Iris Chiang

Hello friends! I’m Iris. I was born and raised in New Jersey. As a second-generation Taiwanese-American, I was raised a traveler. I would often travel to my parents’ hometowns in Taiwan to visit relatives. I always thought traveling across the world was at most a hassle, but nevertheless super normal. It was a bit of a shock coming down south for school, surrounded by many who had never been out of the country. Each year of school, I managed to find a way to board a plane going abroad. Even throughout the year, I would be planning road trips all around the eastern side of the Mississippi river. If I wasn’t moving, I was planning. If I wasn’t planning, I was going crazy. (NOTE: I love Nashville.) But I realized that traveling was an essential part of my life. So when I heard about Lumos, I was convinced that this was the project for me.

In early high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up (an awful burden to bear as a teenager). All I really knew was that I wanted to help people and hopefully do some art along the way. A visitor came to our local chapter of the National Art Honors Society where she talked about her job doing crafts with kids who were in the hospital. I thought, “WHAT? You mean my dream??” So I kept researching and researching about everything art therapy related and found that it continuously aligned with my interests. Jump forward four years, when I discovered Lumos, I immediately started looking for art therapy programs abroad. What’s better than figuring out how your dream job affects people on a global scale?