Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's On the Ground Battle Creek series.
 
 
BATTLE CREEK —Christina Khim’s journey to Battle Creek from her native Burma was paved with challenges that are never far from her mind in her new role as Executive Director of the city’s Burma Center.
 
It is a homecoming of sorts for Khim who spent several years with the organization as a contract employee and later an Associate Director before taking a position as a Human Resources Professional with Denso Manufacturing’s Battle Creek plant at Fort Custer Industrial Park.
 
Khim along with her mother and younger sister left Burma, now known as Myanmar, in 2007 and traveled to Malaysia where they sought political asylum. They became refugees at a resettlement camp where Khim served as a full-time interpreter and translator for the International Rescue Committee and the Department of Homeland Security. Her work focused on assisting Burmese refugees who were relocating to different areas of the world including Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.
 
John GrapChristina Khim is the new executive director of the Burma Center.“We had some issues with Burma’s military government and the junta,” she says of the decision to leave and seek political asylum. “A majority of us were persecuted for who we are. We belong to small ethnic minority groups. We were oppressed and persecuted. The majority of us are Christians and we have different political views. We were hunted by the military government as a result.”
 
They found their way to Battle Creek and the City of Springfield in much the same way that the city’s more than 3,000 Burmese residents did, through family and friends before them who had relocated to the city.
 
This movement began with the arrival of the Thawnghmung family more than 40 years ago. They were sponsored by Battle Creek’s First Baptist Church.
 
Martha Thawnghmung was nine years old when she and her family arrived in 1980. She would go on to found the Burma Center — originally named the Burmese American Initiative — in 2011 with a $400,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
 
“In the Burmese culture. We like to live collectively with people that we know,” Khim says. “The Thawnghmungs had had other family and friends who left the country and they want to go where our people are and the support systems that are built in this type of environment. We all need an initial phase of resettlement and resources and the Burma Center was founded to address those needs.
 
John GrapChristina Khim is the new executive director of the Burma Center.Khim becomes the organization’s third leader after Martha Thawnghmung, who resigned to focus on an urban garden where she grows and sells flowers, and Tha Tin Par, who after almost six years, resigned earlier in 2024 to take a position as Co-Executive Director at the Battle Creek Coalition for Truth Justice and Racial Healing.
 
“My biggest passion and mission for the Burma Center is to empower our people and make these people valued in this community and make sure that their voices are heard so that they can thrive alongside other people here so they can be successful like other families,” Khim says.
 
As a resident not born in the United States, she says there are many barriers faced by her fellow countrymen and women, most notably in the language and culture spaces, which makes it difficult to establish equal footing.
 
For newly resettled members of the city’s Burmese community, there has to be intentionality in learning about a language and culture that is often not known to them, she says.
 
John GrapThe Burma Center is located on Upton Avenue in Springfield in a building which formerly housed the Battle Creek Area Math and Science Center and Springfield High School.“Our kids might have different experiences in the barriers to accessing the same opportunities. Adults and children who come here as refugees already have those barriers. We need to figure out how we create equitable opportunities for our kids to compete fairly.”
 
Although she could speak English, Khim says she had no idea what her future would be like or what her potential would be like before arriving in Battle Creek. She says she wanted to go to school but didn’t have parents who could help or guide her.
 
Thawnghmung, she says, became her guide and mentor helping her to not only navigate the school system and the college application process but also areas that those born here often take for granted.
 
“Martha introduced us to the Battle Creek Y Center and apple orchards and strawberry farms. This might seem small, but it was huge for us.”
 
Opportunity takes many forms
 
Khim attended Kellogg Community College for two years before transferring in 2012 to Albion College where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business and Organization with a minor in Economics. She was among the college’s first recipients of a Distinguished Transfer Scholarship which covered 75 percent of her tuition and fees.
 
John GrapChristina Khim is the new executive director of the Burma Center.In 2018, she earned a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Western Michigan University while working for Denso where she would remain for 8 and a half years. Her work there positioned her well for what would come next with the Burma Center.
 
In 2106 she established a Burmese Resource Group at the company and later co-founded a Women’s Network both focused on Denso’s Burmese workforce which now numbers more than 500.
 
Khim set her sights on Denso because her work with the Burma Center had become very familiar and she wanted to challenge herself.
 
“As a person who came to the United States as an adult, I asked myself if I was going to be OK if I go out of my comfort zone,” she says. “Everyone at the Burma Center was so nice and it was a forgiving environment. But, this was a growth opportunity and at the time Denso had a big Burmese presence in its workforce. I thought I could help them internally and advocate for them. This was something I might be able to do.”
 
Denso became the employer of choice for the Burmese community because it opened its doors to them, Khim says.
 
“Some of them have been there for 20-plus years. It pays really well and the benefits are good. We like to provide for our families and have money to buy houses and pursue education and the typical American dream. It’s difficult to own a house in the country we come from.”
 
In the beginning, her work on behalf of the company’s Burmese employees was “reactive” and she translated whenever the need arose. As time went on, she says, she was more engaged in changing existing systems and providing services and resources designed to provide equitable access which is part of Denso’s commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
 
John GrapChristina Khim is the new executive director of the Burma Center.Khim will not transfer what she learned at Denso into her leadership position with the Burma Center, she says.
 
“There’s a lot of work to be done in our community and I hope I can replicate what I did at Denso with leaders and organizations in our community. Relationship-building is huge. I want to do that with the public and private sectors.”
 
The Burma Center, she says, has made a lot of progress since it first opened 13 years ago. Among the examples she cites— are a full-time, on-site interpreter at Grace Health and an on-call interpreter at Bronson Battle Creek; posts on Facebook by local organizations and businesses offered in Burmese languages; family liaisons for families of Burmese students attending schools in the Lakeview School District and Battle Creek Public Schools, and student handbooks for them in Burmese.
 
“It makes me almost want to cry to see this kind of support,” Khim says. “It’s a huge relief. Navigating the schools alone is difficult. We feel valued in this community and feel like we’re being seen and heard.”