May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month. This year’s theme, A Legacy of Leadership and Resilience, honors the hard work of AANHPI leaders who established a foundation for future generations to adapt to change, overcome adversity, and thrive.

With that in mind, we’re highlighting two trailblazing leaders who made positive impacts on U.S. policy and culture, and whose work continues to inspire us.

Yuri Kochiyama (1921 – 2014)

Though her activism was influenced by the two years she spent in internment camps during World War II, Japanese American Yuri Kochiyama’s civil rights work extended to the causes impacting Black, Latine, and Indigenous Peoples, as well as Asian American communities. After World War II, Kochiyama and her husband — whom she had met at the Jerome Relocation Center in Arkansas — moved to New York City, where they hosted weekly open houses for civil rights activists in their apartment. Kochiyama befriended and collaborated with Malcolm X in the 1960s, and continued to work with Black civil rights activists following his death. In the 1980s, she, along with her husband, campaigned for reparations and a formal government apology for Japanese American interned during World War II. Their work became a reality in 1988, when President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act into law.

Patsy Matsu Mink (1927 – 2002)

Patsy Matsu Mink was an American attorney and politician from Hawaii who served in the United States House of Representatives for 24 years as a member of the Democratic Party. She was the first woman of color and the first Asian American woman elected to Congress, known for her work on legislation advancing women’s rights and education. In 1962 she was elected to the new Hawaii State Senate becoming the first Asian-American Woman to be elected and serve in a state legislature in the U.S. In 1964, Mink ran for federal office and won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, going on to serve a total of 12 terms, from 1965 to 1977 and from 1990 to 2002. She focused on issues including children, education, and gender equality. In addition to other achievements, she co-authored 1972’s Title IX Amendment of the Higher Education Act, renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act in 2002.