Since 1930, Camp Rising Sun has shaped the lives of more than 6,500 alumni from over 60 countries. Across generations and continents, CRS alumni continue to lead with empathy, curiosity, and courage—bringing Camp’s values into classrooms, courtrooms, creative industries, clinics, and communities.
As we celebrate 95 years of impact, we’re spotlighting just a few of the many stories that show how a summer at Camp becomes a lifetime of meaning.
Please visit lajf.org/crs95 to learn more about our 95th Anniversary Celebration from October 24-26.
Liz Lee (CRS ‘04)
Kaozouapa “Liz” Lee is the daughter of refugees who fled to Thailand after they were displaced by the civil war in Laos. Part of the ethnic Hmong group of Southeast Asia, they immigrated to St. Paul, Minnesota, in the early 1990s. Lee earned a degree in political science from Yale and began her career working for U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, later serving with U.S. Representatives Keith Ellison and Barbara Lee. She currently represents St. Paul’s Eastside district as a Minnesota state representative.
It was my first trip away from home and the first time I wasn’t surrounded by my siblings, which in itself made my trip to Camp Rising Sun in 2004 an adventure of momentous proportions. As the oldest of four, I considered myself fearless, and their leader of sorts, and here I was concerned with the idea of being outside a lot and what might be crawling around in the night.
I had spent a lot of time fishing with my dad, and camping is popular in Minnesota, but heading out to New York on my own, I started questioning myself: Am I able to survive this?
It’s funny now looking back on those anxieties after recognizing that my time at Camp Rising Sun propelled me into a world of international travel, intense political work, and my current role as a Minnesota state representative – the first Asian and first woman ever elected to St. Paul’s Eastside district.
I was 14 when I went to Camp, having been recruited by a couple of alumni in Minnesota, where they have a very strong presence of former campers. My first impression of arriving at the campus near Rhinebeck was the incredible diversity of girls there from around the world. I loved meeting them all, especially a girl from Paris, because I had been studying French.
Although I grew up in Minnesota, I had spent my childhood among immigrants from many nations – including the Hmong people of Southeast Asia, the ethnic group to which my family belongs. I still felt a bit sheltered by a regular life of public school, working my first job delivering the local newspaper, and caring for my siblings. Even though Camp was still in the United States, I felt like I was immersed in an international nation of sorts.
Growing up, we didn’t have a lot of media entertainment featuring people who looked like us, so we watched a lot of Korean and Bollywood dramas. But they always seemed far away, out of reach, so at Camp it was cool to meet Korean and Indian people in real life. There’s such a difference in being able to experience personal interaction and working together as a camp community with people outside of your homeland and culture.
That Camp experience played a pivotal role in my academic and professional life that followed – studying comparative politics for different democracies around the world, working for a think tank in Hong Kong that publishes reports about migration in the Greater Mekong Subregion, teaching Thai migrant workers English, and interning for a nonprofit that helps remove mines left over from wars around the globe.
I also remember that someone had gifted a New York Times subscription to the Camp, and I was in awe that we got to read something so political, so international every day. It really set the tone for me to dive into international affairs. The excitement of being so “international” was a good feeling. But something else was brewing in the daily work and learning in Camp.
As campers, we worked together to run the entire show – cooking, cleaning, initiating projects, creating artistic endeavors, and putting in proposals for “instruction,” the educational component of Camp.
We also worked on a group project to plan big Friday dinners: Our group chose a rainbow theme, and we made our Friday dinner incorporate all the colors of the rainbow in the food. Everyone picked one food item and one color. It didn’t taste great, but it was a great concept, exploring and eliciting different ideas from a wide spectrum of cultural backgrounds.
The counselors talked a lot about “servant leadership.” I hadn’t heard the concept until I got to Camp. Initially I thought it described what I did helping my siblings, feeding them and keeping a watchful eye on them. But I quickly learned that the idea meant much more – leading in an informed way that considers your work to be for the greater good. You're not a leader just to be a leader. It’s not just a title or signaling that you’re the one in charge. When it came my turn for leadership, I struggled with creating a new rule for the camp – which was one of the things leaders were charged with. I had never considered playing that role.
Eventually, I saw that everyone at Camp was a servant leader, and I got to watch how they went through the process. It teaches you how to figure out how you contribute to camp life in your own unique way. That realization has played a critical role in my life as a state representative. I’m not there for any kind of power play or purposeful stepping stone to higher office. I’m there because I want to be the kind of leader that looks at every perspective possible, from a diversity of viewpoints, and then tries to anticipate the outcomes to ensure they are fair to all. Camp Rising Sun now calls this “ethical leadership,” and what better tool to be equipped with as a politician — not just a moral compass, but also a way of approaching each policy question facing my constituents and the state as a whole.
Some of the projects may have seemed inconsequential back then – like making new, colorful number signs for each dinner table (the old ones were tattered and dirty) and boxes for every table to hold the salt and pepper shakers, napkins, and utensils. So much of my work now concentrates on very similar little improvements, ways to better the consideration and movement of legislation – corral the chaos, so to speak, instead of letting it slam you around in circles.
I will never forget one night at Camp that has informed everything I have done in my career path and my new leadership role. We had dinner one evening during which we learned about income inequality and how it creates food inequality — sometimes as stark as whether you will eat that night. We all assumed roles in various income positions. One girl got very little food, I got some, but one girl got almost all the food, and she said she felt incredibly bad. “I can’t eat all this.” Of course, we all ended up fed after the project, but visualizing these inequalities with something as primal as food was incredibly powerful.
Camp Rising Sun gave me so many more similar perspectives to consider, and that’s why I think I’m somewhat unique as a legislator for one of the poorest districts in Minnesota. I see inequality and think about it a lot. Our legislators are working on tax relief for homeowners right now, and I kept wondering why nothing was being considered for renters. Why, if we are trying to provide relief for families facing rising costs, do we create another inequality by doing nothing for renters?
There’s this saying a lot of Camp alumni have that you’re a “camper for life.” I’ve tried to keep connected with the alumni but the saying means more than just keeping in touch. It means carrying – for life – the invaluable tools you’ve learned to help lead our world ethically into the future.