---------------------------------------------------------------
Tentative
Keynote Speakers
---------------------------------------------------------------
 SHUKLA
BOSE
Education Activist
Shukla Bose is the founder and head of the Parikrma
Humanity Foundation, a
nonprofit that runs four extraordinary schools for poor children. The
word "Parikrma"
implies a full revolution, a complete path around -- and Shukla Bose's
Parikrma
Humanity Foundation offers literally that to kids in poor urban areas
around
Bangalore. Parikrma's four Schools of Hope teach the full, standard
Indian curriculum
to children who might not otherwise see the inside of a classroom, with
impressive
results. Equally important, the schools build an "end-to-end"
environment that
supports learning -- offering lunch every day, health-care and family
support. Beyond
these schools, Parikrma has inaugurated several afterschool programs
and has plans
for setting up a central teacher-training hub. The nonprofit holds
itself to formal
business goals and strict accountability, and has developed some clever
fundraising
and marketing campaigns. As Bose puts it, the goal of Parikrma is to
help build a
better India by tapping its greatest strength: the vitality and
potential of its people.
Bose left behind a corporate career in 1992 to found Parikrma with a
small group of
friends. She was India’s Women Entrepreneur of the Year in 1995 and
Bangalore
Woman of the year 2000.
"Education of children is at the core of our aim
to transform
poor communities into self-
sustaining, contributing communities. " -Shukla Bose
Parikrma
Foundation Website
---------------------------------------------------------------
 DR.
NGUYEN DINH THANG
Executive Director, Boat People SOS (BPSOS)
Dr. Nguyen Dinh Thang has served as the Executive Director
of Boat
People S.O.S. since 1991. He
helped over 4,500 Vietnamese boat people in their refugee claims and
successfully
advocated for the resettlement of 20,000 boat people after their
repatriation to Vietnam.
Responding to the boat people crisis in 1989, he established Legal
Assistance for
Vietnamese Asylum Seekers (LAVAS), which set up legal aid offices in
the Philippines
(1991) and Hong Kong (1992) to defend the refugee rights of the
Vietnamese boat
people. In 1995, he launched an advocacy campaign that resulted in the
resettlement
of over 18,000 former boat people from Vietnam to the US under the
Resettlement
Opportunity for Vietnamese Returnees Program.
Under his leadership, BPSOS became one of the leading anti-trafficking
in persons
organization not only in the US but in the world. He has personally
worked on high-
profile trafficking cases, from the largest case ever prosecuted by the
US federal
government (Daewoosa American Samoa, 1999) to the recent rescue of 176
Vietnamese
women workers in Jordan. He accomplished this while also working full
time as an
Engineer and Quality Control Manager for the Naval Surface Warfare
Center. In
2001, Dr. Nguyen resigned his position with the Navy to devote himself
full time to
empowering the Vietnamese-American community nationwide through
systematic
community organizing and capacity building. In 2001, the Washingtonian
Magazine
named Dr. Thang, “Washingtonian of the Year”. He is the 2007 recipient
of Community
Service Award from the Asian Pacific American Bar Association Education
Fund.
In 2008 he was honored with a lifetime service award by the National
Congress of
Vietnamese Americans.
BPSOS Website
---------------------------------------------------------------
 MIA
MINGUS
Co-Executive Director, SPARK Reproductive Justice Now
Mia Mingus is a a queer disabled woman of color, South
Korean transracial adoptee,
organizer and one of the Co-Executive Directors of SPARK Reproductive
Justice Now
(formerly Georgians for Choice) in Atlanta, Georgia. For Mia,
reproductive justice is
crucial in the struggle for social change and the fight to end
oppression. Through her
work on disability, race, reproductive justice, gender, sexuality, and
transracial adoption,
she recognizes the urgency and barriers for oppressed communities to
work together and
build alliances for liberation. Though her activism changes and
evolves, her roots remain
firmly planted in ending sexual violence. Mia has been recognized for
her work with the
2008 Creating Change Award by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
---------------------------------------------------------------
 K.W.
Lee
Korean-American Journalist
K. W. (short for Kyung Won) Lee arrived in America in 1950
as a young
man with ink in his blood, and became the first Asian immigrant to work
for
mainstream daily publications in the continental United States. After
40 working
years as a reporter, an editor, and a publisher in both mainstream and
ethnic
journalism, he was inducted into the Newseum's Journalism History
Gallery in
Arlington, Va., in 1997. A native of Kaesong, North Korea, Lee attended
Korea
University and studied journalism at West Virginia University and the
University
of Illinois. In 1955 he started a 45-year-career with dailies in
Tennessee, West
Virginia and California — much of the last two decades with The
Sacramento
Union, where he was in charge of investigative coverage and an
internship
program. He has won 29 professional awards, including those from the
National
Headliners Club (twice), the AP News Executive Council (three times),
and
Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. He was the first
recipient
of the Asian American Journalists Association's Lifetime Achievement
Award in
1987. In 1994 he became the first Asian journalist to receive the Free
Spirit Award
from the Freedom Forum with a $10,000 cash prize.
Lee has covered such issues as civil rights struggles in the South in
the early
1960s, massive vote buying practices in southern West Virginia and the
plight of
Appalachian coal miners. Lee is best known for authoring an
investigative series
on the 1974 San Francisco Chinatown gangland murder conviction of
immigrant
Chol Soo Lee upon which the 1989 film True Believer (starring James
Woods and
Robert Downey, Jr.) was based. His five-year-long coverage with more
than 120
articles led to a new trial and an eventual acquittal and release of
the prisoner from
San Quentin's Death Row.
In semi-retirement, Lee freelances and lectures on investigative
journalism in
communities of color throughout the University of California system,
including
UC-Davis, UCLA, UC-Riverside, and UC-Santa Barbara.
K.W. Lee Center Website
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tentative Workshop
Facilitators
---------------------------------------------------------------
 ETHAN
NGUYEN
Project Manager, Family Medicine
and Community Health
UPenn School of Medicine
Ethan Nguyen is a graduate of Vassar College. His current
involvement includes his role
as project manager of Philadelphia's New Routes to Community Health, a
collaborative
partnership with the community to identify health disparities and
develop awareness
campaigns utilizing community generated multimedia. Ethan will also
commence work
on research projects examining the role of community-involvement and
depression in
AAPI geriatric populations, AAPI women, human papillomaviruses (HPV)
and cancer,
and the role of communication and HIV/AIDS infection in selected
subgroups of foreign
born AAPI men.
---------------------------------------------------------------
MALINI
JOHAR SCHUELLER
Professor of English at the University of Florida
Malini Johar Schueller is a Professor of English at the
University of Florida where she
teaches courses on race, empire, American literature and Asian-American
literature. She is the author of The Politics of Voice: Liberalism and
Social Criticism from Franklin to Kingston (1992), U.S. Orientalisms:
Race, Nation and Gender in Literature 1790-1890 (1998), and Locating
Race: Global Sites of Post-Colonial Citizenship (2009) and editor
of several volumes including Exceptional State: Contemporary US Culture
and the New
Imperialism (2007). She has published essays on Maxine Hong Kingston,
Amy Tan,
Bharati Mukherji, Meena Alexander, Pico Iyer, and Tseng Kwong Chi.
---------------------------------------------------------------
RICH
KIAMCO
Rich Kiamco is a force of nature that rips across the
stage leaving laughter, tears and applause in his wake. His one-man
show UNACCESSORIZED, an autobiographic romp about a queer Filipino
overachiever, received theOverall Excellence Award in Solo Performance
at the New York International Fringe Festival and Best Solo Performance
at the Montreal GLBT International Theatre Festival. He received
standing ovations at FACT: Filipino Americans Coming Together, the
largest mid-west conference of Filipino American students and at True
Colors, the world's largest LGBTIQA youth conference. Rich spoke at MTV
Networks for LGBT month, was honored to co-host a private event for
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, was a deputy field organizer for the
Obama campaign and has appeared on campuses in the US, Canada, China
and the Philippines.
Rich was featured on Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, co-hosted the WE
channel's 3 Men And A Chick Flickand is a frequent guest on OutQ
SiriusXM Radio. Rich has also performed with Peeling, an Asian-American
performance collective based in New York City, and has appeared in Las
Vegas, on The Howard Stern Showand venues nationwide as the side-kick
to comedian Judy Tenuta. His writing can be found in Take Out: Queer
Writing From Asian Pacific America, Temple University Press and Queer
Stories For Boys, Thunder's Mouth Press.
---------------------------------------------------------------
 BRENDA
ABEL
Regional Manager for LiNK|Liberty in North Korea
Brenda joined LiNK in 2009 for the spring tour as a team
leader for the
northeast region. After touring, she joined the staff for a year-long
internship
managing band and artist relations, and organizing benefit and
awareness
shows. She went back on the road for another North America tour in the
spring
and joined the staff full-time as Regional Manager in June of 2010. As
an
RM, Brenda is responsible for training nomads and overseeing tours and
LiNK
Chapters in the west and southeast regions.
Born and raised in California, Brenda enjoys songwriting, performing,
anything
related to music and mentoring young girls.
LiNK|Liberty in North Korea
LiNK, or Liberty in North Korea, is an international NGO devoted to the
North Korean human rights and refugee crisis. LiNK provides protection
and
aid to North Korean refugees hiding in China, and utilizing a
modern-day
underground railroad through Southeast Asia, rescues refugees and helps
them to reach freedom. LiNK’s global grassroots movement seeks to raise
awareness of this crisis and provides a way for the international
community to
take part in bringing about effective change.
---------------------------------------------------------------
 ERIC
HAMAKO
Doctoral Candidate
University of Massachusetts Amhert
Social Justice Education Program
Eric Hamako is a doctoral candidate in the University of Massachusetts
Amherst's Social Justice
Education Program. Eric is studying how community education can support
Mixed-Race people's
political movements in the US and ways to incorporate stronger
anti-racist frameworks into those
educational efforts. He has been involved in Mixed-Race student
organizing since 2000, working
with Hapa Issues Forum (HIF), as an instructor and speaker in Western
Massachusetts, and now as
a member of the MAVIN Foundation’s Board of Directors. His first
publication, "For the
Community education supporting Multiracial organizing" appeared in the
journal Equity & Excellence
in Education in 2006. Eric has also presented on Multiraciality to
colleges and universities across the
U.S., on topics including identity development, community education,
and pop culture representations.
---------------------------------------------------------------
 CHRISTINE
MUNTEANU
JACL (Japanese American Citizens League) Representative
Christine Munteanu is the Ford Program Fellow working in
the JACL Midwest District Office
in Chicago, IL. She works on JACL’s national anti-hate, education and
leadership programs.
The Japanese American Citizens League is the nation’s oldest Asian
American civil rights
organization. It has historically defended the rights of any targeted
by bigotry and injustice.
The JACL is one of the leading organizations in the United States
responding to hate crimes,
defamation and anti-Asian sentiment, and also hosts hate crime
workshops at college campuses
throughout the country.
---------------------------------------------------------------
 UNIPRO
Comprised of young professionals and students, Pilipino American
Unity for Progress (UniPro) is a 501(c)3 non-profit NGO that was
established in 2009. Bonded by the common vision of promoting unity
within the community, UniPro seeks to educate, collaborate and
stimulate dialogue amongst Pilipino American organizations, programs,
and institutions. UniPro also engages in various projects that promote
the Pilipino community in American society.
|
