Jung Han Messinger, MSW, MPH, MCPC (they/them) began their involvement in community and campus activism as a young person in the early 2000’s, and they have nearly two decades of experience in nonprofit and philanthropic leadership, program and project management, community-based research, academic instruction, and birth, loss, grief, and disability care work.

Their professional and organizing background includes work in nonprofit management, social justice philanthropy, LGBTQ issues and communities, prison industrial complex (P.I.C.) abolition, sexuality education, HIV/AIDS, youth development, adoptee issues, social work policy and practice, mutual aid, pastoral care and movement chaplaincy, street medic and mental health first aid, and racial, gender, disability, immigration, reproductive, birth, and healing justice.

Jung is currently the Development Coordinator at Collective Loss Access Project, which makes use of art, culture, peer support, and Indigenous and diasporic spiritual traditions to tend to the stigmatized and disenfranchised grief of disabled people and collective losses, like pandemics, climate crises, genocide, and other political violence. Most recently, they also served as the Interim Director of Programs at Third Wave Fund, overseeing six philanthropic funds resourcing youth-led gender justice, disability justice, and sex worker-led organizing and activism.

Prior to founding Yeojeong LLC, they were the Director of Training and Leadership Development at Funders for Justice, a national network of funders increasing resources to BIPOC grassroots organizations working at the intersections of racial justice, gender justice, ending criminalization, and building models for community safety & justice. As a Program Officer at Third Wave Fund from 2015-2021, they co-designed the organization's philanthropic strategies, oversaw its (then) three funds, helped grow the grantmaking portfolio from $70K to $1M+, and served as the Co-Chair of the Funders for Justice Healing Justice Strategy Group and the Funders for Reproductive Equity Youth Engagement and Leadership Working Group. Read more about Jung’s professional experience and education on LinkedIn.

Jung’s work, activism, poetry, and other writing have appeared in a variety of media platforms and publications, including The Lit Review podcast, Good Day Chicago, Daily Dot, Lost Daughters, moonroot, Common Intuitions: A Poetry Anthology of Women Celebrating Women (Palettes & Quills), Stereo Visions: Looking Back, Moving Forward (Evolutionary Girls Club), and the now defunct Land of Gazillion Adoptees magazine. They also write tailored reading recommendations for Book Riot’s TBR Service.

Jung devotes time to community and neighborhood mutual aid, and volunteers with Liberation Library to ensure access to books, magazines, and outlets for creativity writing for youth incarcerated throughout Illinois. A Unitarian Universalist with roots in earth-based spirituality, they are part of DRUUMM and the Unitarian Universalist Prison Ministry of Illinois. They also like reading all kinds of fiction and nonfiction, playing pungmul (풍물), watching the WNBA, gardening, spending time in nature, and tell their cat Mochi how cute they are.