Speakers | Organizers

SPEAKERS' BIOGRAPHIES

Karin Aguilar-San Juan, editor of the anthology State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1990's (South End Press, 1994) and a second-generation Filipina American, is a doctoral candidate in sociology at Brown University, doing research on Asian American activism. Ms. Aguilar-San Juan has addressed the topic of Asian American activism at colleges and organizations on the East Coast. A former editor at South End Press, she has also written reviews of books and films for Women's Review of Books, Signs: A Journal of Women and Culture, Gay Community News, Sojourner: A Forum for Womenand Sampan (a bilingual newspaper for Boston's Chinatown).

Julia Chang Bloch, U. S. Ambassador to Nepal from 1989 to 1993, is now Group Executive Vice President, Corporate Relations, BankAmerica Corporation, where she is responsible for the corporation's governmental, media and internal and external communications programs. Ms. Bloch's career in international relations has included working for the US-Japan Relations program, the Asia and Near East Bureau and the Food for Peace and Voluntary Assistance Bureau of the Agency for International Development. She is a trustee of the Asia Society.

Gareth C. C. Chang is Corporate Senior Vice President of Hughes Electronics Company and President of Hughes International, where he is responsible for worldwide operations and the corporate business development function. Before coming to Hughes, Mr. Chang had a long career with the McDonnell Douglas Corporation, serving as President of McDonnell Douglas Pacific and Asia, and Chairman of the Joint McDonnell Douglas-Shanghai Aviation Executive Board. Mr. Chang has served as Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong and is currently serving on the boards of Atlantic Council, Pacific Forum CSIS and Johns Hopkins-Nanjing Center. He is also a professor (honorary) at the Beijing Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Purnendu Chatterjee is the founder and Managing Director of The Chatterjee Group, an investment consulting company where he manages a substantial part of the technology-based industrial investments presently held by the $12 billion Quantum Group of Funds. His background includes both technology research and classical management consulting, and he has directed major strategy and organization assignments to maximize shareholder value for chief executive officers of large industrial companies in the US, Europe and Asia.

Nancy Chen is Director of Intergovernmental Relations at the Immigration and Naturalization Service of the US Department of Justice. She was recently appointed by the Clinton Administration to this newly created position to promote greater communication and collaboration between state and local governments and the INS. Ms. Chen was Director of Senator Paul Simon's Chicago office until March 1 of this year. In that capacity, she worked with Asian American communities locally and nationally and assisted Senator Simon in taking a lead on immigration, civil rights and equal opportunity issues affecting Asian Americans. Ms. Chen serves on the boards of the Asian American Institute of Chicago, the Illinois Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights, the National Women's Political Caucus of Greater Chicago and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. Ms. Chen served as the regional coordinator for the Bridges with Asia focus group in Chicago in November 1995.

Lucie Cheng is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She writes in the fields of international migration, gender, ethnic relations, and development. She served as the director of the Asian American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, for more than 10 years and is the founding director of the Center for Pacific Rim Studies. Professor Cheng was elected to be Chair of the Asia and Asian American section of the American Sociological Association and serves as an officer in many other professional and civic organizations. Recently appointed as an external examiner of City University of Hong Kong, she is also a frequent visiting professor at the Nankai University in China and the National Taiwan University.

Muzaffar A. Chishti is a lawyer and Director of the Immigration Project of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). The Project provides immigration legal services to the members of the union and their families. He is active in a number of immigration issues organizations, including serving as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Immigration Forum; Treasurer of the US Committee for Refugees and a member of the Board of Directors of the New York Immigration Coalition. Mr. Chishti has testified extensively on immigration and refugee legislation before various Congressional committees and is a frequent speaker on immigration, labor and related issues. In 1994, he received the New York State Governor's Award for Outstanding Asian Americans.

Christine Choy, Chair, New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Institute of Film and Television, Graduate Program, has made a number of award-winning films, including the documentaries In the Name of the Emperor, Sa-I-Gu, Homes Apart: The Two Koreas and Who Killed Vincent Chin?, as well as several short and experimental films. Ms. Choy has worked as a director, producer, cinematographer and editor on her productions. Her most recent production is Hunting Season, a CD-ROM on the Yoshi Hattori case. She is a trustee of the Asia Society.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, an award-winning writer and poet whose work is featured in The Open Boat: An Asian American Anthology (Doubleday, 1992), and New Indian Writing in English (Penguin, India, 1995) is also editor of the cross-cultural anthology, Multitude(McGraw-Hill, 1993). She has written three books of poems, including Dark Like the River, The Reason for Nasturtiums and Black Candle. Active in women's issues, she is President of MAITRI, a Bay-area not-for-profit, volunteer organization for South Asian victims of domestic violence. Her latest book, Arranged Marriage (Anchor/Doubleday, 1995), recently won an American Book Award.

Luis H. Francia is a poet, critic and journalist. His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and have been included in various anthologies, including the forthcoming Returning a Borrowed Tongue (Coffee House Press, 1996). He has published two books of poetry, the latest being The Arctic Archipelago and Other Poems (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1992), and edited a seminal anthology of Philippine literature in English, Brown River, White Ocean (Rutgers, 1993). His poems and essays have been included in various anthologies, The New Doreligion Book of Philippine Poetry (Anvil, 1993) and Film and Politics in the Third World (Praeger, 1988). He is a writer for The Village Voice, a contributing editor to A. Magazine, and the New York correspondent for the New Delhi-based Cinemaya and the Hong Kong-based Asiaweek. Mr. Francia also teaches a course in Asian American literature at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Along with Eric Gamalinda, he is currently co-editing Flippin', an anthology of short fiction and poetry by Filipinos writing in America.

Neil Gotanda is Professor of Law at Western State University College of Law in Fullerton, California. He has been active in writing on issues of race and was an organizer of the Workshop on Critical Race Theory. He is co-editor of Critical Race Theory: Key Writings that Formed the Movement (New Press, 1995). His Asian American interests and activities date to the 1960s and include community work in San Francisco's Japantown and teaching one of the earliest classes in Asian American studies at San Francisco State University in 1970. Mr. Gotanda resides in Los Angeles and continues to teach, research and write on questions concerning Asian Americans and the law.

Robert M. Hathaway is a staff member of the International Relations Committee of the US House of Representatives. He holds a Ph.D. in American History from the University of North Carolina and has written two books and numerous articles on US foreign policy since 1933.

Andrew Byoungsoo Kim is President and Chief Investment Officer of Sit/Kim International Investment Associates, Inc., where he manages listed international securities portfolios and private equity investment in Asia. Kim's career spans more then 30 years in finance and investment management in the US and Asia. An active participant in many industry associations, including the Association for Investment Management and Research and the Society of International Security Analysts, he is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a trustee of the Asia Society.

Ty Yong Kim is an associate producer for Mike Wallace at CBS News/60 Minutes and is responsible for developing hard news/investigative pieces. He was involved in negotiating the successful entry of The CBS Evening News into North Korea in 1990. Mr. Kim is a graduate of Stanford University.

Joe Klein is Senior Editor at Newsweek, where he writes a regular column titled "Public Lives" in which he examines politics, international affairs and social policy. His columns received a "National Headliner Award" in 1994. He is also a regular commentator on American politics for CBS News. Mr. Klein has had a distinguished, award-winning career, covering New York City government and public affairs for New York Magazine from 1987 to 1992 and writing articles and book reviews for The New Republic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Life, Rolling Stone and numerous other publications. He has written two books, Payback: Five Marines after Vietnam (Knopf, 1984) and Woody Guthrie: A Life (Knopf, 1980). Mr. Klein is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Guggenheim fellow.

Rustam Lalkaka is Research Professor in International Business Development at Northwestern University, specializing in technology sourcing, small enterprise development and international business promotion. He also serves as Special Advisor on Small Enterprise Development, Division for Private Sector, UNDP, New York. While serving as director of the UN Fund for Science and Technology for Development and the United Nations Development Program Energy Office, he was also Executive Coordinator for the Transfer of Knowledge through Expatriate Nationals (TOKTEN) program. Through TOKTEN, he organized the return from the US, on voluntary consulting assignments, of 3,000 professionals to 30 developing countries.

Ngoan Thi Le is currently the Deputy Administrator of the Division of Planning and Community Services of the Illinois Department of Public Aid. She is a founder of the Asian American Institute in Chicago and Chair of its Public Policy Committee. She also serves on the boards of a number of organizations including the National Immigration Forum, Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Inc. (LEAP), and the United Way of Chicago.

Benjamin Lee is Professor of Anthropology at Rice University and Director of the Center for Transcultural Studies. His areas of research include linguistic and philosophical anthropology, with a special focus on problems of globalization and public culture. Through the Center for Transcultural Studies, he is the executive editor for two book series, Public Worlds and Public Planet Books, and an international research and publication project involving colleagues from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India, Japan, and the United States. His next book, Talking Heads: Language, Meta-Language, and Subjectivity, will be published by Duke University Press.

Joann Lee is Associate Professor of Communication Arts at Ramapo College. Her writing on issues facing Asian Americans has appeared in New York Newsday, Editor and Publisher and the San Francisco Chronicle. As a reporter in local television news she was the first Asian American to be hired on-air in Sacramento (KXTV), Chicago (WLS), Philadelphia (WCAU) and CNN (New York bureau).

Jean Raymundo Lobell is the founder and President of AcXEL International, Ltd., a specialized international consulting firm that provides human resources, training and organizational development services. Active in various community organizations, she chairs the board of the Asian American Federation of New York and sits on the board of directors of the United Way of NYC. Dr. Lobell also chairs the Science and Technology Advisory Council of New York, a not-for-profit organization of Filipino scientists and professionals and is a founding board member of the Filipino American Human Services, Inc. (FAHSI).

H. E. Maleeha Lodhi is Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States. Following a career in academia Dr. Lodhi was the first woman in Asia to be the editor of the daily newspapers, The News and The Muslim two of Pakistan's major English daily newspapers. Two books of her writings have been published: Pakistan's Encounter with Democracy and The External Dimension. In 1994 she was selected by Time magazine as one of the hundred global pacesetters/young leaders who would help define the next century.

Robert T. Matsui, Congressman for the Fifth District, Sacramento, California, is a member of the House of Representatives' Ways and Means Committee and serves as Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). During his political career, Congressman Matsui has become recognized as a leader on free trade issues. While serving as Acting Chairman of the trade subcommittee, he had jurisdiction over international trade issues, including GATT, and Most Favored Nation trading status for China, and US-Japan trade negotiations. Congressman Matsui is also actively involved in child welfare reform and has worked to promote children's health insurance. He is married to the former Doris Okada, who is Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Public Affairs for President Clinton.

Veena Merchant, Deputy Publisher of India Abroad, is in charge of the editorial department, which includes all six editions and the news service. She joined the publication as a consulting editor in 1973, after working as an editor for the Somani Group of publications and the Modi Group's first trade publication.

Yong Soon Min, an artist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Studio Art at the University of California, Irvine, works in media ranging from photography to installations. She has exhibited extensively in the US and abroad, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Fourth U.N. World Conference on Women at Huairo, China; Camerawork Gallery, London; Kumho Museum, Seoul; Fourth Baguio Art Festival, Philippines and the Havana Biennial, Cuba. One of her current projects is a Percent for Art Commission for a new library building in Queens, New York.

Tran Tuong Nhu is a columnist for the San Jose Mercury New and writes on a wide range of subjects, especially about changing communities and mores in California. Born in Vietnam and educated in the US, Nhu returned to Vietnam during the Vietnam War, where she was a social worker and worked for NBC News in Saigon. She is currently assisting the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation with a documentary in Vietnam. Nhu also serves on the boards of Asian Women United and Global Exchange and has received a number of awards for community service.

Setsuko Matsunaga Nishi is Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York. She was the founding president of the Asian American Federation of New York (1990-95) and is Chair of the New York State Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights. Her long research career has produced numerous monographs and several books and has focused primarily on American race relations, including the adaptation of Japanese Americans following their wartime incarceration and the historical and contemporary attitudes toward Asian immigrants. As a social scientific specialist on race relations and US minorities, Dr. Nishi has contributed to the development of social policies and programs for many public agencies and private organizations. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago and an M.A. in Sociology from Washington University (St. Louis).

Robert B. Oxnam, President Emeritus of the Asia Society, is a Senior Adviser to Bessemer Partners & Co. and Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University, where he is involved in a project to examine US-Asia relations in the post-cold war world. Major publications include Dragon and Eagle (University of Chicago Press, 1975), co-edited with Michel Oksenberg; The China Challenge: American Policies in East Asia (The Academy of Political Science, 1991) and the novels Cinnabar (St. Martin's Press, 1990) and Ming (St. Martin's Press, 1995). Dr. Oxnam is a director of the Clemente Global Growth Fund, Inc., the First Philippine Fund, Inc., and Bessemer Holdings Asia and a trustee of Yale-China Association and the Committee on Scholarly Communication with China. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, National Committee on US-China Relations, and the US National Committee for Pacific Economic Relations and an advisor to the East-West Center.

Le Anh Tu Packard is a Fellow of the Foundation for Indochina Studies, a non-governmental organization established in affiliation with the University of Amsterdam Faculty of Economics and Econometrics to promote economics research, education and training in the Indochina region. She is also Managing Associate of the Vietnam Investment Advisory Service, a private consulting service which provides a broad range of services to firms with business activities in Vietnam. In the course of her 15-year career in economic consulting, she has studied a range of social, economic and institution-building issues confronting Asian economies in transition. Recent publications include "Vietnam Country Risk Analysis: Methodology and Country-Specific Issues," Vietnam Business Journal, 1995 and "Emerging Issues for the Transition Economies in Asia," Indochina Interchange, 1995. Ms. Packard received her M.A. and M.Phil degrees from Columbia University in New York.

Nampet Panichpant-M, a consultant and panel presenter on international health, information dissemination, training/education, trade, communications and media management areas, is active in international community leadership work and serves on the boards of directors of numerous local, state, national and international committees and organizations. In recent years her professional memberships have included the board of directors, National Asian Health Forum; board of directors, National Asian Pacific American Families Against Substance Abuse and board of directors, Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Inc. (LEAP). In 1990, Nampet was the first Thai to be honored by LEAP for her contribution towards Asian leadership development.

Ki Suh Park, Managing Partner of Gruen Associates, is an architect and city planner based in Los Angeles. His projects span the Pacific Rim, including the Daehan Kyoyuk Insurance Company Ltd. Headquarters in Seoul, the Los Angeles Convention Center Expansion and the Bapindo Center, Jakarta. Mr. Park has been Chairman of the Korean American Coalition (1993-94) and Chairman of the Festival of Korea for Southern California (1993-94), sponsored by the Asia Society. He is presently serving as an advisory committee member of the Asia Society's Southern California Center.

H. E. Nitya Pibulsonggram, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United States, served as Permanent Representative of Thailand to the United Nations from 1988 until his recent appointment as Ambassador. A career diplomat, Ambassador Pibulsonggram was from 1969-72 a member of the Thai delegation to the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO); he then headed the Thai Foreign Ministry's Political Department's Southeast Asian Division from 1975-76 and was the Director-General of the Department of International Organizations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand from 1983-87. His first foreign posting was to the Permanent Mission of Thailand to the United Nations as Deputy Permanent Representative in 1976. Ambassador Pibulsonggram completed his higher education in the United States at Dartmouth College and Brown University.

P.S. Reddy is Professor of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, where he has been on the faculty of medicine since 1971. Dr. Reddy is an accomplished researcher, teacher and practitioner of clinical medicine as well as invasive cardiology. He has published over 100 original articles, several book chapters and one book on pericardial diseases. Dr. Reddy founded various tax-exempt organizations, including SHARE (Science, Health, Allied Research and Education) Medical Care to establish MediCiti, which is a forum for the exchange of technologies between developed and developing nations. His REACH (Rural, Effective, Affordable Comprehensive Healthcare) project is developing a working model of effective health and medical care for rural populations. To help MediCiti fulfill its mission, Dr. Reddy spends 50% of his time in India.

Sam-Ang Sam, Executive Director of the Cambodian Network Council and Advisor of the Cambodian-American Heritage, is active in Cambodian refugee resettlement and in the preservation of traditional Khmer dance and music. He is the author of Silent Temples, Songful Hearts: Traditional Music of Cambodia (World Music Press, 1991) which was selected by the Folkways Division of the Smithsonian Institution as one of the top publications of traditional music for 1991 and the producer of the documentary film Preserving a Culture: Traditional Khmer Dance and Music. In 1994, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellows Award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for the preservation of Cambodian culture and for leading community development activities in the US and Cambodia.

Somini Sengupta is a reporter at the New York Times. She has worked as a reporter at Newsday and the Los Angeles Times and also as a labor and community organizer in California.

Frank Sharry is the Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, one of the nation's leading organizations working to preserve America's tradition as a nation of immigrants. Mr. Sharry is a national spokesman on behalf of fair, generous, and orderly immigration policies in the United States. He is often cited by major news publications, regularly speaks to audiences throughout the country and has appeared on CNN's "Crossfire," "The McLaughlin Group," a two-hour nationally-televised "Firing Line" debate on immigration which aired on PBS, "Tom Brokaw Reports," "The McNeil-Lehrer News Hour," and "Donahue," among others.

Chang-lin Tien, Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley and the first Asian American to head a major research university in the United States, has a distinguished career as a scientist and in university teaching. He has received many honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Currently he serves on the boards of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the Asia Foundation and Wells Fargo Bank. Chancellor Tien continues to teach at undergraduate and graduate levels, holding the professorial title of A. Martin Berlin Chair in Mechanical Engineering.

Sanford J. Ungar, author of Fresh Blood: The New American Immigrants (Simon & Schuster, 1995), is Dean of the School of Communication at American University in Washington, DC. A long career in print and broadcast journalism has included hosting the award-winning program "All Things Considered" on National Public Radio and posts in Washington as editor of The Atlantic, managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine and a staff writer for The Washington Post.

Lawrence C. Wang is the founder and Managing Director of Wang & Li Asia Resources, one of the first placement/search firms specializing in the recruiting of US-based Asian professionals seeking career opportunities with Asia-based multinational firms. Mr. Wang appears regularly as a greater China job market analyst for CNBC Asia in Hong Kong and as a weekly columnist for the China Post in Taiwan. He is also the founder of Chinese-American Professionals in Taiwan (CAPT), which represents the overall needs of Chinese-American professionals in greater China.

Paul Y. Watanabe is Co-director of the Institute for Asian American Studies and Co-director of the Ph.D. Program in Public Policy, both at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. His principal teaching and research interests are in the areas of international relations, the foreign policy-making process, strategic and defense policy, American political behavior, ethnic group politics, public policy and Asian Americans. His publications have included chapters and articles on a variety of subjects including anti-nuclear political activism, US-Japan relations, American foreign policy, and Asian American members of Congress. He is the author of Ethnic Groups, Congress and American Foreign Policy (Greenwood Press, 1984). He serves on the boards of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition and the Asian Pacific American Agenda Coalition, among other organizations. Dr. Watanabe received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University.

Steve R. Weisman became a member of the editorial board of The New York Times in February 1995, after having served as deputy foreign editor since 1992. Previously, he served as bureau chief of The New York Times in Tokyo and New Delhi. Before becoming a foreign correspondent, he covered the White House, Albany, City Hall and the New York metropolitan area for The New York Times.

Linda J. Wong is General Counsel and Chief Financial Officer for Rebuild LA, a nonprofit economic development organization established after the 1992 Los Angeles civil unrest. She is responsible for the development and implementation of industry-specific approaches to workforce development, as well as the formation of industry networks of small manufacturing firms. Amongst her other activities, Ms. Wong chairs the Pacific Telesis Telecommunications Consumer Advisory Panel and serves on the executive committee for the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project, which received a $53 million challenge grant from the Annenberg Foundation to facilitate school reform initiatives in LA County.

Jeff Yang, Founding Editor and Publisher of A. Magazine: Inside Asian America, and Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Metro East Publications, Inc., serves on the board of the New York chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association. Mr. Yang also continues to write for the Village Voice, (where he was the paper's first-ever Asian American columnist and youngest-ever featured contributor), Mademoiselle, Spin and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also acts as a publishing consultant for a number of magazine startups. Among Metro East's current projects are the co-production of a series of cultural awareness videos and the introduction of @live: the Asian American Connection (a World Wide Web site that includes an on-line edition of A. Magazine).

KaYing Yang is Executive Director of the Women's Association of Hmong and Lao, Inc. (WAHL), a nonprofit, community-based organization which works to maintain Hmong and Lao cultures and promote women's status in these communities and in society at large. She also speaks around the country and in Thailand on Hmong issues and women's concerns. Recently, Ms. Yang helped organize a group of Hmong women from the US and Thailand to participate in the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in China.

Alice Young, Partner and Chair of the Asia Pacific Practice Group (US) of the legal firm of Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays & Handler, concentrates her practice in corporate law and international business, advising foreign businesses on operations in the US as well as advising US companies and entrepreneurs on their investment activities throughout Asia. Named by Crain's as one of the "Outstanding Achievers Under 40," Ms. Young is also a trustee of the Aspen Institute, Secretary of the Japan Society and a member of the board of directors of the Committee of 100. Ms. Young was a special guest of the White House to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum in Jakarta in 1994.

Shirley Young is Vice President for Consumer Market Development for the General Motors Corporation. During a distinguished career in advertising and marketing at GM and Grey Advertising, Ms. Young received many awards, including Advertising Woman of the Year by the American Advertising Federation and the Women's Equity Action Award for Achievement in Advertising. Active in many Chinese American and cultural organizations, Ms. Young is Chairperson of the Committee of 100, a national Chinese American leadership resource, and Chairperson of the US-China Cultural Foundation. She also serves on the board of directors of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Hall and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra in Shanghai. In 1994, she became Honorary Professor at Tongji University in Shanghai.

ORGANIZERS' BIOGRAPHIES

Vishakha N. Desai is currently Vice President for Cultural Programs at the Asia Society. She has also been the Director of the Asia Society Galleries since 1990. She is responsible for the special exhibitions of Asian art, the world renowned Rockefeller Collection, and other art-related programs organized by the Asia Society. In 1993, she was appointed as Vice President for Cultural Programs to develop multidisciplinary projects involving visual and performing arts as well as other humanities and social sciences. Under her direction, the Society has inaugurated an ambitious and diverse program to present contemporary art by Asian and Asian American artists, while continuing to organize exhibitions of traditional Asian arts with new contextual foci. Prior to assuming her current position, Dr. Desai was at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, first as the head of Exhibition Resources and as the Acting Director of the Education Department and later as the Assistant Curator of Indian, Southeast Asian and Islamic Art in the Department of Asian Art. She has also taught at the University of Massachusetts, Boston University and Columbia University.

J. D. Hokoyama is currently serving as President and Executive Director of Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics (LEAP), Inc. He has been actively involved in the Asian Pacific community through his professional and volunteer work. A former Peace Corps volunteer who served in Ethiopia, Mr. Hokoyama taught English at various high schools before leaving teaching to join the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). As the chief administrator of the JACL, he played a critical role in helping to establish the JACL's redress campaign. Subsequent to leaving the JACL in 1981, Mr. Hokoyama served as the first director of the office of Asian Pacific American Student Services at USC, and then as Executive VP for Fund Development and Public Affairs at Keiro Services in Los Angeles, until January 1988, when he assumed his current position with LEAP. He is on the board of numerous organizations, including the Volunteer Consulting Group (New York) and Leadership Southern California.

Cao K. O is Executive Director of the Asian American Federation of New York. Prior to joining the Federation in 1990, he worked as a consultant to the Asian American Initiative of the United Way of New York City, to assist in exploring approaches to meet the increasing human service needs of the Asian American community in New York. As Assistant Director of the Refugee Unit of the New York State Office of Mental Health from 1987 to 1988, he participated in the development of state planning initiatives to improve mental health care for New York state's culturally diverse refugee population. Mr. O has also served as Director of Development at Hamilton-Madison House, a multi-service settlement house with a budget of over $3.5 million. He is currently on the boards of a number of organizations, including the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Chinatown Voter Education Alliance, Hamilton-Madison House, Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Inc. (LEAP), and the Private Industry Council.