and her mission is to stir the conscience and spur social change.

Justine, welcome to the show.

Justine Abigail Yu: Matt. Thank you. Thanks for having me here today.

Matt Bowles: I am so excited to have you here. I have been so inspired and impressed and appreciative of your amazing work. So, it is really a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. Let’s start this off just by talking about where we are recording this from today. We are not in person, unfortunately, but I am actually in Charlotte, North Carolina, on the east coast of the United States. And where are you today?

Justine Abigail Yu: I am here in Toronto, Canada.

Matt Bowles: One of my favorite cities, by the way. I went to high school in Buffalo, New York. So, I spent many a weekend up in your amazing city of Toronto and have lots of incredible memories.

Justine Abigail Yu: Oh my gosh. Super close. Yes. I was the reverse. We would often go to Buffalo, Niagara Falls and then Buffalo outlet malls, things like that.

Matt Bowles: All of that good stuff. Yes, but you guys had the lower drinking age, so we were able to get into nightclubs at age 19 in Canada, you see where it was 21 in the United States. So, Toronto held a lot of appeal and allure for us at that age. So, what a fun city. But I would love to kick this off and just hear a little bit about your background. Can you talk about where you were born, when you moved to Canada, and just sort of your memories from growing up as a kid and how that was for you as a cultural experience?

Justine Abigail Yu: Yes. So, I am a Filipino Canadian, very proudly. So, I was born in Manila, Philippines, and I moved to Scarborough, Canada, which is a city just within the greater Toronto area. And I moved when I was just four years old. So, I’ve definitely spent most of my life here in Canada, but I still have a lot of family who live there. And most of my summers from my childhood were spent going back home to the Philippines and visiting family and really mostly visiting family. And so, yeah, that has informed a lot of my life and a lot of the work that I’m doing right now.

Matt Bowles: Can you talk a little bit about how you navigated that hyphenated identity growing up and then how that evolved over time as you got older?

Justine Abigail Yu: You know, I feel really fortunate to have grown up first in Scarborough, which as I mentioned, is in the greater Toronto area, and then later in another suburb called Markham, which is actually the most diverse community in all of Canada. About 77% of the population are “ethnic minorities”. And so, I grew up with so many friends and, you know, friends who have parents and grandparents and ancestors who are” from different places”. And so again, I just really feel fortunate to have grown up with that kind of diversity because I know that that is not the experience of so many people who are again “from different places” around the world, growing up in North America. And so, I think that has really shaped my appreciation for different cultures and especially my own culture and coming to appreciate and embrace that hyphenated identity and that duality that comes with who I am.

Matt Bowles: And can you also talk a little bit about how your politics developed, your social consciousness developed and your anti oppression worldview and kind of take us a little bit through that journey?

Justine Abigail Yu: Yeah. So, my first brush with social change as a concept, I guess, was through my very first internship experience I worked as an intern for a nonprofit organization. Again, based here in Toronto, Canada, called Journalists for Human Rights. And this was an organization that focused on and specialized in taking veteran journalists from around the world to train local journalists, primarily in Sub Saharan Africa at the time. I think they have expanded since then and teaching them about journalism, basic journalism skills, but also how human rights reporting, or how journalism in general can be used as a force to effect and mobilize change within communities all around the globe. I worked as a social media coordinator intern at the time. This was back in 2009, when social media was still very new from like a business perspective in terms of using it as a way to advance your cause or grow an audience and things like that. And so that was my first brush in the non-profit space and in international development. And ever since then, it really changed the trajectory of my life and what I wanted to do. At first, I always wanted to be a journalist. I always considered myself to be a writer. I still am. But that’s where it really started, where I started thinking about social justice and the change that we can affect in our communities.

Matt Bowles: And then what were the biggest takeaways from that and how did that function as sort of that springboard? What did you do next after that? Where did that lead you?

Justine Abigail Yu: Yeah, my main takeaway from that experience with the organization itself. JHR (Journalist for Human Rights), was really conscious of not creating systems of dependency, you know, and not doing the work for these local communities, but rather building capacity for these local journalists to do the work themselves to report on human rights issues. And that was a really foundational lesson for me in understanding that charity or doing things for other people will not be the main lever for change, but rather building capacity and collaborating in that way.

And so that was a really huge take away from me in terms of the anti-oppression side of things. In terms of my own career, like I mentioned, I didn’t realize that social media or digital marketing could be a space where I could flex my writing skills, where I could practice a lot of the things that I’m actually good at. And so, a huge takeaway for me was one that this was a space that I could even contribute to and be effective in. And yeah, that the nonprofit space is, or at least the social impact space is a space that I really wanted to contribute to.

Matt Bowles: That’s so awesome. Yeah, I mean, I relate to so much of that as well because I mean, for me too, a lot of my social consciousness was raised in college. Probably most of it, unless we go all the way back to like kind of socially conscious hip hop music and stuff like that. That got me through high school and then I went on and I did my master’s degree in international peace and conflict res. There’s a lot of people also doing international development work and all that kind of stuff, and got into all sorts of different activist causes and struggles and things like that. Through that, and then, you know, through starting to travel the world.

And some of that travel was initially specifically going to conflict regions, to do solidarity work with colonized people in places like Palestine or the north of Ireland or that kind of stuff as an ally and so forth. And then from there also then it just sorts of eventually I pursued sort of the nomad life, and now I’m just kind of traveling around the world all the time. But I would love to hear for you a little bit in terms of how travel then specifically allowed you to build on those things, both your political consciousness as well as sort of the professional direction as well, that you’ve ultimately taken.

Justine Abigail Yu: Yeah, I think for me, I know exactly the trip that changed my life in the sense that I wanted to travel all the time after that trip. It was maybe a cliche because I’m sure everyone has had similar experiences, but I don’t know, when I was 19, I guess it was, I did a summer abroad or a study abroad program to the Czech Republic, studying European politics. And that was the first time that I had traveled, well, one outside of Canada or the U.S. or the Philippines, which is where I vacationed most of my childhood. It was the first time that I had really traveled outside of those familiar spaces, and the first time I had traveled independently without my parents or without my family.

And the fact that was also an educational program was really such a game changer. That’s the phrase, game changer for me, just because I was actually learning the things that I was learning about my textbook. I was seeing, you know, I was visiting the places where all of these historical moments actually happened. And it brought so much of that history and the politics to life in a way that, of course, my textbook just couldn’t do. And so that was really just instrumental to the trajectory of my life. And ever since I was 19, after that travel abroad trip, I’ve just been going to different places, wanting to experience new things and really seeing the world.

Matt Bowles: That’s amazing. Yeah. I think the study abroad thing can be so unbelievably transformative. I went to study abroad in Ireland my junior year of college, and I’m Irish American. So that had all of this additional significance for me because I’m probably about four generations in the United States, right. And so, of course, what happens to, well, most immigrants from anywhere in Europe, right. Is that they largely lose a lot of that identity and just sort of become kind of like white American, if you will. And so, for me to be able to go and reconnect with Irish identity and then Irish history and then study the history of the British colonial processes over the Irish. And then my advisor in undergrad in the United States was Native American, he’s Lakota.

And so, he and I then started doing this comparative work about the British colonial processes over the Irish and the colonial processes over native nations in the U.S. and then I went on and I studied abroad after that, and I went to Palestine, and then we were looking at the colonial processes of over the Palestinians and all of this kind of stuff. And so, for me, a lot of that really came together, but it all really, really started, I would say, with the study abroad experience. And then from there it was just kind of like on this path that goes from there. I relate to so much of that. Can you share a little bit about some of your travel experiences that you had after that?

Justine Abigail Yu: Well, you mentioned your trip to Ireland and that connection to your heritage and 2011. I actually went back to the Philippines for a couple of months, and that was extremely transformative for me. That was after graduation, after graduating university, I mentioned that I had always gone home to the Philippines to visit family growing up, but it wasn’t until I was a lot older that I was really curious to learn more about our history and our heritage, not just family. I love my family, of course, but I wanted to see this country and this place and this culture that I am so deeply embedded in. But I don’t know if I actually knew that much about it. And aside from our family parties and the stuff that has been passed down to me from my parents and my family.

And so, I actually decided to go back home to the Philippines and I decided to do an internship there, really wanting to immerse myself in life back in the homeland. And so that time was really transformative for me. I had so many questions about this place that I called home and wanted so badly to belong there in a way that I thought would be different from my sense of belonging here in Canada. And I don’t know if I really felt that or if I got all the answers that I wanted, but I did want to bring that up and share that connection with you of just how important it is to reconnect to our roots and to experience. You know, there’s just a difference between living in the diaspora versus living in the homeland. And even though I’m Filipina, having that hyphenated identity makes my experience entirely different from what it’s like for folks back home.

Matt Bowles: But actually, love to hear your reflection on that. I think it’s super significant. So how was going back and what did you hope to find out of that trip to the Philippines? And then what do you think you actually found and came away with from that when you reflect back on it?

Justine Abigail Yu: Yeah, you know, I mentioned earlier that I’ve always felt really fortunate to grow up in really multicultural and diverse communities here in Canada. And so, I feel like I don’t have that much of a conflict or tension in terms of my hyphenated identity, as some other folks might have who grew up in more homogenous white spaces. But having said that, a lot of the mainstream media that I consume, the history textbooks that I had to learn in my years growing up, were still very Western and European centric, you know, and so while I had my friends who I felt like I belonged to and with, in a grander scheme of things, in terms of the broader society, there was always this question of what does it mean to be Canadian? I know when I walk around Canada or Toronto, there’s always a question of, where are you from? You know, there’s this assumption that I’m not from here.

And I know that that question can sometimes often be a question that’s really in search of connection, you know, just trying to find a way to connect with somebody else. But I also know that sometimes that question is laden with a lot of racist undertones. So, anyway, so knowing that broader scheme of things, I’ve always been really curious to see what it feels like to be back home in the Philippines. Would I feel that same sense of belonging or not belonging when I’m there? Which is why I really wanted to go back home and really experience the culture and the people and get to know this place that I’ve romanticized a lot growing up and that my family always talk about in so many of our family stories.

And when I got there, there was some familiarity. I’m very lucky also that I’ve been able to retain my language, Tagalog, which is one of many of the languages in the Philippines. But I speak Tagalog fluently, so I was able to get around. I was still able to communicate with a lot of people. But I don’t know something about the way that I walk or the way that I carry myself. People know instantly that I’m not, quote, unquote, from the Philippines. They are always taken aback once I start speaking, that I can actually speak the language fluently. There’s always a surprise in that. And so, yeah, being there for the couple of months, I still felt like an outsider despite speaking the language, despite knowing the food, knowing the culture, knowing the people, and all of these things. There’s still something about growing up here in Canada, having the values that I have that have been shaped by the west, that have separated me from people of the Philippines.

And so, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it was something at the time, you know, at a young age that took me aback because I thought, oh, everything is going to click when I go back home. But it didn’t. But after years of processing and reflecting, I know that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s great to be able to live in between cultures, to live in the hyphen. I talk about that a lot in my work with Living Hyphen, which I’m sure we’ll talk about later. You know, being able to act as a bridge between these two places and lands and cultures and peoples.

Matt Bowles: Well, I also want to ask you about your 2019 trip to the Philippines and going back again, because I feel like each time you go back at different points in your life based on where you are in your life. Experiences can be very different. And reflections on those trips can be very different. So, I would also love to hear a little bit about the 2019 trip. Although before you share about that trip, I know that you went there with your relationship partner.

Justine Abigail Yu: Yes.

Matt Bowles: We should maybe just start with that story, because I love good travel love stories and finding love through travel. So, good one, maybe could you just share a little bit about how your relationship came about and then that sort of lead into the 2019 trip?

Justine Abigail Yu: Absolutely. Yeah, this is my favorite travel story, so I’m glad you asked. I was traveling in 2014 to Banff, which is in Alberta, right outside of Calgary, here in Canada. One of my best friends lives there and so decided to go visit her. And we wanted to go hiking for one of the weekends. And so, we stayed in a hostel in Banff, Alberta. And one morning I went down to breakfast. My friend had already gone ahead without me. I am a late riser. And so, she had already had breakfast, was already meeting people. And when I got to the hostel breakfast area, the communal area, all the seats were taken. The only table left was with this guy. And so, I sat down and we struck up a conversation, as you do when you’re traveling, when you’re at the hostel and this guy’s name is Dom, Dominic. And he had just come from Whistler and was making his way east across Canada, eventually ending up in Toronto, Canada. And so, he let me know that, and I said, oh, my Gosh, I’m from Toronto, I should show you around sometime because he was super cute.

So of course, I wanted to show him around and we exchanged numbers, but I didn’t think anything would really come of it. But, but when he did, you know, when I went back home to Toronto and when he made his way to Toronto, he did send me a text and asked if we could hang out. And we ended up hanging out. And he was staying in Toronto for a few months just over the summer. I’m not sure how long exactly, but really, we became good friends during that time and nothing more. And he moved back to the UK and we just stayed friends for however many years that was. You know, we had sent a few Facebook messages here and there and just chat here and there, but again, mostly went about our separate ways.

And then in 2017 he happened to be visiting Toronto again and asked if he could crash at my place for a couple of days. And I thought, oh, I remember that guy, he’s pretty cute, he can crash at my place. So, he came, he crashed at my, on my couch for exactly one night. And then and we had this fling for a week or 10 days and it was this whirlwind romance for that time that he was here in Toronto. And honestly, I thought that that would be it. He was a good friend of mine at the time and we had so much fun. But to complicate matters, he wasn’t just going back home to the UK. He was actually going to Vietnam to teach English for the next two years. And so, when he came for that short vacation, I definitely thought it was just going to be a fling, just something for fun, a little summer romance and then that would be that.

But when he got to Vietnam, we were still texting, we were still messaging each other all the time and just decided to give it a go and try long distance. And we did that for about two years and then he moved to Toronto in, oh gosh, July 2019. So right before the pandemic hit. And we’ve been living together ever since. And so, we’ve gone from our long-distance relationship to being the only people that we see for the last like 19 months or so. Slowly now we’re actually starting to see other people, but we’ve certainly made up for our long-distance time together.

Matt Bowles: That’s amazing. What a great story. Well, I would love to hear a little bit about this shared travel experience. When you went to the Philippines together in 2019, how was that?

Justine Abigail Yu: So, after that trip that I had told you about, after graduation visiting the Philippines. I had taken a break, I guess, from going back home just because I really wanted to experience new people and places and, yeah, see other destinations that I hadn’t had a chance to see yet. And so, you know, most of my 20s, I had actually spent, you know, traveling Europe, traveling Central America, East Africa and other parts of Southeast Asia. And it never really occurred to me to go back home to the Philippines. Until Dom had asked me, he said, you know, should we go to the Philippines? I’d love to see this place that you talk about all of the time. I always share parts of my culture with him, always try to share our food and our history and all these different things.

And yeah, it just never occurred to me to go back home. But when he suggested, just felt right, it felt like the right time to do it. I had just left a job that I was working at for many years and I was already planning to go to Vietnam. And so, I was like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Let’s go. But I remember feeling so much anxiety and stress going back to the Philippines this time just because one, it was with my partner, with this person that I love who I wanted to see, this place that I love, that is a part of me. You know, I really wanted him to see why I loved it so much and to see this side of me that he’s seen glimpses of it, but not fully. And so, there was a lot of, yeah, anxiety. I was really stressed out about it. And also, I hadn’t been there in almost a decade. And the last time I was there, it was filled with a lot of questioning and it just felt like a lot. I put a lot into that experience.

But when we went, it was awesome. It was so good. It felt so wonderful to be back home. I was older. I didn’t have the same hang ups about identity I think that I had previously. I was so excited just to show Dom these different, you know, parts of my country and different parts of our culture and really traveling. I think that was the first time that I had traveled the Philippines before. You know, I was working and I really wanted to immerse myself in what I thought to be like “normal life” there. But I had never really traveled the Philippines as a tourist to see it from a different lens. And so, we visited my family, my dad’s side of the family, which is in Cebu. He got to meet all of them, my giant family, and then also my family in Manila. But we also took a trip to Palawan, which is this beautiful island. So gorgeous. And, yeah, I just was able to travel to my homeland, which I know a lot of people don’t really have the opportunity to do. And so that felt really special.

Matt Bowles: That’s amazing. So, I have yet to visit the Philippines. It is so high on my list. I have had, I mean, multiple Filipino and Filipina people on the podcast. I have also had tons of friends that have gone there. Everybody has just said the most amazing thing, so it’s so high on my list. So, for me, as well as listeners who have not yet been to the Philippines, what do you recommend in terms of a trip to the Philippines? I know you wrote an entire article about why you need to make sure not to skip Manila. So, I want you to be able to talk a little bit about that, as well as what other things people should definitely check out when they go to the Philippines.

Justine Abigail Yu: So, of course, you know, you have to visit the white sand beaches. Palawan was my absolute favorite place to go. Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s so beautiful. The islands are incredible. But you’ll know that, you know, like, if you do a Google search of the Philippines, that’s probably going to be the top thing to come up. So, I won’t even talk anymore about that. Yeah, for me, it’s Manila. I mean, I’m biased because that’s where I grew up, where a lot of my family is, and where I always go home to. When I do go home or when I talk about home in the Philippines, there is a certain grit to Manila that I think if you are open to it and really take the time to get to know this place, I think you will love as well.

It’s not beautiful in any conventional sense, I’ll tell you that. You know, but there is so much complexity in the city of Manila. It’s not, you know, like, there is a part that is incredibly glamorous and super wealthy and trendy and all of that. But then there’s also the stark poverty that you cannot ignore when you go to the Philippines. You know, it’s not secluded or segregated in some kind of neighborhood that you will never see. It’s everywhere. And I don’t say this in a way that’s like, oh, slum tourism. Let’s look at poverty in this kind of exoticized way.

But really sitting with the discomfort of having such unequal lives side by side, for me, is an important fact that a lot of travelers need to sit with and look at when they travel to the Philippines because it’s not all white sand beaches, you know, I wish it was. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? But real life in the Philippines is a lot of what you’ll see in Manila. And I think that’s really important to bear witness to. And if you want to be an ethical traveler, a responsible and conscious traveler, holding all of these truths and complexities is really important.

Matt Bowles: Well, I know you also went to the Fringe Festival in Manila, and I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about that, maybe just starting for people that have never heard of the Fringe Festival to describe sort of what it is and then how was your experience there?

Justine Abigail Yu: Yeah, the Fringe Festival is an international arts and community festival that really highlights local artists and makers and creators in different cities around the world. I didn’t even know it was an international festival, to be honest. We have it here in Toronto and it’s primarily a number of stage, plays, theater, and I’ve always loved it here in Toronto. And it just so happened that during that trip, Fringe Manila was also happening. And I was so eager to go and to see what the local arts and culture space was like in Manila.

I had at that point been building Living Hyphen this community and it’s a community of artists and storytellers and so I wanted to connect to those similar people but back home in the Philippines. And we attended the opening party in Makati, which is the financial district of Manila of the Philippines. And it was just, just so much fun. It was just full of dance and song. And what I thought was actually hilarious was when I got there, I actually saw a Filipino Canadian DJ, Lady D, and some other like Filipino Canadian comedians and some public figures and I had no idea they were going to be there actually. And so, I was like, oh my gosh, it’s like my whole world collapsing into this one beautiful space. It was awesome.

Matt Bowles: That’s amazing. One of the things I remember from your article is that you were talking about the gender fluidity that is able to sort of manifest in this particular festival at this particular time of year within a broader conservative society. Can you talk a little bit about that aspect of it?

Justine Abigail Yu: Yeah, that was definitely showcase and put front and center in this dance party, in this launch party that they had for the festival. You know, folks who were trans, gender, non-conforming, you know, people of across the gender binary really celebrating their identity through fashion, through dance, through song. It was so beautiful because, yes, the Philippines is a very Catholic and patriarchal society. And while there are many folks who identify across the gender binary in the Philippines.

It’s like most parts of the world, but I think a lot more amplified in the Philippines because of our very Catholic population and our very patriarchal society. It’s shame still. There’s violence that is done upon these people. And for this one night, I don’t want to say that was not evident. Like, that threat to safety was not evident because I myself am a. You know, I’m a. I’m a CIS straight woman. I don’t identify as such, so I can’t claim that. But it was really beautiful for me to see that being celebrated. And for me, I hope that that is something that becomes a lot more widespread and accepted and celebrated all across the country, because I know for sure right now there’s still a lot of stigma around it. There’s still a lot of shame, and it’s not a safe place necessarily for folks to express gender fluidity.

Matt Bowles: Another travel experience that I want to ask you about is your trip to Vietnam with Dom also. You wrote a really powerful and important article which I’m going to link up the show notes because I want everyone to go read this whole thing. It’s called Living in Between Traveling while Filipina Canadian. And you talk about a couple things in the article. I’m wondering if you can sort of expand on this. I’ll just read a brief quote from the article. In the first part of the article, you say, “I have felt fully society’s exoticization and fetishization of Asian women as modest, quiet, submissive and subservient beings. All the things that I am not”. And then later in the article, you say, “plot twist, I discover that I’m problematic too”. And then you have a subsection of the article called Decolonizing Myself and Unlearning Systemic Oppression, where you talk about this rooftop bar story. And I thought just including all of those in the same article was just an incredibly powerful read. And so, I’m going to link it up in the show notes and I want people to go read the whole thing. But can you just share a little bit about that experience?

Justine Abigail Yu: Yeah, thanks for asking about that. That’s one of my favorite articles that I’ve written, actually, because of the complexity that it captures. Throughout my life, I’ve always felt society exoticizing or fetishizing me. You know, even here in Canada growing up, a lot of gendered and racialized comments have been thrown at me about being an Asian woman. And I always knew that. And I think I knew these things on an intellectual level. But it wasn’t until I had traveled to Asia and had seen before me so much of history, I guess, playing out before my eyes. When I was traveling to the Philippines, the first time that I had gone back, like, after graduation and I was working, I was doing my internship.

In the evenings, I would go around Makati, which is the financial district, and I would see in some of the trendier places and restaurants, a lot of expats, a lot of white men with Filipino women. And typically, they were a lot older white men with much younger Filipino women. And I could see how these women were performing. They were putting on a performance in a way that was really different from how interactions are between Filipino women and Filipino men. Like, I knew that there was something going on there that was, again, there’s like something about gender and race and the history and our legacy of colonialism in the Philippines there. You know, we were first colonized by Spain for over 300 years, and then colonized by the U.S. for another almost 50 years. Not quite. But, you know, we have this history of colonization.

And of course, during that time, a lot of sexual violence took place against Filipino women. And I could see how these legacies of colonialism continue on today and how Asian women revere in the Philippines, especially in Asia, especially white men. There is still this idea that being with a white man can elevate your status in some way. This is a generalization. Of course, not all Filipino women feel that way, but societally, I know that this is a fact. You know, like, even when I go back home to the Philippines, when on my way home when I was with Dom, a lot of people were telling me, oh, how lucky that you’re with a white man. That was a step up, that I was doing well for myself because I was with a white man. But it wasn’t until I think I was traveling back in Vietnam, particularly with Dom, that I fully felt the weight of all of that. And not just for me as an individual, but I felt like I had felt the entire colonial legacy of Asian women being extreme exploited by white colonizers in Asia.

And there was this one particular moment that I described in the article that you’re talking about where Dom and I had visited a rooftop bar in one of the more affluent areas of Saigon. And it was a very expat, dominated space. It was beautiful. It was expensive by Saigon standards. And I noticed that it was full of white people. And I remember entering that space and almost like leaving my body and just looking around me and noticing these white men, many of whom were older, who were with younger Asian women. And suddenly my mind just going on overdrive, thinking about, oh my gosh, are all of these men just with these Asian women because of these stereotypes, you know, and thinking about again, that colonial legacy of white men, white colonizers going into Asia, different parts of Asia, and exploiting these women for sexual favors, for sex.

And suddenly I zoomed back into my own self and saw myself with my white partner and was immediately self-conscious of how I was being perceived by everyone else in that room, both by, you know, the local bartenders as well as the other expats, men and women alike, who were there. And suddenly I was over analyzing and incredibly self-conscious of being perceived as a sex worker or a prostitute or someone who’s just here with a white man to get ahead. And it felt so gross. And it’s still such a visceral experience for me because there were so many things that were wrong about that whole situation, about the way that I was thinking. You know, suddenly I was afraid of what people thought about me.

And not just afraid of what people thought about me, but suddenly being afraid to be judged as a sex worker, as a prostitute, as if that is something to be ashamed of, as if that, that the person who is being exploited for sexual favors is the person who should feel ashamed for that, which is not the case at all. And suddenly in that moment, all of these questions were going through my mind and all of these judgments on myself were being passed through my mind. And my reaction to that, not just a disembodied experience, but I remember distinctly that one of my reactions, my main reaction, was to make my Canadian self-louder. You know, I made sure to speak a little bit louder and make sure that my unaccented English was heard by everyone in that space so that they knew, no, I am not a local Vietnamese woman who is just with a white man to get ahead or anything like that. I am a Western raised woman and suddenly won all of those judgments against local Vietnamese women were passed on like I did. That was hell a problematic.

And then also I gave up my own identity as a crowd, as I had thought all these years, as a proud Filipino woman that went out the door in that instance. I relied on my Canadian identity as a shield to protect myself from these judgments from other people. And suddenly just not forgetting who I was, forgetting who Dom was and forgetting what our relationship is about and the fact that we are not part. I mean, we are. We certainly are part of this broader history. We can’t take ourselves out of that whole line of lineage. But I forgot about who we were. I forgot about our love and our relationship. And it felt really ugly. And for me, that was a really powerful experience because it brought to the fore a lot of my own existing and current biases about myself, about my identity as an Asian woman, and really forcing me to confront that. And so, it’s still something that I think about right now.

Matt Bowles: I mean, the article was incredibly powerful the way that you wrote it. We’re going to link the whole thing up in the show notes so people can go read the entire thing. But I wonder, coming out of that, what reflections do you have and maybe tips and advice for folks, because the legacy of colonialism and the racialized gender dynamics that you’re describing are very pervasive in many places around the world. I mean, in Africa, in South America, in other places, in Asia, you know, all over the place. This legacy of colonialism, as you’re describing it, exists there, right? And so particularly for situations and relationships between, say, white men and women of color from these various different places, where there is that nefarious legacy of colonialism that you’re describing there that we all are existing in, in the present-day reality of it. What sort of tips or advice do you have for folks to navigate that? Both, I guess, for white men as well as for women of color.

Justine Abigail Yu: For me, I think the biggest tip that I have is to talk about it with your partner. I think that’s really important. I don’t know if we can fix the bigger societal context on our own, but I know that I can have a conversation with Dom, with my partner, about how this made me feel. Because he will never know that, you know, as a white man, he will never know all of the millions of thoughts that suddenly went into my mind. And he needs to know that because that is part of the baggage that he should carry. And so, we are constantly. And not just when we’re traveling to different parts of the world as an interracial couple, but even right here at home in, in Toronto, Canada, how does our identity play out? I think that’s the biggest thing for me. It’s not always comfortable.

We’ve had arguments and a lot of tension, especially over the last year, where we talk about race and racial justice. A lot of that has really come to the forefront. And I might not be able to fix the grander societal context that we work in, but in my relationship, in the thing that follows me back home, that is something that I can change. And so, to be able to have this open and honest conversation about the history of his ancestors and what has happened to mine is something that’s really important. And I think that’s where we begin to change the trajectory of these legacies.

Matt Bowles: Yeah, I totally agree with that. That is awesome advice. The other travel experience I want to ask you about is your East Africa trip. I went for the first time to East Africa in 2018, which subsequently inspired my trip to West Africa and all of that. I think it’s an amazing region. I have been to Kenya. I’ve been to Uganda. I’ve been to Tanzania. I know you’ve also been to Rwanda. But I would love to hear a little bit about for you, the context, first of all, for that trip and then what were your experiences like there?

Justine Abigail Yu: Yes. So, my East Africa trip was another really formative experience for me. I had gone to East Africa as part of my work with another non-profit organization called Operation Groundswell. We call it OG affectionately, that’s Operation Groundswell. OG is honestly where all of my anti oppression and equity work stems from. That is the organization that I credit for so much of my critical consciousness. Just as a background, Operation Groundswell is an experiential education organization that takes typically students, youth between the ages of 18 to 30 to places all around the world to learn about various social justice issues. And each program is focused on a specific social justice issue, whether that’s environmental sustainability or gender rights or food justice, all of these different subjects.

And during the time that we’re there, we meet with local activists and educators and storytellers and all of these different change makers who are doing incredible work to solve the problems that they face. And OG was really formed as a reaction against the voluntourism industry where folks often go abroad with very little consultation with these local communities to build a school or a well or other of these other voluntourism projects. For Operation Groundswell, what was really important was to meet with these locals who have lived with these problems all of their lives, who have been solving these problems on their own, and who really know what is the best way forward for them, because this is their everyday reality.

And so, a lot of my experience in anti-oppression, in community organizing came from this experience from this organization. And I was the marketing and communications director there for nearly seven years. And during my first year there, I had the really wonderful opportunity to go to East Africa to look at gender equality in the region. And we met with different local activists and educators to hear from them their experiences of gender equality and whatnot and gender rights. And yeah, we traveled to Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, meeting with a number of different local organizations not to solve those problems, but to learn about it from the people who knew it best. And it was such a formative experience for me also because it was my first time in Africa, which sounds so cliche, but growing up in the west, we have these preconceived notions of what but Africa, this entire continent that often gets diluted into this mistakenly as like a one country or one-dimensional place.

I had all these preconceived notions of what this place was like and it completely changed my perspective and just went against everything I expected it to be. You know, I spent so much time in Nairobi and in Kigali and they’re tech hubs, you know, like that’s something that I think most people don’t expect naively or ignorantly enough that they don’t expect when they think about Africa. Previously I worked as a marketing coordinator, as a marketing director in the digital space. I was always curious to learn more about like tech innovations in all the different countries that I go to. And so that was something that I did on the side when I was on this program was, I met with different founders of tech hubs in the region and they’re leapfrogging us in ways that I had no idea. And it really, again, just flew in the face of everything that I thought it would be.

Matt Bowles: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I was based in Nairobi for a month and I was working at the co-working space. First of all, it was absolutely what you’re describing, an entrepreneurship and tech hub. I mean, there were all of these unbelievable entrepreneurs that are doing incredible things and it was just a really dope place to just post up on the rooftop and I had espressos and Kenyan food and all this kind of stuff was just. And it was like perfect. So really great place to hang out and co-work and absolutely sort of network with the local entrepreneurs there and all that kind of stuff. I would love to talk a little bit now about as you’ve had all these travel experiences, right, and you’ve been continuing to develop your worldview and the values that you then integrate into your professional work. And I’m wondering if we can talk a little bit now about your website. For example, on your website you have what you call your 3DR approach, which stands for decolonize, Disrupt, Dismantle and Rebuild. Can you talk a little bit about the 3DR approach and what each of those means.

Justine Abigail Yu: Yeah. So, the 3DR approach is a framework that I developed just in the last year, really, as the most recent wave of the Black Lives Matter movement erupted, as so much anti-Asian hatred erupted here in Canada, we have been facing a reckoning around so many indigenous children being found in unmarked graves from our, I don’t want to say colonial past, because it’s still an ongoing process. This colonization is an ongoing process. But there’s been a reckoning over the last year, as I’m sure everyone knows, because we’ve all been a part of it. And I developed this as a reaction to some of the experiences that I’ve had working with different brands over the last year who have made many promises for diversity and inclusion and equity and have had very little follow through.

And so, I created this framework, Decolonize, Disrupt, Dismantle and Rebuild, as a way to think about the different ways in which I personally can inject social change in the work that I do. And it might not be changing the whole system right away, but in small little steps. And so, for me, first and foremost, what needs to happen is decolonizing. You know, I write that as a woman who was born in the Philippines and then who was raised in Canada, both places that are colonized places. This colonial mentality is something that I was socialized into, you know, and I hold a lot of these white supremacists and colonial ideas in my head, and I uphold it as we saw in that example about the rooftop in Saigon. And so how do I learn and unlearn these systems of oppression that have been really built into me? And this is internal work. This is stuff that I have to do on my own and that I’m continuing to do.

The next stage of that is disrupting. You know, there are so many different ways in which we can interrupt these systems of oppression. Whether that is speaking up at a meeting when someone says something that’s racist or sexist or homophobic or whatever it is, that those are “small but impactful” ways that we can disrupt these systems. And what’s my next one? Dismantling this is a lot harder. But I’m fortunate to be able to work with different businesses in my consulting work that aims to dismantle policies or cultural norms and practices that are racist and that upholds white supremacist beliefs. So, whether that is creating systems or creating policies that ensures there is a certain percentage of employees or especially those in leadership positions that are hired from a diverse background. That’s a way that we can begin to dismantle these systems.

And then finally rebuilding. We need to build new systems. We can’t just fix and kind of hack here and there these systems that already exist, but we need to find ways to actually rebuild entirely these really flawed systems that we were working with. And so, for me, like, one of my biggest contributions to that part of my approach, I guess, is my work with Living Hyphenate is creating this magazine or this community that really amplifies the work of historically excluded and marginalized voices in a way that we don’t see often. And so, yeah, the three-doctor approach is a multifaceted approach to anti oppression and equity. I recognize that this work isn’t going to be done in one shot, but there are different stages in which we can interrupt and change these systems of oppression that we’re currently finding ourselves in.

Matt Bowles: Well, let’s talk a little bit about Living Hyphen. Can you share a little bit about the backstory in terms of how it came about and the importance of storytelling, particularly for marginalized communities?

Justine Abigail Yu: Yeah. So, Living Hyphen, I noticed at the top of the show here in the bio you said, is a magazine that explores what it means to live in between cultures as what we’ve been calling hyphenated Canadians. And we are definitely that. But we’ve grown so much over the last few years. We launched our first issue back in 2018. This was a magazine that I started where I really wanted to focus on writers and artists and storytellers from across Canada who hail from different ethnic backgrounds, religions, and indigenous nations. And this all started because I had attended this panel from writers of color who were sharing their experiences of getting their work published as writers of color and all of the barriers, the opportunities, the challenges that they faced. And I was young then, like my early 20s, and I was a freelance writer. I have always considered myself to be a writer in different shapes and forms, whether that’s through my own blog, whether that is through paid freelance writing, whatever it is. I always considered myself to be a writer.

And I was listening to these established writers talk about how difficult it was to get their work published because of just how white dominated editorial spaces are here in Canada. And there is this one particular story that always stays with me and that I always share. It’s from one of the panelists. She is a Japanese Canadian novelist and she was born in Canada but still had very strong roots to Japan. And she had written this novel about her Homecoming or Homegoing Journey to Japan. And she wrote this beautiful novel. But the manuscript, when it was returned to her, the feedback that she had gotten from her editor was that they didn’t feel it was “Japanese enough”. And getting that feedback really shook her and shocked her because what did it mean for a story to be Japanese enough or Canadian enough when she herself is Japanese?

And when I heard that, something inside me really clicked because I was like, what if I get feedback saying that my story is not Filipino enough? You know, I struggle enough on my own with my own identity and figuring if I’m Canadian enough or Filipino enough, let alone have some big shot editor tell me that my story is not Filipino enough. And so, when I heard that, that’s when this whole idea for Living Hyphen began. I wanted to start something that was by people of color, for people of color. And so, I put out a call for submissions for Living Hyphen. And I really, I didn’t know what to expect. I just wanted to do something. You know, I didn’t even know what that looked like. I thought, honestly, like a group of my friends, maybe a group of their friends would submit stories, we’d put together a really badass zine, and that would be that. But we received over 200 submissions from writers and storytellers all across the nation, and we’ve just been growing ever since. We’ve turned into a podcast. Stories have been adapted into stage play just this past summer. We have since developed cultural programming by way of writing workshops and storytelling nights to really cultivate this culture of storytelling for historically marginalized people. And it has been incredible.

And when I started Living Hyphen and we got those hundreds of submissions, I was blown away. I couldn’t believe that there were so many people who were hungry to tell their stories and that there just wasn’t a space at that time to tell those stories. But what shocked me even more was when we actually published the magazine, I had even more people reach out to me through email, through Instagram, DMs, through Facebook, messages telling me how moved they were and impacted they were to see themselves represented and reflected in the pages of our magazine way more than the people who submitted, you know, and it got me thinking that not only is there a hunger to tell these stories, but there are so many people who are living, you know, in this in between place, who are from different ethnic backgrounds or from indigenous nations, who don’t even realize that they have a story to tell because they have been told for the longest time since the day we were born that our stories don’t really matter so much of the institutions around us, the media, the movies that we watch, the books that we read.

It’s only in the last few years that we’ve really seen this call for representation take up so much space in our mainstream consciousness. And, and so it just got me thinking that, wow, there’s probably so many more people who want to share their stories. And that’s why we created our writing workshops, because I wanted to create a space where people felt empowered and compelled and confident enough to tell those stories. And we needed to create this space that was safe and brave to really make that happen. And so, we did that. And then we put out our call for submissions for issue two, and we got over 700 submissions from all across the country. And so, we’re just really building this ecosystem for people to tell their stories, to build their confidence to tell those stories.

Matt Bowles: I do want to hear, when you incorporated the in-person storytelling events, how did those turn out?

Justine Abigail Yu: Those were amazing. They were so empowering for myself. You know, I don’t even want to speak for other people, but for myself, to hear people share such honest and vulnerable parts of themselves to a group of, at that time, maybe like 50 to 100 people was so refreshing and so powerful for me to see. And so, yeah, it was amazing.

Matt Bowles: Where are you envisioning that the Living Hyphen project will go? When you think about the potential that you’ve seen so far and the momentum and the scale at which people are responding to this and where you’ve taken it so far. When you think about it, maybe five years from now, 10 years from now, where do you see Living Hyphen going?

Justine Abigail Yu: Oh, my gosh, I don’t know. This question always freaks me out because I haven’t planned for any of this. I didn’t expect anything that happened with Living Hyphen. And I want to keep that flexibility and that openness in all of the work that we do. I just know, I don’t know exactly what it will look like in five years, but I know that, that we’re going to find new ways to tell these stories. In the last year alone, you know, we went from magazine to podcast to stage play. And I just want to make sure that we are always finding new ways to tell these stories. Whether that’s digital, maybe it’s through more podcasts, maybe it’s through TV one day, I don’t know. But whatever that looks like, I want it to be community driven because the podcast, the play that came from the community. I had, you know, two incredible women, Tricia Gregorio, who produced our podcast, and Alison Wong, who directed and created and wrote the play. They are the ones who came to me and said, I want to turn this into a podcast or play. And so, whatever it is that we end up doing, I just want to make sure that it’s community driven. And that’s really the heart of our success. And what will continue to be the heart of our success.

Matt Bowles: That’s awesome. Well, I also want to ask you about your role as the marketing and communications director at Wanderful. Big shout out to Beth Santos, who has been on the podcast previously as well. But for people that have not heard that episode, for example, have never heard of Wanderful. Can you share a little bit about what Wanderful is, who is for, and how you got involved?

Justine Abigail Yu: Yes. So Wanderful is a global community and lifestyle brand that specializes in helping all women travel the world. And we do that through a number of different ways. We have an online membership community that is full of women and gender diverse people from all around the world who are supporting each other in their travels. Whether that’s offering advice, maybe meeting up for coffee when someone is traveling in their particular city or neighborhood. So many different ways. We also do that through our WITS Creator and Brand Summit where we empower different diverse travel creators to tell their stories in new and different ways. And how did I get involved? I first got involved with WITS with Wanderful. It was through my work with Operation Groundswell with that nonprofit that I told you about that I went to East Africa with. I had applied to be a speaker at Wanderful at WITS. I applied to be a speaker to talk about the voluntourism industry and how to volunteer and travel internationally in a way that is ethical, responsible and sustainable. And they accepted my proposal, which was really wonderful. And I attended my first WITS conference in California and I was just blown away by how supportive this community was. And ever since then I’ve been trying to find a way to come back year after year. I applied again, I’ve applied a couple of times to be a speaker and have been accepted thankfully. And I’m now working as the marketing communications director at Wanderful

Matt Bowles: So Awesome. Well, one of the amazing things that you were involved with creating at Wonderful was the anti-oppression toolkit, which I definitely also want to link up in the show notes for how folks can access that. But can you share a little bit about what that is, how it came about and who it is for?

Justine Abigail Yu: Yeah. So, the anti-oppression toolkit was co-created by me and Ariel Goldberg, who is one of my colleagues at Wanderful. And it’s really a resource hub for travel creators. So, whether you are a journalist, a videographer, a blogger, a podcaster, whatever you do, if you move and if you make, this toolkit is for you. And it’s really a resource where we break down all of the different ways in which we talk about travel, the way we talk about identity. And it’s full of how to guides, you know, how to talk about gender, how to talk about cultures that aren’t your own, how to practice allyship with indigenous nations and communities. We have also a glossary of terms for those who are new or just starting on their learning or unlearning journey around anti-oppression and equity so that we all have a shared foundation of understanding of these different concepts.

And we really created this as a reaction to a lot of what has happened over the last year. You know, seeing the inequities and injustices around the pandemic, and also of course, the Black Lives Matter movement and the rise in anti-Asian hatred. We recognize our role and responsibility as people who work in the travel industry, as creators in the travel industry who talk about destinations, who talk about people and cultures. We have a role and responsibility to do so in a way that is respectful, that upholds the dignity of the people around the world that we’re talking about. And so that’s what this toolkit is really for, is how can we approach all the content that we create in a way that is equitable?

Matt Bowles: Yeah, it’s really an incredibly impressive resource and I’m going to link it up in the show notes. It’s totally free, so folks can just go to the show notes and definitely encourage everybody to check this out. The other organization you are involved with is the Rise Travel Institute. You are a senior advisor there. Can you talk a little bit about what the Rise Travel Institute is all about and what you folks are up to there?

Justine Abigail Yu: Yeah. So, the Rise Travel Institute is a very new nonprofit organization. It was just formed last year and our mission is to inspire responsible, impactful, sustainable and ethical travel through education. And I am the senior advisor there, working primarily on our DEI or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives. I am also an instructor for their pilot program which is a 10-module course that talks about different facets of the travel industry and how we can approach it in a sustainable and ethical way. And one day when we are able to fully travel safely again, we do have an experiential program that we want to launch. But for now, our course is entirely virtual and it’s learning about the different facets of travel and tourism in a sustainable way.

Matt Bowles: Can you share a little bit and maybe share some specific tips for travelers? A lot of travelers listen to this podcast for travelers that want to be more responsible, impactful, sustainable and ethical as they travel. What tips do you have for how folks can do that?

Justine Abigail Yu: The main thing that I always try to do when I’m traveling is really researching the different organizations or tour operators that I plan to take a tour with or to embark on a certain adventure with. And I think it’s really important for us to understand who we are supporting when we travel abroad. I think we’ve seen a lot of that in the last year in our push to support local with a pandemic. We really want to support these small, local, independent businesses that make our communities as vibrant as they are. And we should be doing the same thing when we’re traveling abroad. And so, we have this nifty tool called Google now where it’s super easy for us to do our research and find out what are these local businesses around the world that we can support.

And so, for me, that’s an easy way to really support a more sustainable way of traveling. Because a large majority of the tourism dollars that go around the world are actually filtered into large corporations. You know, whether that’s big hotel chains or big airlines that are actually operating or headquartered in the west versus these local boutique hotels or hostels or guest houses, which is really where we want our money to be going to support these local economies. So, I think as an easy step, as our first thing to do is really finding out where we put our money.

Matt Bowles: I also want to ask you about three terms that are really consistently present throughout your work. One of them is allyship, one of them is solidarity, and one of them is anti-oppression. And for folks that are looking to step up their game in terms of allyship, in terms of acting in solidarity, and in terms of anti-oppression politics, what tips do you have? And maybe even defining some of those terms a little bit, but also then how they can be better allies and more of their work can be in solidarity with marginalized communities.

Justine Abigail Yu: So for me, anti-oppression is really the practice of recognizing the oppression that exists in our society and trying to interrupt it and to mitigate its effects and hopefully equalizing or creating a more equitable world and leveling out that the power that exists. And in terms of allyship, for me, allyship means standing alongside marginalized groups and speaking up when you see injustice or inequality happening, especially when it is the most uncomfortable to do so. And there’s just so many different ways that you can make that happen, whether that is just interrupting when you see an act of racism or even just like words of racism taking place in a family dinner or something like that. That making sure that you speak up and you interrupt and you call it out and call the people into a conversation about that is really important, especially if you are somebody who it doesn’t directly impact, you know, if you are someone, I don’t want to say who has more power, because in a family dynamic, that might not be the case.

But, for example, as a white man, if you do see something happening, the stakes are lower for you to speak up, as opposed to somebody who is a person of color, you know, who, as we have seen so much in the past, who are often berated for speaking up, for making, “everything about race”. You can put yourself into that position and help, you know, and actually stand in solidarity and stand alongside this person of color or anyone who is of a marginalized identity to support them and validate their experience.

Matt Bowles: Awesome advice. All right, Justine, I want to ask you one more question, and then we’ll move into The Lightning Round and wrap up with all of the travel that you have done up to this point in your life, why do you continue to travel? At this point in your life what does travel mean to you?

Justine Abigail Yu: Traveling is such a privileged experience, isn’t it? That’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot, especially in the context or with this pandemic that’s been happening. What a privilege it is for us to be in this place that it’s already a privileged position to be in without the pandemic, but now we have vaccines in a way that so many other places around the world don’t. And so, one, I just really want to acknowledge how much of a privileged experience it is for us to be able to travel. And sitting with that, you know, I can never erase the privilege that I hold to be able to go to different places, but I continue to travel because of the connection it brings me not only to the people around me and these new cultures that I may never encounter when I’m here in my home in Toronto, but the connection, it brings me to the land, our world, our natural world, and also to myself.

And I think that it brings me face to face to so much of these complexities around all so many of the things that we talked about here today in terms of colonialism and Western imperialism and capitalism and all of these different things. It shows me a much bigger world and it shows me how I am part of a much longer history and a longer future. And I think being able to see myself as just that one small part is really important to be able to understand how much of my own work and anti-oppression and equity is structural. So, for me it brings that to the forefront, you know, and so yeah, I will always be traveling to be able to put myself in those uncomfortable situations that bring a little bit of connection in some way.

Matt Bowles: Amazing. What a great note to end on. All right, at this point, Justine, are you ready to move in to The Lightning Round?

Justine Abigail Yu: All right, let’s go.

Matt Bowles: Let’s do it. All right. What is one book that has significantly influenced you over the years you’d most recommend people check out?

Justine Abigail Yu: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi.

Matt Bowles: Coates, who is one person that’s currently alive today that you’ve never met. You’d most love to have dinner with.

Justine Abigail Yu: I would love to meet Ta-Nehisi Coates. He has influenced and shaped so much of my mind and my understanding of anti-blackness and anti-racism and I would love to sit down with him. So maybe he listens to your podcast, Matt.

Matt Bowles: If he does, we’ll put your contact information in the show notes so he can just hit you up. All right, knowing everything that you know. Now, if you could go back in time and give one piece of advice to your 18-year-old self, what would you say to 18-year-old Justine?

Justine Abigail Yu: I would tell her she’s doing just fine and to trust the process.

Matt Bowles: Nice. All right, of all the places you’ve been in the world up to this point, what are your top three favorite travel destinations you would most recommend people to check out.

Justine Abigail Yu: The Philippines, of course. The Philippines, number one, Guatemala and Iceland.

Matt Bowles: Nice. All right, what are your top three bucket list destinations? These are places you’ve never been highest on your list you most love to see?

Justine Abigail Yu: Cuba anywhere and everywhere around South America. And I’ve already been there, but I already want to go back. Vietnam.

Matt Bowles: Those are awesome picks. I love that. All right, Justine, this was amazing. I want you to let folks know first of all how they can find you, follow you on social media, connect with you, as well as how they can buy the Living Hyphen magazine and plug into all the awesome stuff you’re doing there. And also, how they can join the Wanderful community. Just get involved with everything that you’re doing. How do you Want folks to come into your universe?

Justine Abigail Yu: Yes. So, you can follow me personally. My website is justineabigail.com but you can follow me across all socials at Justine Abigail, if you’re interested in Living Hyphen, which I hope you are, you can learn more at livinghyphen.ca and across all socials at Living Hyphen. And for Maverick listeners we have a special promo code which is all caps MAVERICK. Use that promo code at checkout and you’ll get 10 off our latest magazine which is called Resistance Across Generations. If you want to get involved with a Wanderful community, you can learn more at sheswanderful.com and on socials at sheswanderful.

Matt Bowles: Amazing. So, we are going to link all of that up in the show notes so folks can just go to one place at themaverickshow.com you’ll find all of Justine’s contact information, how to get involved in all the amazing stuff that she is involved with and this was amazing. Justine, you are doing incredible things. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Justine Abigail Yu: Thank you so much, Matt. It was a pleasure.

Matt Bowles: All right, good night, everybody.