Pradeepta Upadhyay is retiring after more than 14 years leading InterIm Community Development Association (InterIm CDA) as executive director.
Two senior-level staff members have stepped forward to serve as co-executive directors of the nonprofit affordable housing and community development organization from its office on sloping Maynard Avenue South: Leslie Morishita, who previously led real estate development for the organization, and Medhat Adib, the organization’s Chief Financial Officer.
The leadership transition was officially announced on November 2 during InterIm’s annual community dinner fundraising dinner, though it has been quietly underway since spring this year.
InterIm started in 1969. With origins in the Chinatown International District (CID), InterIm builds and develops affordable housing, manages the Danny Woo Community Garden, and offers a plethora of services to low-income Asian and Pacific Islander community members. It also serves some 5,000 low-income people from Asia, Africa, and the Americas throughout the Puget Sound region.
After 14 years, Upadhyay felt it was time to step away. “You love the job and you love what you’re doing, but at some point in time, it does burn you out,” she said. “Basically, I think I felt I had done what I could for the organization.”
But Upadhyay plans to continue serving the organization in an advisory role for at least another year.
Upadhyay was born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal and educated at a private Catholic boarding school. She described her upbringing as relatively privileged, and her parents instilled in her the value of giving back to those less fortunate. She founded and served as director of the Women’s Inspiration Community, a Nepali nonprofit focused on women’s health and education.
As one of her first projects, Upadhyay worked with women who were imprisoned after attempting abortions, which were illegal in Nepal at the time, and advocated for abortion rights. Her organization worked with “absolutely poor, abject women that had no choice but to have unsafe abortions, and they were either dying or they were being imprisoned,” Upadhyay recalled. For nearly a decade, she also worked with women who were trafficked in the sex industry in India due to poverty, contracted HIV AIDS, and were sent back home. Unable to return to their families due to the stigma, “they were just dying on the streets in Kathmandu.”
Upadhyay came to the United States in 1999, to be closer to her daughters who came here for college. Settling in Los Angeles, Upadhyay worked as director of the South Asian Network, serving immigrants and refugees. Seeing the challenges they faced inspired her to help.
“I hadn’t realized the number of immigrants and refugees that were really hurting in so many ways,” Upadhyay recalled. “There were language issues, financial issues, family problems, everything.” Yet a lesson she took from the experience was the resilience and strength of immigrants and refugees.
She and her husband later moved to Seattle, where she was director of Chaya, which would later merge with the API Safety Center to become API Chaya, an organization serving survivors of domestic and sexual violence and trafficking. After a stint in consulting, Upadhyay longed to return to grassroots activist work.
In 2014, she became Director of Strategic Operations for InterIm CDA before serving as interim and then permanent executive director.
She worked closely with Bob Santos for two years, who she previously knew from her work on the National Asian Pacific Women’s Forum (NAPAWF). Santos encouraged her to become permanent executive director.
“By the time one year was over, I’d become very attached to the organization, I was very attached to Bob,” Upadhyay said.
Santos, who grew up around the CID and the Central District, was an instrumental leader for InterIm CDA from 1972 to 1989 and again from 2000 to 2005. He died in 2016 and is remembered as a fearless, indefatigable advocate for the CID and its residents, a bridge builder with other communities of color, and a savvy change-maker who could build connections with the political establishment and business worlds to achieve results.
To this day, Santos serves as an example for the work InterIm does. For years, in InterIm’s conference room, a photo of Santos was propped against a white board with the caption “Uncle Bob is watching!”
“There was this immense respect and love for him. And I think what really surprised me was his ability to relate to young people in the same way that he was able to relate to elderly people,” Upadhyay said.
As executive director, Upadhyay’s vision for InterIm was financial strength and resilience.
“When you have an organization so rich in history, I think you always have to understand the historical context to move it into the future,” Upadhyay said. “Making sure that you’re able to be flexible with what needs to change as the community changes and the community needs become more fluid.”
A legacy of community building
InterIm was started in the late 60s by a group of activists, business owners, and former members of the Jackson Street Community Council (JSCC) neighborhood improvement organization, who believed the CID needed to be protected and revitalized.
They chose the name “International District Improvement Association” or “InterIm.”
“Funded and staffed through the Model Cities Program, InterIm opened an office in a storefront in the NP Hotel,” wrote activist and writer Gary Iwamoto in an article recounting the history of InterIm. “In its first two years, InterIm lobbied successfully for better lighting and increased police patrols to help minimize crime. Staffing for the agency was sporadic; InterIm went through two executive directors and two coordinators in three years.”
When InterIm’s board applied to the Model Cities Board for funding to hire a full-time staff person, they found a supporter in Santos, a member of the board and a rising activist. In 1971, InterIm’s board recruited Santos as executive director.
Just a month after Santos started in the role, plans were announced for the Kingdome stadium by the King Street rail station. The community worried the stadium would displace residents, raise property values, and choke the area with traffic. Although it became too late to stop the project, the Kingdome galvanized the Asian American community around protecting the CID and creating more resources.
In the 1970s, Santos petitioned government officials to mitigate impacts of the Kingdome, regularly speaking at City Council and County Council meetings. “InterIm, under Bob’s leadership, became a magnet for young Asian activists, many of whom were recent college graduates or emerging professionals with fresh and innovative ideas toward serving the community,” Iwamoto wrote.
In the early 70s, InterIm established its parking lot under I-5 to serve residents and businesses, and in 1975 began constructing the future Danny Woo community garden up on Main Street. That year, it also helped start the Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority (SCIDpda). In 1976 InterIm also started a child care task force, which became the Denise Louie Day Care Center, to look after neighborhood kids.
While InterIm began as a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, in 1979 it created InterIm Community Development Association (ICDA) as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, allowing it to receive grants to build and preserve housing.
In the 1980s and 90s, InterIm rehabilitated historic buildings like the Rex Hotel, the Gee How Oak Tin building, Eastern Hotel, and NP Hotel, converting them into affordable housing. Most recently, this year InterIm announced its plan to buy and rehabilitate the vacant Republic Hotel.
In 2012, InterIm CDA merged with the International District Housing Alliance (IDHA), a subsidiary organization that InterIm had established in the 70s to advocate for residents.
IDHA had become its own organization by 1979, offering housing services, emergency rental assistance, services for domestic violence survivors, resident services such (health education, financial literacy, ESL and civic engagement), advocacy, and the WILD youth program (Wilderness Inner-city Leadership Development). All of these programs InterIm continues to offer since the merger.
InterIm started work on Uncle Bob’s Place in 2017, named in honor of Santos. It will feature affordable housing, a community room, and serve as the new location for the legendary Bush Garden Restaurant and Bar.
Two new executive directors step forward
As former real estate development director for InterIm, overseeing projects like Uncle Bob’s Place, Leslie Morishita is taking over as co-executive director with a deep background in community development, housing, and fundraising.
A third generation Japanese American whose parents and grandparents were incarcerated during WWII, Morishita said her family history is one reason she was drawn to the CID and InterIm. The neighborhood was also a place where she could be around other third generation Japanese Americans with similar experiences.
Because of the intense impact of being incarcerated during WWII, “my parents were always working hard to be ‘good Americans,’” Morishita said. “I didn’t recognize it until much, much later, until I was an adult. But I kind of had this double life… we did not show our Japanese-ness out in the world unless it was indoors with family or at family gatherings.”
Morishita came to Seattle to study culturally-appropriate design and vernacular architecture at the University of Washington. She had a bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology. “I used to do archeology, and then I was much more interested in the living people than the people who were gone. We were always digging in the ground, and I was always looking up and looking around at the people. You know, how do people live in a place, in space, and how does culture shape that?”
One day, Santos was invited as a guest speaker at school. “Bob Santos came with his little box of slides and gave his famous slideshow about the Danny Woo garden and why it was built, and how it was built by volunteers, for elders who didn’t have a place to grow food,” Morishita said.
After the talk, Morishita asked if there was anything she could do to help. InterIm’s executive director at the time said the garden needed a new tool shed. Morishita did an independent study designing the shed, and built it with some friends over a summer.
Morishita also worked on envisioning culturally-appropriate housing for Southeast Asian refugees for InterIm, which she completed as a Master’s thesis. Her design guidelines were used to inform InterIm projects such as Highland Gardens in Issaquah, intended to serve Highland Lao farmers who farmed in Snohomish, sold at Pike Place Market, and wanted to live closer to their work.
After volunteering at InterIm, Morishita was hired, and had roles including Community Housing Planner and Senior Housing Developer.
For many years, InterIm had a small staff and the roles were somewhat non-hierarchical, where “you just do whatever needs to be done.” Morishita spent time running the Danny Woo Garden, in neighborhood planning and community organizing.
As part of her transition into co-executive director, the organization hired a new senior housing developer this year, Akhil Arun, to whom Morishita will transfer responsibilities.
This year Medhat Adib, Morishita’s fellow co-executive director, has been stepping into more staff development, human resources, and administrative roles in addition to acting as CFO.
An immigrant from Cairo, Egypt, Adib came to the United States with two siblings, non-English speaking parents, and an accounting background.
Community service was instilled in Adib from a young age. Growing up in a middle class family, Abib’s mother had the children go door to door among low-income households, handing out food and necessities through the Christian Orthodox church they belonged to.
In Seattle, Adib was drawn to work that involved community service. After seven years working at the Seattle Indian Center, he was hired at InterIm as a finance director in the early 2000s.
When he met and worked with Santos at InterIm, Santos mentored and built his confidence in community service and working with local government. “He taught me the true meaning of community,” Adib said.
Over more than 20 years at InterIm, Abid worked on finance, asset management, and rose to the role of CFO.
No one on staff stuck to their job on paper. “You’re here to do whatever it takes to help ICDA and the community,” Adib said. “This is what I learned, and I think it somewhat made me successful — a different vision and different point of view.”
“All the three of us, Pradeepta and Medhat and myself, just love InterIm, and we together agree, we will do what it takes to make this transition smooth and intentional,” said Morishita.
In the coming year, this will likely include meeting with funders to build relationships and reassurance, as Morishita takes on a more outward-facing role.
The plan is for Adib and Morishita to co-lead the organization for a year and see how it agrees with them.
“I think transition is our biggest project, keeping InterIm strong in the process, and setting us up to sustain for the future,” Morishita said.
Looking to the future
As leader, Upadhyay is proud to have built the organization from the inside through boosting general operating funding, board development, and strategic planning.
She also is proud of growing the organization based on community needs, partnering with other immigrant and refugee organizations, and building a staff that represents the diverse communities served. She is proud the organization invested in policy advocacy — “raising the voices of the community” and “taking a stand against policies that could have a negative impact on the immigrant refugee communities that we serve.” This also included working with the community to build its own advocacy through new resident civic engagement programs and financial education for young people.
“She’s leaving the organization really in a good place, like all around the organization is strong, and that’s because of her,” said Morishita.
“We were so lucky to have her at the right time,” said Adib. “She carried the history, and she came in with her connections and expertise.”
For Upadhyay, the biggest challenge has always been financial sustainability, though the organization has been successful with grants. Another is housing. “Trying to protect the neighborhood and trying to protect the low income communities that live here, but then at the same time, you’re having to fight off the private real estate developers,” Upadhyay said.
With the CID near transit and downtown, it has increasingly become attractive for housing developers wanting to build massive projects, Morishita noted. With so many projects planned, InterIm is focused on the balance of income levels in the neighborhood. An ideal mix is one third low income, one third moderate income, and one third income levels that can afford market-rate housing, she explained.
“That’s kind of close to where we’re at now, and it’s healthy. It keeps the traditional community in place, but we don’t want to be 100% low income people,” Morishita said. “When we look at projects that are planned, then it gets way out of whack, and the market rate projects far, far, far outpace the affordable housing projects.”
“Where do you draw the line between, okay, revitalization on one side, but displacement on the other side?” Upadhyay said. “I think what keeps worrying me is how fast this place is growing, right, and what it’s going to look like in the next few years, if you have more buildings coming up, and more displacement happening, that’s beyond our control.”
Morishita has optimism despite the uncertainty. “We pour ourselves into this work because of our hope for the future,” she said. “Everybody who works at InterIm really cares, they care about their work, and they care about the people they work with, and the community.”
