UW Major: Life Sciences Communication
Chair, Green Bay Equal Rights Commission
As a teenager, Tara Yang watched her parents open an Asian grocery store in their Green Bay neighborhood. The store, Main Oriental Market, quickly grew into the largest Asian grocery in the area, and it also evolved into a de facto community center, where people could share information, opportunities, and various forms of support.
When her father was diagnosed with cancer, Yang was inspired to pursue a career in health, and she enrolled at the UW with an eye toward elder care. However, while volunteering at the UW’s University Hospital and interning at a nursing home, Yang realized that her real passion was in preventative care, and specifically food and nutrition. After graduation, she went to work at Simply Tera’s, a whey protein manufacturer, and later at Organic Valley.
“I was supporting the growth of these large, million-dollar and billion-dollar companies, but when I would visit my home town, I realized there were many families struggling,” she says. “The very same families that were struggling when I left for college 10 years ago were now living in intergenerational poverty.”
She pivoted to work in nonprofit business development in Minneapolis, where she partnered directly with other minority-owned “mom-and-pop” businesses, like her parents’ grocery store. By 2018, she decided she was ready to bring those skills back to the place she cared about most: Green Bay.
A year later, fellow Badger Eric Genrich ’02 was elected mayor of Green Bay, and Yang introduced herself. She advocated for the Asian American community to be at the top of the new mayor’s agenda, and Genrich immediately appointed her to the city’s economic development authority committee. Soon after, Yang became a key voice during Brown County’s initiative to declare racism a public-health crisis, and she also began to speak publicly about the challenges faced by minority and economically disadvantaged communities in northeastern Wisconsin. “I went to the mayor and got involved in governance because I know that true sustainable, systemic change happens when there is policy change,” she says.
In 2021, Yang was appointed chair of Green Bay’s brand-new Equal Rights Commission, making her the city’s first-ever Asian American commissioner. “I am proud that I can pave the way for the next generation,” she says. “I want to be an example for them so that they aren’t afraid to be in these spaces. I want them to feel welcomed into it, and I want them to know that their voices matter.” As a commissioner, Yang is involved in a wide range of city initiatives, including the development of 25 acres on the city’s industrial east side into an innovative urban farm, community park, and high-quality family housing project that aims to uplift some of Green Bay’s most economically vulnerable populations. Even closer to home, Yang is currently spearheading the development of the Asian American Resource Center to formalize some of the community services her family has long offered in an ad hoc way at Main Oriental Market. “My parents are very modest and humble, and I love that about them,” she says. “I do what I do because of them.”
