Natchawi “Nat” Wadman

April 29, 2021
LEAP

Natchawi or Nat Wadman, MSW is Community Program Director for Center for the Pacific Asian Family (CPAF) based in Los Angeles, California. She was hired in 2019 and have been leading the overall strategy of community program, its implementation and monitoring, learning, and evaluating its outcomes and impact to build healthy and safe communities by addressing the root causes and consequences of family violence and violence against women in AAPI communities. She previously worked in international development sector for over a decade in different capacity and wide range of work in positive youth development and youth leadership, program development in education, livelihood, and health programs to enhance social accountability, social inclusion and build resilience in Asia Pacific and Africa. Nat also championed in education reform of life skill learning and development in Thai education system and restorative justice practices in Juvenile Justice system in Thailand. Nat is the first-generation Thai immigrant and a woman of color. Through her participation with LEAP Cohort 7, she is hoping to enhance skills in bringing collective voices, building allies, strengthening social capitals to challenge dominant paradigm that caused the imbalance of power.

Nat’s philosophy in an adaptive and inclusive leader is to strengthen the connection with the team members through nurturing, acceptance, and the empathetic connection. Inclusive leaders use the “power-with” in shared leadership to guide as an equal partner in delivering tasks, assignment, support and teach staff and team members; to encourage them to have power-within discover their own potentials, recognize their strengths and maximize their potential to lead and use the power-to achieve the agreed goals. She enjoys trying different kind of food, traveling and exploring the world, binge watching Korean and Chinese dramas, and would go for a game or two of tennis match.