The Princeton University’s 2021 Princeton Prize in Race Relations for the greater St. Louis region was awarded to rising Clayton High School Senior Kaitlyn Tran. This national service program was created by Princeton University “to identify and recognize high-school-age students who significantly engage and challenge their schools or communities to advance racial equity in order to promote respect and understanding among all people.”

Tran was awarded for the creation of The National Data Coalition Against Anti-Asian Hate. She is the coalition’s co-founder and leader. She started the group as a way to unite various organizations working in Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) advocacy and organize their data in a more meaningful way. Tran noticed victims of hate crimes against AAPI communities do not report these incidents due to fear of consequence and lack of ensured anonymity. She wanted to create a better system to gather as much accurate data as possible to create legislative change.

“I created the National Data Coalition Against Anti-Asian Hate to bring tangible relief to victims and pave long-lasting change. This coalition would not only strengthen and unify data collection, it would also bring post-reporting relief to victims by offering response resources and pushing for policy change,” said Tran. 

As an unpaid intern at IssueVoter, an online platform that connects members with government representatives and gives information on upcoming legislation people can vote on, she took action to begin collecting data from various AAPI advocacy organizations. She partnered with the Founder and President of IssueVoter, Maria Yuan. She discovered they were lacking data scientists to assist with data collection and forming that data into meaningful messaging to be distributed to the public. After creating the coalition, she was able to recruit two organizations to help connect those who fill out incident forms to resources and recruited two academics at universities to research trends in these crimes and how to encourage more reporting of incidents. 

“In this project, Kaitlyn has spearheaded a collaboration of academics, national advocacy organizations, and data scientists to develop a single platform for data sharing to collect and share incidents experienced by Asian-American and Pacific Islander individuals. In this role, Kaitlyn has effectively engaged with communities across geography, professional background, experience level, and mission. Without Kaitlyn and her emotional maturity and interpersonal skills, these groups and individuals would not have come together,” said Yuan.

To learn more about her award, please visit the Princeton website.