October 20, 2026

Ms. Welcomes Kris Chan 

by Kris Chan

Kris Chan (she/her) joins Ms. Foundation as the IT Support Specialist.

What brought you to Ms. Foundation? 

The mission to support women and girls. I have a background working in education and public service, and I wanted to work for an organization that cares about members of the public. I was also drawn to the Foundation’s history — it has been involved with many of the changes we’ve seen throughout history, and I wanted to support an organization that has weathered all of this. I’m really excited about the future of the Foundation as well. 

What gets you out of bed every morning? 

Professionally, thinking about the real-world impact of my work. When I worked in public transit, I worked for the maintenance infrastructure department and had a couple of projects working on bus stops in the city. I also took the bus regularly, in Long Beach, California. It was really gratifying to wake up and walk to a bus stop that I helped clean up, redesign, and implement better lighting and better signage for. I also really loved having relationships with the bus drivers. I like seeing my work out in the real world and developing relationships with the people who benefit from it. 

Personally, I have a cat named Coconut, who needs breakfast, so I’ve got to get out of bed in the morning or he’ll get really grumpy and start meowing incessantly. I think he can tell time because an hour before breakfast he’ll start tapping me on the shoulder.

Who is a badass feminist who inspires you? 

A sociologist named Maxine Baca Zinn, who went to the same school as me — Cal State Long Beach. She created the first endowment for a professorship in the University of New Mexico’s Sociology Department so the department could focus on hiring people to work on issues of social inequality. 

She developed the structural diversity approach to show that families are socially constructed and products of social forces, and there is more than one way to create a family. She argued against the idea of the suburban, two-parent, male breadwinner as the benchmark of a “normal” family. Instead of viewing families merely as autonomous “building blocks” of society, this perspective examines how larger institutions actively shape what happens inside the home.

Overall, it’s really important to me that we understand that families can look many types of ways. 

What advice would you give to your younger self?

You can always pivot. There’s always time and you can work on your own schedule because it’s your life at the end of the day. It sounds really cliché, but your dreams are your own, and you can dream big. There may be people who don’t believe in you, or things that make achieving your dream a little out of reach, but if you really want something, you’ve got to cheer yourself on and pursue it.