Dr. Joanna Mimi Choi is a pediatrician passionate about empowering communities to thrive. Her lived experience as a mother, doctor, and public health professional who has worked in community, county, and state-level health systems helps her think creatively about Strategic CaseMaking™.
Mimi loves to cook and bake with her daughters (they recently placed second in the beginner category of San Francisco public radio station KQED’s Forest Ecology Bakeoff!), run and hike with friends, and generally explore the wonder of the world with her family. We talked to her about melding cultures, challenging dominant narratives about parenting, and CaseMaking as a primary care physician.
What do you love about where you live?
We moved to Berkeley this past summer, and we are lucky to live right by an incredible network of fire trails. I'm an avid runner and hiker, and I love being able to put on my shoes and be surrounded by the healing power of nature within minutes.
What’s your aspiration for your community?
As the daughter of Chinese immigrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong, I grew up bridging multiple cultures and communities. Being Asian American is a label I only recently circled back to during the Covid pandemic and as I entered middle age. My hope for my future fellow culture melders is that we are more easily able to embrace the vibrancy of being parts of many wholes, rather than feeling like we are not enough for any one identity. For example, not Asian enough or American enough.
What are some of the obstacles you’re navigating?
As a mother and a pediatrician, I've seen firsthand how intense parenting has become. Rather than being a joyful adventure of love and discovery, forces like social media and the lack of social mobility in our world have co-opted the experience into one that is fraught with worry, misgiving, and overscheduling.
The obstacles are both personal and societal, given what a unique journey parenting is for each person. I have been working on trying to be thoughtful about and staying true to what I ultimately want for my children, rather than what I think society wants to see and values.
Given that so much of this is influenced by our peers, it has really helped to have a partner and parent friends who have a similar approach, as raising children really does take a village. I also really appreciate and respect that U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is trying to lift this issue up, as it only is with recognition of what needs to change and group agreement to start shifting norms that we can give our children their childhood back.
How are you making the case for your vision of the future?
I come from a long line of advocates and policymakers, and my passion for Strategic CaseMaking™ and systems change comes from wanting to help more people on a broader scale. I’ve been lucky to work with communities in Los Angeles and across California to help them create the healthy changes they would like to see, not only in structural policy change but also in growing the social fabric and movement needed to build and sustain the work. With TheCaseMade, I’m excited to broaden this work and reach communities around the country and the world.
I also fully appreciate the power of a great teacher or mentor, and I really enjoy working with individuals to inspire them and equip them with the tools to shape their worlds. Whether they are community leaders, college students, or pediatrics residents, I always feel so lucky and energized to see the next generation of changemakers in motion.
I also aspire to live my vision of the future as best as I can, to model for my daughters what I hope the world can be.
Would you share your best CaseMaking moment with us?
One of my most powerful CaseMaking moments came during the first workshop I did with DrT five years ago. I was pitching a statewide initiative on child wellbeing and policy change to a group of funders, when one bluntly asked why she should care about kids when she wasn't planning on having any of her own.
After taking a moment to recover from my shock, I took a step back and realized I needed to build a stronger "we" and connect back to her aspirations — to make a broader appeal that we were all children once.
I asked the group to close their eyes and remember back to when they were children, to channel the joy and possibility of what life was like then. In helping folks tap back into that special time of their own lives, I was able to secure multiple commitments for partnership and financial support, whether or not these funders had children of their own.
What’s your favorite CaseMaking tool or skill?
In addition to connecting to people’s aspirations, as I did in the anecdote I just shared, my favorite CaseMaking tool is anchoring and credentialing solutions, not problems.
As a doctor, I was very much trained in "bad news data," using numbers and statistics to scare and intimidate, rather than leading with the positive. Learning asset-based framing was such a powerful shift! It’s been such a rewarding creative exercise to help folks flip the way they see the issues they've been working on, often for years, and find ways to appeal to a broader audience and impact.
What can folks in health fields learn from CaseMaking?
As a primary care pediatrician, much of what I do in clinic could be considered CaseMaking. When I work with my patients to make sustainable healthy changes to their lives, I lean on principles like naming the power of the moment and making inequitable systems the villain. Most of my patients know what they “should” be doing, and by talking about why it’s so hard to stop drinking soda or cut down on their screentime, they feel empowered to make powerful adjustments to their day-to-day activities.
Folks in both health care and public health often understandably resort to backfires, using data, jargon, and fear to scare our patients into the behavior change we want to see. Instead, we can meet our patients in partnership and motivate them by tapping into their inherent desire for good.
As Dr. T likes to say, “CaseMaking is life!”
What are you working on next?
I recently joined TheCaseMade as senior director of strategic partnerships, and I am absolutely thrilled to put CaseMaking at the front and center of my work, rather than it being something I wish I could do more of.
I also still see patients at an incredible community health center called Asian Health Services, and I feel so fortunate to be able to blend these two professional passions. I'm excited to help TheCaseMade build out our health portfolio while also continuing to reconnect and grow our community up here in the Bay Area!