AANHPI Heritage Month: speakers, programming & vendors for ERGs services for ERGs.
Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month is the annual U.S. observance held throughout May that recognizes the histories and contributions of the AANHPI diaspora.
Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month runs the full month of May. ERG leaders use it to honor the histories of more than 50 ethnic groups speaking over 100 languages — and to push past the model-minority myth that flattens all of it.
to plan, execute, and recover
More than a calendar moment.
AAPI Heritage Month is not a monolith month. ‘AAPI' covers East Asian, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities — each with distinct histories, languages, and realities. A single panel can't represent any of them well; the calendar has to be designed for plurality.
May was chosen to commemorate the first Japanese immigrants to the U.S. (May 7, 1843) and the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869 — built largely by Chinese laborers. The dates carry contested histories, not just celebration.
For ERG leaders, the work is twofold: celebrate the breadth of API cultures across the diaspora, and name the realities — bamboo ceiling, model-minority myth, Pacific Islander erasure — that the celebration alone can't address.
What follows is the planning architecture: speakers, vendors, programming ideas, and a 6-week timeline — for ERG leaders building a month with range.
The AANHPI pitfalls.
What sinks AANHPI programming isn't usually a missing speaker — it's a misread of the moment. The three misses worth naming out loud.
Treating AAPI as East Asian.
Programming that centers only Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cultures erases South Asian, Southeast Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander members. Build the calendar with all sub-communities represented.
Leaning on the model minority myth.
‘High-achieving' framing flattens disparity within AAPI communities — Cambodian, Hmong, Pacific Islander populations face some of the country's highest poverty rates. Don't use one community's success to silence another's needs.
Skipping the hard conversations.
Bamboo ceiling, model-minority pressure, Pacific Islander erasure, caste dynamics — these are part of the month, not a separate one. Pair celebration with honest programming.
Curated for AANHPI Heritage Month.
Speakers, facilitators, and vendors filtered for AANHPI programming. Pulled live from ERGs.io — every profile is one click away from a full bio, rate, and inquiry form inside the platform.
Other observances in the calendar.
Every observance gets its own planning page — speakers, vendors, programming ideas, and a timeline.
Stop scrambling. Start planning the month that lands.
ERGs.io pulls every speaker, vendor, and programming format into one workspace — so planning AANHPI takes one afternoon, not one month of late nights. Free to start.