8th Annual Banquet (2009) – Biographies

Honorees

Kiran Bedi, Ph.D., is India’s first and highest ranking (retired in 2007) woman officer. She joined the Indian Police Service in 1972. Her experience and expertise include more than 35 years of tough, innovative and welfare policing. Dr. Bedi has worked with the United Nations as the Police Advisor to the Secretary General, in the Department of Peace Keeping Operations. She has represented India at the United Nations, and in International forums on crime prevention, drug abuse, police and prison reforms and women’s issues. She has also been a National and an Asian Tennis champion.

Recipient of the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award (“Asian Nobel Prize”), and several other decorations, Dr. Bedi is an author of several books, anchors radio and television shows and is a columnist with leading newspapers and magazines. She is a sought after speaker on social, professional and leadership issues. She is the founder of two NGOs, Navjyoti and India Vision Foundation, which reach out to over 10,000 beneficiaries daily, in the areas of drug abuse treatment, schooling for children of prisoners, in addition to education, training, counseling, and health care to the urban and rural poor. Kiran Bedi has been voted India’s most admired woman and fifth amongst all Indians.

A non-fiction feature film on Dr Kiran bedi’s life entitled Yes, Madam Sir has been produced by Australian film maker, Megan Doneman. This film is being screened in film festivals around the world. The documentary has made a clean sweep of the award categories—“Best Documentary” with a cash award of $100,000, the biggest prize for a documentary for any film festival in the US and the Social Justice Award with $2,500 at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. The film is due to be widely released in early 2010.

Savio S. Chan is a pre-eminent expert on doing business in China. He serves as President and CEO of US China Partners Inc., a privately held business development firm specializing in Market Entry, Strategic Sourcing and Marketing Development in China for U.S. companies, and facilitates local and cross-border joint ventures among leading Chinese multinationals as well as Fortune 1000 companies.

Savio is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist at business and technology events including the American Express Minority Small Business Seminars, and the e-Business Conference and Expo, co-organized by BusinessWeek and InformationWeek. Among his many awards and recognitions are :the “40 Under 40” Business Leader Award , and Top 10 Movers and Shakers on Long Island, Top 100 Most Influential and in 2007, ExecuLeaders presented him a special award in the category of International Business Leadership.

Savio, started his career in international marketing and business with his studies at Baruch/CUNY. He has been featured in numerous industry and trade success profiles, including articles in The New York Times, Chief Executive Magazine, and InformationWeek. He serves as Vice Chairman of ITP China and is the president of the Northeast Chapter of US Pan Asian Chamber of Commerce, the largest Pan Asian Chamber in the country, senior advisor for the Outsourcing Institute, on the boards of Executive Council of New York and Association of Commerce, Industry and Technology (ACIT). Savio also hosts the PBS syndicated TV show, Asian America, sponsored by Wal-Mart.

Emcee

Nina Pineda joined the Eyewitness News Team in October of 2000. Prior to making the move the “Big Apple” Nina worked in her hometown of Pittsburgh, “The Steel City” for the ABC affiliate WTAE-TV. Nina’s first job in the news business was a position as the AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) reporter-trainee for WTTG-TV; the Fox affiliate in Washington, D.C.

Before becoming a journalist, Nina’s work included lobbying on Capital Hill for Governor Mario Cuomo’s Washington Office and a position with the Presidential Inaugural Committee handling celebrity relations for former President Bill Clinton.

Most recently, Nina helped the Eyewitness News Team cover the tragedy of the attack on America, September 11, 2001.

“Three days before the attack I was covering the MTV Music Awards live from Lincoln Center, our anchors Bill Ritter and Diana Williams were joking with me on air about how terribly young the awardees were. 72 hours later, it was amazing how trivial that report seemed. Everyone’s world turned upside down, and as journalists we were trying to get as close to the towers as possible that Tuesday morning. Many of us wound up running for our lives.”

For Nina, reporting on the tragedy live from Lower Manhattan and her subsequent reports from the family centers and hospitals has changed her entire outlook on the profession of journalism. “This is a time where a new generation of reporters has a chance to renew the public’s view of the media. Never before has it been more important to provide our viewers with substantial information, unbiased accounts of the events which affect our world, and most of all, deliver reports with sensitivity and genuine caring for victims, no matter what the story is.”

“It’s a privilege to cover the news in an area with the diversity of the metro area,” Nina says. “Our viewers are the most savvy in the world. They count on us to give them 100% fair and balanced reporting, plus make our stories interesting to watch. It’s a challenge I strive to deliver on every day.” Nina is a summa cum laude graduate of Syracuse University with a BA in political science.

Nina currently lives in Manhattan. Her interests are scuba diving, biking, politics and adventure travel.

Performers

The Matt Snow Group – Bassist Matthew Snow and his collective ensemble are an exciting group of talented musicians with a common goal, To play great music with soul and integrity. As a New York Native Matthew has had the opportunity to experience many diverse cultures and styles of music. His Band is a reflection of that. His current ensemble is a treasure trove of American and international talent which include musicians who are distinguished leaders in their own right. Some of the personnel include Trumpeters Miki Hirose and Taku Kuroda from Japan, Saxophonist Ian Rapiean and Jamaal Sawyer Dymski from Califronia, Pianist Wei Tan from Singapore and Matthias Bublath from Germany And Youichi Sato who is also from Japan. All Music is composed by Matthew and is an embodiment of of his love of the many musical styles that he listens to as well as the many people that he has met in his life that influence him to write and play the way that he does. The group performs regularly in local venues in New York such as the Shrine in Harlem and Spike Hill in Willamsburg Brooklyn. Matthew Has also had the pleasure of working with fellow artist Arron K Hamilton and Duke Meselku.

Sitta Ta-Hyekyung Sim & dance company are the organization that makes efforts to sublimate the aspiration for the peace of the humankind through traditional Korean cultures and arts beyond the limits of cultures and race based on the noble national spirit of our ancestor as well as our traditional history.

Hyekyung Sim & dance company are composed of 16 dancers who are professionals in Korean dance and music. They are making efforts to create new cultures and arts by harmoniously performing the artistic streams of the east and the west with the ideas and emotions of the contemporary times through the unified composition of music, song and dance. The artistic point of view of Hyekyung Sim as a director and choreographer, pursuing insuperable energy and potential beyond the tradition and the present times through performances at home and abroad is ultimately aimed at pursuing the life with full of true human happiness and love by exhibiting the message for freedom and peace of the humankind through performance.

Her works mainly adapts the humanity and the nature as subjects and have been evaluated as a fresh storm through her attempt at new choreography of ‘Raining on the Dried Earth’, her first work of 1994. Her principal works include ‘Sun-rising Country’, ‘Early Riser Can See the Sunrise’, ‘Jeokmyulbogung’ and so on. Her artistic material and techniques have been reflected in her works are being realized through teaching students in college and the performance. The dance comes to us as a shamanism at first, the art and now as the therapy; Hyekyung Sim translates the role of dance to mankind as the therapy becomes a part of human life then brings us the true happiness through both physical and spiritual health.

She has involved in creative activity at home and taken a main role as the ambassador introducing traditional Korean arts and cultures to the world with touring performances in Hawaii, Russia, Taiwan, EU, Japan, Canada and the United States.