In celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May, CPC  launched the “Our Community, Our Stories” campaign to share the personal stories of community members directly impacted by CPC. Through these stories, we celebrate our collective impacts and our community's contributions and resilience.  

Our third community story features Jimmy Chen.

Jimmy Chen is a young entrepreneur and real estate developer, who despite his youth, is already committed to giving back to his community. 

“I grew up in Chinatown and in the Lower East Side to two Chinese-American immigrant parents. They came to America with no fundamental understanding of English working as waiters, waitresses and seamstresses.”

Times were tough, growing up in a family of four in a rent controlled one bedroom apartment. The good part was having programs like CPC come into his life while attending P.S. 124. In Chen’s words,

“CPC was huge to my development”.

He loved the sports and after school offerings, in particular the chess program, where he was able to compete nationally. It was there that he made his first best friends which gave him a real foundation in life and helped make him more resilient.  

Jimmy went to NYU where he got his sports management degree and his first job after college was working for the Brooklyn Nets. Around the same time he started Taiyaki NYC, a Japanese Ice Cream shop. The first location, in 2016, was on Baxter Street in Chinatown. Today they have six shops throughout the United States, but he continues to maintain a presence in Chinatown as his way of giving back.   

He is concerned about the mom and pop shops that don’t have anything to really fall back on. As Chen states,

“Those are the ones that I have my heart out to right now. That is first and foremost". 

He is particularly grateful to CPC for the role it played in his elementary school years in shaping him and making him into the resilient adult he is today. As Chen states,

“Mentorship, I mean it meant the world to me because I think of all the older guys who saw that I had the right drive, but I still needed a lot of guidance.”

He knows he was able to succeed because he had the opportunity to learn from those older than him. Hence, Chen is especially eager to mentor the next generation. 

CPC made Chen happy and positive as a child. 

Share Jimmy's story on social media using #cpcstories.

By sharing the stories of our community members, CPC hopes to inspire and empower all our communities and allies to use their voices to set forth the change they want to see as we rally together to #StopAsianHate.

ABOUT CPC

The Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC) is a social services organization that creates positive social change. Founded in 1965, CPC is the nation's largest Asian American social services organization and aims to promote the social and economic empowerment of Chinese American, immigrant, and low-income communities of New York City. CPC is the trusted partner to individuals and families striving to achieve goals in their education, family, community, and career. 

關於華策會

華人策劃協會（簡稱“華策會”）是一個致力於創造正向社會變革的社會服務機構。華策會成立於1965年，是美國最大的亞裔美國人社會服務機構，旨在促進紐約市華裔美國人，移民，及低收入社區的社會權益和經濟賦權。華策會是為實現其教育，家庭 ，社區及職業目標而努力的個人和家庭可信賴的機構。