OCA Intern Alum: Fine Tuitupou
Interview by Cassie Micah / Written by Cassie Micah and Kent Tong
PUBLIC SERVICE AND UPLIFTING THE PACIFIC ISLANDER COMMUNITY have been in Fine Tuitupou’s DNA since birth. The eldest daughter and granddaughter to low-income immigrants from the Kingdom of Tonga, she grew up seeing her parents—both pastors—dedicating their time to their community in Hawthorne, California. Her father was a social worker at the Tongan Community Center, where he raised awareness about health issues the Tongan community faced, such as heart health and lung cancer. Seeing her father collect data to support and justify his public health campaigns, that data was not simply numbers but could tell a narrative, intrigued her. She took this understanding with her throughout her academic and professional career.
While she was still in high school, Tuitupou participated in Pomona College Academy for Youth Success, a college preparatory program for underrepresented students in education. Taking these college-level courses, she was exposed to history, sociology, and ethnic studies—the first time she was taught anything about her community. For the first time, she started to understand how her identity as a low-income Pacific American was shaped by intentional forces. “It helped me contextualize my life experiences,” she says. “Like, Oh, so that wasn’t just a random occasion, this happened because of these institutions or these policies. It’s not just coming out of nowhere.”
After high school, Tuitupou attended El Camino College, majoring in ethnic studies. On campus, she served as the director of equity, diversity, and inclusion for the Associated Students Association, and as a committee member on the President’s Advisory Committee on Race and Equity and the Student Equity Advisory Committee. In these roles, she represented her student body’s perspective in matters of race and equity on campus; enacted campus-wide equity trainings; organized panels and events related to race and equity, and helped establish the Social Justice Center, Black Student Success Center, MANA Center, Puente Center, and Pride Center. In the summer of 2021, at the encouragement of her friend and former OCA intern Marina Aina, she became an OCA intern and was placed to work at APIAVote. There, she supported their civic engagement and policy work, including creating a report on AAPI voting trends. This experience reaffirmed to her that, while she is interested in policy, she’s particularly interested in education policy.
Tuitupou eventually transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, continuing her pursuit of ethnic studies while dedicating time outside the classroom to more data, research, and equity. As a research assistant for the Sexual Health and Reproductive Equity program, she supported a study into Black and Pacific Islander pregnancies, groups that were identified as the most at risk for preterm births. The data collected was used to justify more funding to provide mothers and birthing people in San Francisco with supplemental cash to reduce preterm birth. She also supported recruitment and retention efforts for Pacific Islander students as the programming intern for the Pacific Islander Initiative, organizing a conference to encourage high school and community college students to pursue a four-year university. She is dedicated to these initiatives uplifting Pacific Islander communities because Pacific Islanders make up less than 1% of the students on campus, which makes it not only hard for these students to find community but also for the school administration to understand the issues these students face. “The admin wasn’t very helpful,” she says. “We had to fight with them for resources.” Fostering a sense of community for Pacific Islander students who are used to being surrounded by their own community was the best part of her experience at Cal, she says.
Tuitupou with her OCA summer internship cohort on Zoom, the second virtual cohort due to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Today, Tuitupou is a recent graduate from UC Berkeley with plans to pursue a master’s degree in public policy in the near future. She’s currently back at El Camino College working as a student services specialist for MANA, a program that provides culturally sensitive resources and support to Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Asian, and Native American students—a program that supported her when she was a student. At MANA, she mentors students, helps them stay on track with their academic progress, advises them, and provides personal support, which she considers to be a full-circle moment for her. “As someone who struggled through higher education due to a lack of resources,” she says, “I am glad to now give back to the community.”