Date: Friday, May 6, 2011 Time: 8:30AM to 5PM
Place: New York Times Building
620 Eighth Avenue, 15th Floor, Manhattan
Vida Benavides is a principal in the Dewey Square Group’s state, local and multicultural practice, developing third party outreach strategies inclusive of multicultural constituencies and consumers, as well as advising national, state and local leaders on political, policy, communication, constituent outreach and public relations strategies. With over 16 years of distinguished service, DSG has become one of the leading public strategies firm in the country with offices in eight cities and affiliates in every state.
An expert on electoral politics, Benavides’ career includes providing strategic counsel to campaigns and policy initiatives on voter education and mobilization, political leadership and civic engagement. Benavides co-founded APIAVote, a national nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that encourages and promotes civic participation amongst Asian American and Pacific Islanders in the electoral and public policy processes. As Executive Director she oversaw the organization’s 2008 unprecedented national field, public education, and communications program that helped to increase the visibility and capacity of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community’s participation in the electoral process.
In another leadership role, Vida served as the Executive Director to California’s Community Technology Policy Council. The council’s role was to develop and implement a telecommunications policy agenda reflective of the needs and concerns of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (API) and to increase the engagement of API in California’s telecommunications public policy debates. In that capacity, Vida was able to establish the relations between policy leaders at the national and state levels with AAPI leaders.
Benavides spent 15 years as a political and public affairs consultant, developing political, policy, fundraising, public relations, and communication strategies focused on developing diverse and alternative outreach approach to multicultural communities.
As a consultant, Vida served as a top advisor to the Kerry-Edwards and Gore-Lieberman campaigns. And as a Campaign Adviser/Strategist, she designed the coalition infrastructure and developed grassroots and grass top strategies for the National Alliance for Filipino Veterans Equity (NAFVE), the coalition that pursued passage of Filipino WWII Veterans Benefit Enhancement legislation. President Obama signed the bill as part of the Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009.
Benavides served as the Director of Public Liaison of the Department of Public Liaison, Voter Education, & Training for Democratic National Committee under Chairman David Wilhelm. She helped develop base vote outreach strategies, utilized an aggressive use of specialty media, monitored and recruited minority & women candidates, facilitated training programs, and implemented a surrogate speakers program for the Party and the administration. Vida also served as Deputy Director for Political Affairs for the Clinton/Gore Presidential Transition Team and as a Special Assistant for the Political and Constituency Outreach division for the ’92 Clinton/Gore Campaign.
As a community leader, Benavides has served as a board member of numerous organizations such as Asian Law Caucus of San Francisco, APIAVote of Washington, and for the Presidential Nomination, Timing and Scheduling Commission for the Democratic Party. Vida currently serves as the leadership advisor to America’s Opportunity Fund, a leadership PAC Chaired by former Secretary Norman Mineta.
Benavides dedicates her time to fostering emerging talent through leadership development activities. Over the past decade she has trained and mentored public servants and campaign operatives and continues to promote leadership among youth, women, and minority communities. She has also worked with community leaders and public officials to establish civic and electoral engagement entities such as National Alliance for Filipino Veterans Equity, Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies and Small Business AAPAC.
In 2010, Vida received an honor form the Ron Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development at NY Saint John’s Law School for her work in civil rights and civic engagement. Vida was also an Asian Pacific American Women’s Leadership Institute Fellow, US-German Marshall Fund Fellow, and is listed as one of 100 Influential Filipina American Women.
Gloria Chan, Esq., is President and CEO of Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies. Prior to joining APAICS, Gloria Chan spent over four years working on Capitol Hill advocating on behalf of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Most recently, she served as the executive director of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), a caucus of 30 Members of Congress, then chaired by Rep. Michael Honda (CA-15). In this position, Ms. Chan worked regularly with congressional leaders, as well as Asian American and Pacific Islander national and local leaders around the country. Prior to this post, she served as legislative counsel to Rep. Honda, and CAPAC’s communications director. Her portfolio then included justice and commerce appropriations, census, voting, civil rights, and immigration. Ms. Chan came to Capitol Hill in 2006 as an APAICS Anheuser-Busch/Congressman Frank Horton Fellow.
Before moving to Washington DC, Ms. Chan clerked for US Magistrate Judge Theodore H. Katz in the Southern District of New York, and also was a judicial intern for New York State Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan. In 1999, she founded Chinatown Youth Initiatives, a youth leadership nonprofit for high school students in New York City, the advisory council of which she currently chairs. She also served on the board of the Organization of Chinese Americans-NY Chapter.
Ms. Chan received her undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College and her law degree from Harvard Law School. She is a member of the New York State bar.
Margaret Chin is a Member of the New York City Council, District 1. Margaret immigrated to the U.S. with her family from Hong Kong in 1963 when she was nine years old. She grew up in NYC Chinatown and attended P.S. 130 and JHS 65. She graduated from the Bronx High School of Science and from the City College of New York (CCNY) with a degree in education. It was at City College through taking Asian Studies courses that Margaret got involved in community organizing. For more than 30 years she has dedicated herself to public service to help immigrants, low income and working families.
Margaret worked for 14 years at LaGuardia Community College’s Division of Adult and Continuing Education helping immigrant adults get a college education. Many of her students learned English, got a college degree and built a better life for their families.
For the past 11 years Margaret worked at Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE), an organization that she helped to form when she was in college. As the deputy executive director, Margaret led the organization’s work in advocacy, community organizing and coalition building. She fought for the preservation and building of affordable housing; better access to government services; equal opportunity and fair treatment, for immigrants, low income and working families. Margaret left her position at AAFE at the end of August 2008 to focus on her City Council Campaign.
In her many years of public service she served on boards of many not-for-profit organizations. Margaret was formerly the Chairperson of the NY Immigration Coalition (NYIC). She was a board member of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD) and chaired the Advocacy Committee. Margaret was a founding member of Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation (CPLDC) and served as the vice-chair of the board. Additionally, Margaret served as chair of the Census Bureau’s Race and Ethnicity Advisory Committee on the Asian and Pacific Islander Population for Census 2000. Margaret was a member of Community Board 3 and Community Board 1. Margaret was also one of the founding members of Asian Americans for Equality, where she served as President of the board from 1982 to 1986. In 2003 Margaret was a Fannie Mae Foundation Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
As an advocate for civic participation and voter education, Margaret was elected to the Democratic State Committee for two terms from 1986 to 1990. Margaret ran for City Council in 1991, 1993 and 2001. She fought hard to get bilingual ballots for the Asian community.
Michael Lichuang Chu was born in Taiwan. He studied high school in Okinawa, Japan and acquired his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Hawaii. Michael is the publisher of Asian American Times since its inception 1987 and the owner of Asian American Global Travel. In addition to his busy work as a publisher and travel agency operator, Michael has donated a substantial portion of his time and resources to community service. He had involved himself in community work as early as 1987. After being elected the chairperson of the Council of Chinese American Associations in 2009, he has created the Legal Aid Services and Employer-Employee Conciliation Services, both offering free consultation to new immigrants in the community. In the spring of 2010, as a response to the brutal rape and murder of a young female student named Yu Yao in Flushing, Michael Chu started an ad hoc civilian neighborhood patrol in the late spring. 10-15 members of Neighborhood Watch Team began to patrol the streets around Flushing from 8 pm to 10 pm, five days a week, rain or shine. The group now consists of 550 volunteers.
Jennifer Hayashida is Director of the Asian American Studies Program (AASP) at Hunter College, CUNY. While at Hunter College, she has worked closely with students, faculty, administrators, and community groups to strengthen and expand the AASP. In addition to her work as an educator, she is a writer and translator, and is currently a writer-in-residence through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s 2008-2009 Workspace Program.
James Hong is the Civic Participation Coordinator at the MinKwon Center for Community Action (formerly YKASEC). A 2nd generation Korean American from Miami, Florida, James joined the MinKwon Center in 2010 and oversees the Center’s Civic Participation Program, which seeks to empower the community through the electoral process by organizing voter registration, research, education, and mobilization efforts. He was most recently a Senior Research Analyst at Market Dynamics Research Group, Synovate USA and Synovate Korea.
S.J. Jung is President of the MinKwon Center for Community Action (formerly YKASEC). S.J.’s journey as a community advocate began with working at the MinKwon Center as a volunteer, becoming its Executive Director in 1989, and then elected as its President in 2006. S.J. serves on the board of directors of the New York Immigration Coalition, and works with diverse communities.
In 2009, S.J. shook up the Queens political scene with an impressive campaign for New York City Council, winning endorsements from diverse sectors. He fell short of winning the Democratic nomination by a slim margin, but is now widely regarded as one of the most unifying community and political leaders in Queens. In 2010, with overwhelming support, S.J. won the election for Male District Leader of the Democratic Leadership District 22 Part B, in Flushing.
Peter Koo is a Member of the New York City Council, District 20. Peter immigrated to America from Hong Kong in 1971. He worked minimum wage jobs at Kentucky Fried Chicken and Dunkin Donuts to put himself through the University of New Mexico – College of Pharmacy, where he earned a Bachelors of Science degree. He is the founder, CEO, and President of the Starside Pharmacy chain located in Flushing, Queens.
As a local businessman and community activist, Peter has tirelessly fought for the needs of the residents who live in his home community and has become one of Flushing’s foremost community activists. He has served as the Chairman of Program Services for the Flushing Business Improvement District (BID), and President of the Flushing Chinese Business Association.
Prior to taking office, Peter was an active member of Queens Community Board 7; served as an advisor for the Queens General Hospital Community Advisory Board; Treasurer, Founder and Trustee of the LaGuardia Community College Foundation, the Flushing Lions Club, Flushing Rotary Club, and the American Cancer Society.
Peter is also President of the Peter Koo Community Charitable Organization. His recent philanthropy includes a $100,000 donation to LaGuardia Community College, and 20 wheelchairs to Elmhurst Hospital. Throughout the years, he has also donated generously to several local senior centers.
Peter Kwong is Professor of Asian American Studies and Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, as well as Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is best known for his work on Chinese Americans and on modern Chinese politics. Peter sits on the Board of Directors of several organizations: Downtown Community TV; Manhattan Neighborhood Network; International Center for Migration, Ethnicity and Citizenship; and The New Press, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of New York Foundation.
Russell C. Leong is the Spring 2011 CUNY Thomas Tam Visiting Professor at Hunter College/CUNY, and the editor of UCLA’s Amerasia Journal. He received his MFA in directing from UCLA’s School of Film and Television. An adjunct professor in the Depts. of English and Asian American Studies, Prof. Leong is also the editor of www.uschinamediabrief.com and Asian American Sexualities (Routledge Books. He was featured with 50 U.S. poets on the PBS series “The United States of Poetry.”
Glenn D. Magpantay is the Director of the Democracy Program at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. His work at AALDEF includes enforcement of the federal Voting Rights Act with regards to bilingual ballots and redistricting, access to the vote, Asian American political opinion, and census public education, advocacy, and monitoring.
Mr. Magpantay has represented Asian Americans in high profile voting rights cases including US v. Boston which resulted in Boston’s first-ever bilingual ballots in Chinese and Vietnamese, and Chinatown Voter Education Alliance v. Ravitz, an action against the New York City Board of Elections for compliance with the Language Assistance Provisions (Section 203) of the Voting Rights Act for Chinese and Korean assistance.
He oversees AALDEF’s Asian American Election Protection efforts in fifteen states across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest. In 2008, he coordinated the nation’s largest multilingual exit poll of Asian Americans surveying over 16,000 voters in 11 states and 52 cities. He organized hundreds of pro bono attorneys to monitor poll sites to guard against anti-Asian voter discrimination. In 2009, he was summoned to testify before Congress about his findings.
On census, Mr. Magpantay spearheaded the Asian American Census Task Force in 2000 where he worked with others to win a legal opinion ensuring the confidentiality of census information and a moratorium on immigration raids during the census. He is again leading AALDEF’s 2010 Census Project which includes advocacy, community education, legal support, and monitoring of the census.
He is a recognized authority on minority voting rights, census, and Asian American political participation. He has published scholarly legal articles, authored a number of reports, and has given commentary to numerous media outlets including The New York Times, USA Today, Boston Globe, CNN, and National Public Radio.
He teaches “Race & the Law” at Rutgers School of Law – Newark, “Asian American Civil Rights” at Hunter College/ CUNY, and a clinical seminar on “Individual Rights and Representation” at Brooklyn Law School.
Outside of his professional activities, Magpantay serves as co-director of the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA), a national federation of Asian American, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender organizations.
Magpantay attended the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook on Long Island, and graduated cum laude from New England School of Law in Boston – after being admitted as an affirmative action beneficiary.
Vishnu Mahadeo has been an active member of the Richmond Hill/ Indo- Caribbean community in Queens for over 23 years. He serves as the president and founder of the Richmond Hill Economic Development Council (RHEDC), an organization of property owners and commercial tenants in Richmond Hill that is dedicated to promoting business development and improving the area’s quality of life. HeHe graduated from the University of Surrey in Guildford, England in 1981 with a Bachelors of Science with Honors in Engineering. has served on the Queens Community Board 9 as a Parks Committee Chairman and active Community Board Member.
Over the last several years, Mr. Mahadeo has conducted training classes for voter registration and solicitation of petitions in the Richmond Hill area. As a US Census crew leader, he recruited community partners and local residents to work for the US Census 2010. He is the recipient of community service awards from East Indian Diaspora (NY) & Sanskaar Bhaarti International (Guyana).
He is currently a math and science teacher who specialized to assist special educational needs students, serves as a secretary in the Richmond Hill High School (RHHS) PTA and as the treasurer for the RHHS Parent Action Committee (PAC).
Mr. Mahadeo is a founding member of American Sevashram Sangha Inc, a not-for-profit organization that provides religious guidance, social, cultural and educational services in Queens. He also served as Chairman for Management and Development, a non-governmental organization that helps to improve education, health and general welfare for rural communities in Guyana, South America.
He lives in Richmond Hill with his wife and children. He is a devoted father and proud to one child as a graduate (Cum Laude) from Amherst College and another child attending Cornell University.
John Mollenkopf is director of the Center for Urban Research. He is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Graduate Center and coordinates its interdisciplinary concentration in public policy and urban studies. He has authored or edited fifteen books on urban politics, urban policy, immigration, and New York City. Prior to joining the Graduate Center in 1981, he directed the Economic Development Division of the New York City Department of City Planning and taught urban studies and public management at Stanford University. He received his PhD from Harvard and BA from Carleton College.
With Philip Kasinitz, Mary Waters, and Jennifer Holdaway, Mollenkopf recently completed Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age (Russell Sage Foundation Press 2010), a book on educational attainment, labor market position, and political and civic involvement among second generation immigrant and native minority young adults in the New York metropolitan area. This book was given the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Book Award in
2010. His current research focuses on immigrants and politics in New York and Los Angeles, the political incorporation of immigrants in Europe and the U.S., and the comparative analysis of the situation of the second generation in eight European countries. His Place Matters: A Metropolitics for the 21st Century, co-authored with Peter Dreier and Todd Swanstrom, won the Michael Harrington Prize of the American Political Science Association in 2002.
He is a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Building Resilient Regions, where he is leading a collaborative study of political responses to immigration across six metropolitan areas in the U.S. He serves on the selection committee of the Migration Policy Institute’s E Pluribus Unum prize for local immigrant integration efforts and the “Setting Into Motion” PhD fellowship of the Zeit Foundation, Hamburg, Germany.
Joyce Moy is the Executive Director of the Asian American/ Asian Research Institute. She was the first Asian American director of a NYS Small Business Development Center. Her area of expertise is entrepreneurship and economic development. She has taught business law and taxation at Queens College, the CUNY School of Law, and at Cornell University School of Law. She is a former practicing attorney with over 15 years experience in corporate law, franchising, taxation and commercial areas. She recently served on the NYS Governor’s Taskforce on Small Business and currently co-chairs the NYC Comptroller’s Taskforce on Community Benefit Agreements.
Frank H. Shih, a former social worker and community advocate in New York City, received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the New School for Social Research. He is an adjunct faculty member at Suffolk County Community College in Long Island, New York. From 1996-2009, he was the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at CUNY School of Law. Prior to this position, he was the Director of the Center for Academic Advising at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Dr. Shih serves on the Board of Directors of AAARI. As an active volunteer in the community, he is a Director of the United Way of Long Island and the Organization of Chinese Americans– Long Island Chapter. He is also a member of the Advisory Council of Nassau Suffolk Law Services, Inc.
Betty Lee Sung is Professor Emerita from City College of New York/CUNY, and Board Member of the Asian American/ Asian Research Institute. Professor Sung has published innumerable articles and seven books on Chinese Americans including Mountain of Gold (1967), and Chinese American Manpower and Employment , which won an outstanding book of the year award for 1976.
S. B. Woo is a Board Member and former President of the 80-20 Initiative. Mr. Woo is a retired Physics professor and served as the 21st Lieutenant Governor of Delaware from 1985 to 1989. Born in Shanghai, China, he came to the United States from Hong Kong at the age of 18.
He is the president of The 80-20 Educational Foundation (EF), a 501(c)3 non-profit organization focused on winning equal opportunity in the workplace and equal justice for ALL Asian Pacific Americans. 80-20 EF’s first step in fulfilling this mission is to create a community-wide awareness of pervasive workplace discrimination against Asian Americans, thereby hoping to induce an awareness and will to take action. 80-20 EF is also educating the community on the importance of group political clout.
He was also the founding president of The 80-20 PAC, Inc. from 2002 to 2006 that works on organizing Asian Pacific Americans (APAs) into a swing bloc vote in presidential elections, thereby inducing both major political parties to compete serving the rightful interests of the APA community.
His past experiences include being the Founding President of the Faculty Bargaining Unit at the University of Delaware, its Chief Spokesman and Chief Negotiator; a Trustee of the University of Delaware; an Institute Fellow at the Institute of Politics, the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; and serving as the National President of the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA).
His bio can be found in The Congressional Record of 2/5/2007. He is also listed in Who’s Who in America. A life-sized picture of him is displayed in Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington D.C.. In 2000, aMagazine ranked him the 6th of the 25 Most Influential Asian Americans.
He received his B.S., summa cum laude, in Mathematics and Physics from Georgetown College in Kentucky and his Ph.D. in Physics from Washington University in St. Louis in 1964.
To send an unmistakable signal of personal devotion – that his mission in working to champion equality for all Asian Americans through 80-20 has no personal gain or interest whatsoever – S. B. has pledged never to run for a political office or accept a government appointment for the rest of his life.
His past experiences include being the Founding President of the Faculty Bargaining Unit at the University of Delaware, its Chief Spokesman and Chief Negotiator; a Trustee of the University of Delaware; an Institute Fellow at the Institute of Politics, the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; and serving as the National President of the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA).
His bio can be found in The Congressional Record of 2/5/2007. He is also listed in Who’s Who in America. A life-sized picture of him is displayed in Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington D.C.. In 2000, aMagazine ranked him the 6th of the 25 Most Influential Asian Americans.
He received his B.S., summa cum laude, in Mathematics and Physics from Georgetown College in Kentucky and his Ph.D. in Physics from Washington University in St. Louis in 1964.
To send an unmistakable signal of personal devotion – that his mission in working to champion equality for all Asian Americans through 80-20 has no personal gain or interest whatsoever – S. B. has pledged never to run for a political office or accept a government appointment for the rest of his life.
Planning Committee
Carol Huang
Joyce Moy
Betty Lee Sung
Antony Wong
Sponsor
CUNY Diversity Grant
Media Sponsor
New York Times
