“Simply amazing! Sumi is a must-have speaker when approaching the complexities of equity and inclusion. Sumi’s presentation at Irvine Valley College was nothing short of transformational for our faculty and our college.  She presented to a group of well-informed faculty and staff and each of them walked away challenged, inspired, and motivated to implement effective change in and outside of the classroom.  She addresses issues critical to equity, social justice, and inclusiveness in a way that is direct and highly effective; she is eloquent, powerful, and inspiring. Sumi has the keen ability to present in-depth information with ease, while keeping the attention of every attendee through humor, personal experiences, and well-researched data.”

Cindy Vyskocil
Interim President, Irvine Valley College

"I have seen and heard several keynote speeches throughout my career. Sumi Pendakur's speech at our NODA Region 2 conference was one of the few that actually drew me in, held my attention throughout, and more importantly, challenged my thinking and practice. Sumi was able to flawlessly weave in her knowledge and real life experiences of critical race theory, student development, and identity exploration with our association's work- new student orientation and transition to college. Specifically, she focused on how as orientation professionals and students, we need to infuse inclusivity and open-mindedness into everything we offer- from icebreakers, to language, to programming, and how in not doing so, we can create a space that is exclusive, unwelcoming, and not conducive to achieving success. Not only was I blown away by Sumi's style of delivery and insightful content, but I could tell the rest of the audience was equally excited and reflective. Sumi's keynote served as the perfect opening to our conference as it set the tone for why we were there and what we needed to focus on."

Chrissy Roth-Francis, Ed.D.
Director, New Student Services, University of California, Berkeley
Board Member, Association for Orientation, Transition and Retention in Higher Education

“Sumi Pendakur joined WoW (the Women of WACUHO) as a keynote at our annual drive in and she was a hit! Sumi brought her real, authentic self to the keynote, while simultaneously sharing important messages with our group. All day, participants were commenting on how much they appreciated Sumi’s keynote and authenticity, raving that she was the perfect way to start a day that was focused on women and leadership in student affairs! I would highly recommend Sumi to any organization looking for a keynote to touch upon women, leadership, social justice issues, and more – she brings her real self, critical engagement, humor, and more to her presentations!”

Piya Bose, Ph.D.
Director, Palo Verde, UC Irvine Student Housing

“We were thrilled to have Dr. Sumi Pendakur as the keynote speaker at Teach For America’s 2014 Asian American and Pacific Islander staff summit. Summit programming focused on AAPI history, community building, and bringing knowledge back to our daily work in the movement to spread educational opportunity to all students. Thus, we asked Dr. Pendakur to share why she focuses on work related to diversity and equity, as well as provide some historical context around the AAPI community in our country. Dr. Pendakur’s speech can be described in so many ways: entertaining, educational, dynamic, personal, heartfelt, jaw-dropping, and inspiring—the list goes on. She highlighted the history and origins of the term “Asian American”, how our community’s narrative has been developed and shaped by others, and the emergence of the “model minority” and why it’s a particularly harmful stereotype. As an organization that focuses on ensuring all children have access to great educational opportunities, her speech hit home with summit attendees and encouraged them to push their thinking around the need for disaggregated student data. Since the Summit, staff members have consistently cited her speech as one of the highlights of our programming and an inspirational call to action to action.”

Crystal Tang,
AAPI Staff Summit Chair (2014)

"Looking for a witty, charismatic and downright real educator than can connect students, faculty and staff? Dr. Sumun “Sumi” Pendakur should be at the top of your list! Talk about energetic, research based, rooted in real life ability to tap into the needs of a mixed constituency group. From the initial ask to keynote, Sumi was enthralled with gathering as much information as she could to prepare a dynamic presentation that was clearly designed for our group and not just a one size fits all model. Sumi was engaging and thought provoking, with the ability to utilize humor and passion to keep the audience engaged, a tough feat for a group of 250 + participants. As the first keynote to address issues of diversity and inclusion on our campus, Sumi presented with unique angles that blended the approaches necessary to engage with tough topics. The setting of clear guidelines and the sharing of her personal narrative rooted the conversation in mutual learning and understanding, which really led to a phenomenal start for our university as we begin to grapple with these ideas. I highly recommend you engage with this magnetic presenter and consider adding her to your presentation docket!"

Kristina Londy
Coordinator, Multicultural Center
CSU Dominguez Hills

“Dr. Pendakur has served as a social justice trainer and facilitator for our RAs and professional staff for the last two years.  Each year, we have found her knowledge, perspective, and skills as a trainer and facilitator to be incredibly effective and impactful in developing our staff's capacity to grapple with and navigate the social justice issues we face in our work.  What we have valued most is her collaborative nature in developing meaningful trainings for our staff and her ability to connect the content to intentional practice that our staff will use during the year.  After our first year with Dr. Pendakur, we gathered feedback from our staff about what skills they would like to further develop during our next training.  Dr. Pendakur worked with us to build upon the previous year's training with our staff, developing a unique experience that further developed our staff's skills of engaging in difficult conversations across identities.  Our organization is so appreciative of the thoughtfulness, intention, and collaborative nature that Dr. Pendakur brings to our workshops.  She has made our staff so much more prepared to serve the students in our communities.” 

Billy Jankowski  
Associate Director, Residential & Community Living
UC Santa Barbara

"I have not only witnessed Dr. Sumi Pendakur present and facilitate at a variety of events for students and staff at MIT but have had what I call the "Sumi Pendakur experience." She is such an excellent and dynamic speaker on diversity, equity, inclusion, and access not only in higher education but to the individual experience. She is able to take those topics and present in a way that engages the audience to dive deeper into the discussion and become active participants. She has a superb cross-cultural understanding and has been so well received by the MIT community. She is authentic, relatable and a class act. She is excellent at what she does and we are always looking forward to have her back on campus to present to various groups."

Julian S. Green
Program Director, Institute Community and Equity Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 

“Sumi has changed my life. Ever since my first year at USC, Sumi has been full of utmost generosity, humor, patience, intelligence, and mentorship. I first met her as a freshman student at USC, wandering around on campus, trying to figure out how to make sense of the beautiful, but intimidating campus. As I unknowingly passed by a welcome session by the Asian Pacific American Student Services, I was surprised by a bright and cheerful lady. This was the first time I met Sumi. She asked observant questions and completely persuaded me into applying for APASS's leadership program, Critical Issues in Race, Class, and Leadership Education. My experience with this wonderful program challenged my assumptions about society and my own identity--and helped me formulate a better understanding about how to serve my community and contribute to the social good. Through this experience, I took on a leadership role as a facilitator and teacher's assistant in CIRCLE, managed by Sumi, who is also a great teacher, and developed my skills in conflict resolution and dialogue. We addressed heavy issues related to poverty, Asian American identity, and people's personal life histories. Overall, Sumi's continual mentorship, good humor, and open door policy has been a critical piece to my successful and enriching college experience, helping me understand issues, both personal and social, through both the good times and bad. I hope that if I send my kids to USC many years from now, to see Sumi as a future college President!”

Daniel Wu
Harvard JD/PhD Student

“I had the privilege of working with Sumi on two separate occasions. The first time, she had just been appointed Director and did not yet have an Assistant Director to help her do all the work of the APASS department. Even with her responsibilities, however, she still made sure we CIRCLE TAs knew her door was always open if we had questions or needed help. She served as a knowledgeable resource every week as we planned the course our discussions would take, and knew the answer to any question we might have. Even as she worked to strengthen existing programs, she never stopped thinking on how to improve. As such, she set quite a few goals for the APASS department that were inspiring to work towards. Sumi's greatest strength is her ability to inject the appropriate levity to any situation, to break the ice and get people to open up, but also while remaining professional at the core. For all these reasons, I consider Sumi one of my greatest role models.”

Angela Lee, China Affairs & General Counsel Intern at US Trade Representative
University of Southern California

"I cannot say enough great things about Dr. Sumun (Sumi) Pendakur. Sumi is well-versed in social justice, diversity, and equity issues. But what makes her truly amazing is her ability to take those concepts and make them accessible to the most skeptical of audience members. I've hired her to do several talks at MIT and she connects with the audience in the most impactful way. If you are looking for someone to help transform your students, your staff, your culture, Sumi is an amazing first step. Her words resonate with you long after her workshop is over."

Monica Orta, Assistant Director of MIT Media Labs (2015)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

“Sumi recently led a workshop around diversity issues as part of Step Up’s annual national all-staff retreat. This workshop had 2 main purposes. One was to educate our staff around the social justice and equity issues in higher education today that are and will continue to affect the girls we work with in our programming. In addition to having an academic background in this area, Sumi also lives and breathes it every day in her role at Harvey Mudd, so she served as a wonderful resource – helping tie the big picture systemic issues at play with what it’s really like for a college student of color today. The second purpose of the workshop was to create dialogue amongst our staff about our approach to diversity going forward. Sumi is an effective and approachable facilitator. She deftly helped us create an environment for open dialogue that will serve as the foundation for us to continue having these important and sometimes tough conversations so that we can hold ourselves accountable to making real positive change. We look forward to continued collaboration with Sumi!”

Angie Franchino, VP, Operations & Fundraising Strategy
STEP UP: Inspiring Women to Inspire Girls