Spotlight on ALTRA Magazine
Filling an important need in our community

By Joanne Lee for AIA, May 2007

ALTRA's Spring 2007 issue features Heroes' star James Kyson Lee.

Growing up, I remember flipping through fashion and lifestyle magazines and never expecting to see anybody who looked like me. When I stumbled upon the one model of Asian descent in the pages, I would stop and closely examine each part of her face and body to find any resemblance to me or my friends. I never even dreamed of reading articles that would capture my rich and sometimes confusing experience of being an Asian American. Thus, I was very excited to learn about ALTRA, a brand new, seasonal lifestyle magazine that caters exclusively to cosmopolitan, educated Asian American professionals...(gasp - dare I say it?) people like me.

Nancy Moran is the bilingual and bi-cultural entrepreneur who created ALTRA, the magazine that she envisions will become the ultimate resource guide for the Asian American community. Her wealth of experience in event production, marketing/branding, and public relations, as well as close affiliations with a number of Asian-American organizations and community outreach projects, makes her especially well-suited for such a worthy undertaking.

Due to her grandfather's influence, Nancy had been immersed in reading and writing since she was a child. During this time, she also discovered her love of reading and collecting magazines. Nancy credits the influence of one magazine in particular, A Magazine, which catered to the Asian American community.

"After 'A' magazine folded, I had a really hard time finding a quality, unisex lifestyle publication for Asian Americans like myself, so I felt that there was a need to fill this void in our community." Need often creates opportunity, and the idea of starting ALTRA soon formed. Meeting others who shared the same view only further reinforced her desire to start ALTRA. She thanks them for their part in bringing the vision of ALTRA to life: "Truthfully, I couldn't have done this without my amazing team, the wonderful contributors and the enthusiastic readers, so I'm forever grateful to them for making ALTRA a reality."

ALTRA will cover topics from entertainment, art, culture, to fashion and technology and include articles, entertainment features, local and national community news, exclusive offers and promotions, photography, and reader focused segments.

ALTRA's mission is to increase unity, awareness, and pride among Asian Americans. Nancy aims "to bring out the 'pride' within the Asian American community by highlighting successful and up-and-coming Asian Americans in a positive, non-traditional and non-stereotypical fashion - male and female, coast to coast, in all different sectors." Through its coverage of news and personalities, ALTRA will seek to define and raise the profile of individual Asian Americans as well as the Asian American community as a whole in the mainstream media.

At the same time, ALTRA will address the unique perspective and dual nature of being both Asian and American. In fact, one of Nancy's greatest motivations for creating ALTRA was "to highlight the 'dual identity' factor that all Asian Americans share, and to show non-Asian Americans how we can successfully intertwine both Asian and American cultures/values in our daily lives."

Lastly, Nancy was inspired "to demonstrate how the complexity of our community is actually what makes us unique as a whole."

I know I can't wait to display ALTRA on my coffee table.

The spring issue of ALTRA is now available! For more information or to subscribe, please go to: http://www.altrazine.com