Network Catalyzer Edwin Zhao on Coming Home through Adopted Families
Edwin Zhao, co-founder of Ode, is committed to a future in which collaboration and dissent are both grounded in deep human connection. He is a coach and facilitator who brings together diverse groups to study the fundamental gestures of being-in-relationship; embodiment, breathing, listening, observation without judgment, requests, and so forth. He is also co-founder of Ode, a startup bringing curious, unagenda-ed listening to healthcare spaces and studying its effects on patient experience, medical decision-making, and health worker burnout.
Ruby Devoe, the Democracy and Belonging Forum’s summer intern, spoke with Edwin about his journey with Coming Home through Adopted Families; the experiences that shaped his work, what he’s learned, and the challenges he continues to navigate in building community.
What specific challenge or opportunity related to othering, belonging, bridging, and/or democracy are you exploring through Coming Home? How does your work help advance democracy rooted in belonging within your local or regional context?
The opportunity that ‘Coming Home’ addresses is the human capacity for listening, which is fundamental to bridging, belonging, and democracy. Listening is the mindful receptivity that precedes action. If we do not make space for these momentary pauses to notice our own listening, then we end up recreating the past on autopilot. For society at large to shift, we must make the study and practice of (open, nonjudgmental, clarifying) listening commonplace.
What led you to engage in this work? What hopes or intentions did you have at the start, and how have they evolved over time?
I was inspired by a joke my mother told me about how to get along with family members. The punchline is to pretend that they’re unrelated to you. The joke highlights a paradox that’s felt by many families, especially those that straddle cultures due to migration: our closeness can perpetuate alienation. Why do these high-commitment relationships sometimes produce estrangement? Often, it’s because we lack practice in listening curiously to those who grew up under different value systems. ‘Coming Home’ was designed to bring these value systems into curious conversation through facilitation and skills practice.
After months of curating the space, we’ve identified a few principles that make our space fundamentally productive - meaning, the conversations produce mutual regard and understanding among participants.
We listen curiously, assuming what is being said is meaningful to the speaker, seeking to engage.
We speak from experience, redirecting from political and moral stances back to formative experiences
We observe our internal judgments/reactivity, acknowledging our perspective is one of many
As we grow, it’s important that each participant feels empowered to remind one another of the principles and to help the rotating facilitator hold the space.
One of the challenges we’ve had so far is the language and technological barrier with older adults. Because of these challenges, participation from elders has been sporadic. This is something we’re committed to overcoming in the second half of our course together.
What kinds of transformations — personal, relational, or collective — have you witnessed within the community? Is there a moment or memory from the past year that stands out — a time when the work felt especially meaningful, a moment of connection, or a significant challenge?
There have been several moments of transformation. I’ll cite a few here and their significance.
Early on, I served as the facilitator consistently to reinforce the structure of our conversations. We began with a moment to gather the attendees, then we would reflect on a skill (e.g., curiosity questions, rephrasing, etc.), and finally, we would apply the skill to a conversation topic. One particular day, we had participants from 17 to 70, and there was a moment when the elder, a woman, felt that the men were doing too much of the talking. She stepped in and asked whether the ladies wouldn’t like a turn to share. There was an appreciable pause in the conversation. It was as if we were all suddenly noticing the overlapping power structures - age, gender, role, and so on. This moment then became part of the conversation about our relationships to authorities, which was incredibly interesting.
Our youngest participant, who is a college-bound senior, took the first turn at facilitation. She wanted to talk about eye contact because, as someone who has long lived with a ‘lazy eye’, she’s learned coping mechanisms for ‘appearing normal’ in social situations. We spent the hour exploring eye contact within our conversation - when we give eye contact, how it corresponds to listening, when we break eye contact - while also reflecting on eye contact in different contexts. One participant shared that in her Indian family, eye contact with elders, especially male elders, was implicitly discouraged. Now, as an adult, she intentionally makes eye contact with her uncle, which she observes appears to cause general discomfort. The act is framed as both a ‘power play’ and a bid to have a more loving relationship with family members. We had a fascinating conversation about how eye contact, the smallest of gestures, reifies power structures in society and within families.
At the start of fall, we embarked on a series of conversations around what America means to each of us (in 1-2 words, illustrated by a personal experience). Our newest participant shared that, as a divorced Black woman, mother of two gifted children, America means liberation. She was a young mother when her daughter’s charter school came under threat of closure. In response, she rallied the parent-teacher association and fought back against the school board, eventually reversing their decision. To her, liberation meant the capacity of the individual to take action against perceived injustices. She asked each of us to reflect on things happening around us that we found ‘difficult to stomach.’ What did each of us intend to do with that power, that insight? How might we tend the fire so that it supports long-term, focused action rather than burnout?
How do you see your role as a catalyzer of this community? How has your participation in the Network Catalyzers Program supported this work? What have you learned about yourself through this experience?
The Network Catalyzers Program has supplied two things: (1) the frame of bridging and democracy, and (2) a reflective space in which to unpack experiences from ‘Coming Home.’
I have had extensive experience facilitating conversations and integrating skills. In these conversations, I played the role of the catalyst and the role of the sustainer. ‘Coming Home,’ by contrast, is an experiment in developing a group of individuals capable of creating the space of a true conversation wherever they go.
I am part of other communities that typify this model of distributed knowledge. I train Capoeira Angola, through which each individual develops knowledge of the roda (circle in Portuguese); the arrangement of the space, the music, the movements, the terms of engagement. Whenever a group of Angoleiros gathers, we are capable of making the space of the roda. I also participate in Quaker worship, which is performed in silence with no minister. Each worshiper learns, through practice, how to listen subtly, how to quiet the mind, how to deliver messages that are meant for the group, leaving abundant silence for those messages to touch the spirit. Whenever a group of Quakers is gathered, there is worship.
The essence of ‘Coming Home’ is about finding out what a bridger should know so that he/she/they can be the seed of a transformative conversation. The Network Catalyzers Program has been a supportive structure in helping me focus in on this vision and to evaluate the ongoing process against the vision.
One of the central hopes of your project is to build intercultural and intergenerational connections. That’s especially powerful within the context of a society like the United States, in which mainstream culture often devalues the role of elders and cross-generational kinship. Do you/How do you see the work of re/building these relationships as political?
Politics is about collective movement. When the collective sense is weak, we are simply a collection (of individual interests), easily divided and targeted by unjust policies. The most fundamental work of politics is to rebuild a sense of the collective (the polis).
The fundamental act of bridging is listening with curiosity because it enables the individual to feel connected to others when he/she takes action. As much as fighting for our rights, it's acting from a sense of mutual response-ability that makes us a coherent nation.
Editor's note: The ideas expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of the Othering & Belonging Institute or UC Berkeley, but belong to the authors.
Explore the Network Catalyzers Program page for more conversations and insights from community leaders supported by this initiative. Click here!