{"id":459211,"date":"2026-09-10T09:16:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T09:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/459211\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T09:16:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T09:16:15","slug":"2026-change-maker-honoree-lauren-oto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/459211\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 Change Maker honoree: Lauren Oto"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Sacramento Bee and Nehemiah Leaders Programs are celebrating this year’s 60 Change Makers. Join them at our gala at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 13 at the Grand Sheraton in downtown Sacramento. Buy tickets at sacramentochangemakers.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Small business owners face all sorts of challenges, from mental health to finding the right employees to paying rent.<\/p>\n

Lauren Oto \u2014 through her work as the executive director of the Sacramento Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce Foundation \u2014 aims to tackle these challenges by creating an \u201cecosystem\u201d of sorts.<\/p>\n

The chamber advocates for businesses to reduce barriers and provides technical assistance workshops, Oto said, while the foundation helps build the workforce pipeline to diversify what leadership looks like within organizations.<\/p>\n

This type of work, she said, became increasingly important in 2020 \u2014 at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic \u2014 when violent anti-Asian hate crimes<\/a> increased by 125%, according to the California Department of Justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last six years, we\u2019ve really dove deep into the work to understand that now a lot of our small business employees and employers have become victims of some sort of hate crime,\u201d Oto said.<\/p>\n

Oto and her colleagues also work to provide mental health services for small businesses. She said 100% of the businesses she works with don\u2019t have a fully-funded budget for mental health resources, but each of these businesses are open to providing something at low to no cost, sparking the organization to take action.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a platform, a digital platform that we\u2019ve launched providing free access to our small businesses to be able to go on and take assessments as it relates to their stress level, depression levels, anxiety levels,\u201d Oto said. \u201cFrom there it automatically will populate some resources based on their assessment of how they maybe can minimize the stress on their job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lauren Lauren Oto is a 2026 Change Maker on Wednesday, July 29, 2026. HECTOR AMEZCUA hamezcua@sacbee.com <\/p>\n

Oto is Japanese American herself and grew up in the Sacramento region. She said she enjoys working in the nonprofit space, so when the opportunity to work at the chamber came, she jumped at the opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur work has grown. My role has grown. The level of impact that I\u2019ve been able to make in the community has grown,\u201d Oto said. \u201cI really think where I\u2019m at now is really a great opportunity for us to continue growing and continue growing in the ways that we show impact in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n


\n \"Profile
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Corey Schmidt<\/a><\/p>\n

The Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n

Corey Schmidt is a watchdog reporter for The Sacramento Bee, focusing on Folsom, El Dorado Hills and Sacramento County\u2019s eastern suburbs. Previously, he was the government watchdog reporter for the St. Cloud Times in Minnesota. Schmidt received his bachelor\u2019s degree from DePaul University in Chicago and his master\u2019s degree from Yale University.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sacramento Bee and Nehemiah Leaders Programs are celebrating this year’s 60 Change Makers. Join them at our…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-459211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}