“Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall,” she kept thinking as her hands trembled.
Surrounded by her husband and their two children, the Phoenix small-business owner spoke to 75,000 attendees of Vice President Kamala Harris’ “closing argument” of her presidential campaign. A day earlier, Poon had no idea she’d even be there.
On Monday morning, Poon was in her Phoenix home reading her emails. As far as she was aware, her brush with the political spotlight had already happened. She’d been featured in an ad for what was then the Biden-Harris campaign. But about 7:30 that morning, that ad led to a phone call.
It was a campaign staffer, asking Poon if she’d come to D.C. They wanted her to speak at Harris’ rally the next day.
“They said go talk to your husband. I was like there’s really nothing to talk about. How do you say no to that?” Poon told New Times. “How can I say no to being there in this monumental moment where we are about to elect our very first woman and person of color as president?”
Only three hours later, she pulled her daughter from school, threw clothes into a bag, and with her husband and two kids was on her way to Phoenix Sky Harbor airport to catch a flight across the country.
They arrived in the nation’s capital at 11 p.m. that night. By the next evening, Poon was speaking to a massive crowd. Poon cut through the nervousness with humor, introducing her young children to the crowd. “This is Ayda and Okin,” she said. “I don’t think they’ve ever seen this many people in their entire lives.”
Even she had little idea how many people there really were. Leading up to the event, she was expecting roughly 20,000 attendees. She’d heard rumors the crowd could reach up to 50,000 people, but she wound up speaking to 75,000. For perspective, the largest sports venue in Arizona, State Farm Stadium, holds only 63,000.
“I’m really glad I didn’t know it was 75,000 when I went out there,” Poon said.
Spouses Odeen Domingo and Jenny Poon are the cofounders of the co-working space CO+HOOTS in Phoenix. They have two children, 10-year-old Ayda and 2-year-old Okin.
Courtesy of Jenny Poon
Who runs the world?
Representing Arizona, business entrepreneurs and families at the rally, Poon spoke about the increasing cost of living, price gouging, reproductive rights and small-business ownership.“Today, women run our homes, they run our businesses, they run our cities, and soon they’ll run this country,” she told attendees, who responded with cheers and chants of “USA, USA, USA!”
After she was laid off from her art director job at the Arizona Republic during the 2008 recession, Poon started her own marketing business. In 2010, she and her husband, former Republic sportswriter Odeen Domingo, founded Phoenix’s first co-working space, CO+HOOTS. Almost 10 years later, she expanded, founding the entrepreneur support platform HUUB.
Starting a small business, much less helping others to start theirs, hadn’t been her plan. Her parents, who are refugees from Vietnam, started a restaurant in Minnesota. Growing up, Poon saw firsthand their struggles.
“Being an entrepreneur was out of necessity for them, and they didn’t want that for us,” she told New Times. “They couldn’t really get jobs unless it was entry-level service-type jobs.”
Yet now Poon has grown into an influential voice for small business owners within the presidential campaign in Arizona. First was the ad for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, which was released in late 2023. Poon also has hosted campaign events in her co-working spaces.
“Business ownership is the path to wealth. It can transform communities. It changes entire generations,” Poon told New Times. “I’m a steadfast supporter of helping more underrepresented communities get into entrepreneurship.”
When President Joe Biden dropped out and Harris took over, Poon quickly voiced her excitement at the change and got more involved. “Ever since Biden stepped down, the energy has completely shifted,” she told New Times.
For years, Harris has been an inspiration to Poon and especially Ayda, Poon's 10-year-old daughter. Ayda even wrote a research paper on Harris and met her during a Phoenix parking lot rally with Biden in 2020.
“We pulled my daughter out of school that day because I wanted her to see Kamala Harris. I wanted her to see somebody that had moved to one of the highest seats in America that looked like her,” Poon said. As the vice president was leaving, Harris “turned around and walked back to my daughter and had a whole conversation with her.”
Poon and her husband have already turned in their ballots for Harris. “Every year when we vote, we bring our kids with, and they drop off the ballot with us,” Poon said. “We’re feeling excited. It has been a rollercoaster of a year.”
Assuming there are no more speeches for her to give, all Poon has to do now is wait for election results.
“I'm pretty sure I'm going cry regardless, either tears of grief or tears of happiness,” she said. “I'm really hoping it's happiness because it will be historic.”
