Westridge alumna Zandie Brockett 张桂才 ’05 is a curator and the creative director and executive producer of West of Here, a creative agency she founded to work with vanguard artists, realize perspective-shifting live experiences and original content, and provide cultural advisory to brands between Asia and the West. She was formerly the director of community and culture at NeueHouse, a private social and work space for creators, innovators, and thought leaders. She has spent her entire career building bridges between creatives and the general public, referring to herself as a ‘cultural infrastructure builder.’ She also currently sits on the Westridge Alumnae Board, serves as part of the DEIJ (diversity, equity, inclusion, justice) committee of the board, and is a member of the alumnae Asian American affinity group.

We are proud to share Zandie’s Q&A this Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Read on for a peek at her experience as a Westridge student and her career trajectory building on her identity as a third culture kid.

Note: This Q&A has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What was your experience like as a Westridge student? [Editor's note: Zandie began attending Westridge in the 7th grade.]

Upon arriving, I was immediately welcomed by a great group of women who were not only as artistically curious as I was, but also very much had an authenticity to their voice, expressing themselves in ways that I hadn’t experienced by my peers at my former school. Westridge was a place that allowed me to explore my curiosities and nourish my talent in the arts and in athletics. As a freshman, I made it onto the varsity volleyball team and so from 9th grade on, I interacted with and built friendships with upperclassmen. It was really powerful to observe these cool older girls move through the world, watching the ways they were disciplined with their commitment to the sport (and the little things they did that were so uniquely them to stay committed, like playing Sublime’s “40 oz. to Freedom” album every morning as we woke up for 5 am practice), conducting themselves as leaders on and off the court.

My love of photography really started and flourished at Westridge. Spending time in the darkroom and in dialogue with [former Westridge Art Faculty] Katie Sivers helped me find a lot of solace and further cultivate a practice that grounded me through observing the world and thinking critically about how visual culture and the production of images changes the ways we constitute our own identity.

You've held a lot of different titles over your career such as storyteller, author, photographer, researcher, and more—talk to us about your career trajectory.

Upon leaving Westridge, I knew that I wanted to get as far from California as possible, so I went to North Carolina and enrolled at Duke University. I studied sociology and photography and ended up doing my master’s at the Fuqua School of Business. I moved to New York for a year after graduating and quickly realized that I needed a city where there was a burgeoning art scene, so I quit my job and moved to China. [Ed. note: Zandie spent six years in Beijing, and two years in Shanghai.]

Throughout my time there, I worked with contemporary Chinese artists. I managed the studio of prominent painter Liu Xiaodong. In producing projects for him at museums and biennials around the world, I started to learn the inner mechanisms of what it meant to be a curator both from a research and production standpoint. I learned what it meant to build infrastructure for artists to create work and tell stories about complex, and often unseen aspects of human life.

In 2013, I started an organization called Bactagon Projects, a curatorial lab that operated like a cloud: we curated exhibitions in disused spaces across the city. We recorded a podcast before most were podcasting. We published a bilingual literary journal distributed globally, and as part of that I became a founding member of Distribution Assembly East—a collective of independent publishers and artists who made books to convene and think about alternative infrastructure for distributing independent print.

I’ve always thought of myself as a cultural infrastructure builder. For me, it’s thinking about the ways in which we were able to enable artists to give voice to either untold stories or to excavate aspects of history that have not been recognized or to allow the expression of various identities of marginalized communities and their lived realities.

Upon returning to the U.S., Zandie had a brief stint at the Annenberg Space for Photography as the senior manager of engagement and learning before later settling into her role as director of community and culture at NeueHouse. She is currently the creative director of the creative agency West of Here.

Do you have any advice for Westridge students and recent alums who are interested in the intersection of their identity and future vocation?

My dad’s side of the family is American from Florida—Caucasian—and my mom’s side is Chinese American originally from Southern China. I’m from these very disparate worlds—these two empires, if you will—and I feel like I have really leaned into and recognized my power as a third culture kid. I find that there’s a real superpower we all hold in knowing two (or more!) different worlds and learning what it means to flow between them, these differing cultural, geographic, linguistic lived experiences. There’s real evolution of values and identity that comes from blending and bridging our worlds.

Zandie flagged that much of her recent programming at NeueHouse focused on the next generation of Asian Americans, creating space and place for third culture kids. “We all share a similar immigration journey at some point in our family’s recent history,” said Zandie. “So, how do we—in this generation—recognize and honor the sacrifices and journey that [our families] made in order to come to America, to imagine and build a new vision of the future they wanted us to inhabit, but also to allow their journey to empower us as we continue evolving this dream? To move out of a scarcity mindset and hold our power and authentic voices as the artists and creative professionals that we are today?”

What drew you to getting involved with Westridge after graduation?

It was a wonderful place for me—I was a very shy kid, and it allowed me to develop a sense of self that grounded me through my college years and prompted me to think critically about my surroundings, even prompting a career of working with artists. There’s a real curiosity, sense discipline and, for better or worse, sense of perfectionism that Westridge instilled in me and my work ethic… I think it’s pivotal that it happened at such a young age. You can get to college and have wonderful professors, but by the time you’re 18, your sense of self is already quite developed. Having Westridge be that safe space to really explore what it meant to ‘be me’ at a young age was vital to who I am today. I want to be able to see and help the next generation of Westridge students have those same experiences.

Connect with Zandie on Instagram at www.instagram.com/zandiebrockett/.

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