Asia Canady feels a strong connection to the Oak Park community and has impactful memories of her time at Sac High. Sac High Dragons are a part of her family as her mom and aunts attended the school and her twin sister Asha was also in the class of 2008. 

Asia credits her excellent college counselor at Sac High for connecting her to Occidental College in Los Angeles, where she majored in urban environmental policy with a minor in politics. After undergrad, she went on to earn her Masters in teaching at Fordham University. Asia now resides on the South Side of Chicago since completing her Masters in public policy from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. 

Asia says that the close-knit community and school environment at Sac High was a natural segway for her college experience at a small liberal arts college. She says that the Sac High community exposed her and her peers to new and exciting opportunities, and that she is immensely grateful for the friendships she made while attending St. HOPE Public Schools. The principal at the time called Asia and her closest friends the “focused four,” and she says that she and her friends have stayed in touch and supported each other through major life events like buying homes, getting married, and having children over the past 15 years. 

Her first year after college, Asia was involved in legislative work focused on education and environmental policy as a California Senate Fellow. She then moved to New York City where she worked as a public school teacher with Teach for America for four years. Now she works at the Hunter Family Foundation, where she co-leads their education, environmental stewardship and food security framework for the family-oriented philanthropic foundation. 

Asia is a firm believer in the importance of leveraging community based strengths into community building and says her time at Sac High helped her frame how she thinks about public policy.  While she is currently living in Chicago Asia has a deep affinity for Sacramento and is grateful for the work community based organizations are doing to uplift the Oak Park community. When discussing the importance of giving back, Asia said “it is our job to explore the world but not run away from home.”