OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates is a non-profit organization founded in 1973, whose stated mission is to advance the social, political, and economic well-being of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) in the United States.
The National Council of Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA) is a coalition of 35 national Asian-Pacific American organizations in the United States. Founded in 1996 and based in Washington D.C., NCAPA seeks to expand the influence of Asian-Pacific Americans in the legislative and legal arenas, and enhance the public's and mass media's awareness and sensitivity to Asian-Pacific American concerns.
John David Trasviña is a human rights attorney. He is the former dean of the University of San Francisco School of Law. Previous to that, he was assistant secretary of the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), and special counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices at the U.S. Department of Justice. He was named principal legal advisor at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in January 2021.
The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2, previously Cal(IT)2), also referred to as the Qualcomm Institute (QI) at its San Diego branch, is a collaborative academic research institution of the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego), the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and University of California, Riverside. Calit2 was established in 2000 as one of the four UC Gray Davis Institutes for Science and Innovation. As a multidisciplinary research institution, it is conducting research and educational programming to leverage emerging technologies to improve the state's economy and citizens' quality of life, while addressing large-scale societal issues. Calit2 also develops and deploys prototype infrastructure for testing new solutions in real-world environments.
Sonal R. Shah is an American economist and public official. She is the CEO of The Texas Tribune, a politics and public policy-specific nonprofit news organization headquartered in Austin, Texas. Shah served as the National Policy Director for Mayor Pete Buttigieg's run in the 2020 United States presidential election. From April 2009 to August 2011, she served as the Director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation in the White House.
Asian/Pacific American (APA) or Asian/Pacific Islander (API) or Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) or Asian American and Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islander (AANHPI) is a term sometimes used in the United States when including both Asian and Pacific Islander Americans.
The Asian American and Pacific Islander Policy Research Consortium (AAPIPRC) focuses on critical policy issues facing the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Conceived of as part of the White House Executive Order 13515 (2009) the consortium supports, promotes, and conducts applied social science and policy research. In addition, Professor Paul M. Ong proposed two courses of action for AAPIPRC, one which formalizes working relationships among university-based AAPI research institutions and the other which would include publishing the proceedings of the briefs to inform policy.
The White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (WHIAANHPI) is a United States governmental office that coordinates an ambitious whole-of-government approach to advance equity, justice, and opportunity for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. The Initiative collaborates with the Deputy Assistant to the President and AA and NHPI Senior Liaison, White House Office of Public Engagement and designated federal departments and agencies to advance equity, justice, and opportunity for AA and NHPIs in the areas of economic development, education, health and human services, housing, environment, arts, agriculture, labor and employment, transportation, justice, veterans affairs, and community development.
Amata Catherine Coleman Radewagen, commonly called Aumua Amata, is an American Samoan politician who is the current delegate for the United States House of Representatives from American Samoa. Radewagen, a Republican, was elected on November 4, 2014, after defeating Democratic incumbent Eni Faleomavaega; she was the first-ever Republican delegate since the office had been created in 1970 and began her tenure on January 3, 2015. She also serves as the national committeewoman for the Republican Party of American Samoa. Amata is the first woman to represent American Samoa in the U.S. Congress.
Kiran Arjandas Ahuja is an American attorney and activist who served as the director of the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM). She served as the chief of staff to the OPM director from 2015 to 2017. She assumed that position after serving for six years as the director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. An Indian-born American, she has also been a lawyer with the United States Department of Justice and a founding director of a non-profit, the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum. In 2017, she became the CEO of Philanthropy Northwest.
Bao Nguyen is an American Democratic politician from Orange County, California, and a former mayor of Garden Grove, California. He also previously served as a trustee on the Garden Grove Unified School District Board of Education.
David Kunnghee Min is an American lawyer and politician. He is the Democratic state senator for California's 37th Senate district, which includes portions of Orange County. He was an assistant law professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law before he was elected to the California State Senate.
Bo Thao-Urabe is a social entrepreneur who has founded numerous organizations and efforts to advance social justice. She was appointed as a Regent to the University of Minnesota by Governor Walz in 2021. A sought after leader, Thao-Urabe has served community in local, state and national settings and is the founder and former Executive Director of the Coalition of Asian American Leaders. President Obama appointed Thao-Urabe as a Commissioner to the President’s White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. She has also served as Senior Director at Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP). She founded and served as the Chief Operating Officer of RedGreen Rivers, a social enterprise which develops and connects women artisans in Southeast Asia to global markets. Philanthropically, she founded of the BMPP Giving Circle, which brings Asian American families together to pool their resources together to fund social justice causes in the Upper Midwest. She has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the prestigious Bush Fellowship from the Bush Foundation in 2019. Both Saint Paul Mayor Coleman and Governor Mark Dayton declared November 1 as Bo Thao-Urabe Day.
Holly Luong Ham is an American business executive and former Washington, D.C., government official. She served as a senior official in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and in the U.S. Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA). Ham also served as the executive director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the U.S. Department of Education. Prior to that, Ham served as the Assistant Secretary for Management in the U.S. Department of Education, where she was appointed by President Trump on April 20, 2017.
Subramanian Karthick Ramakrishnan, typically published as S. Karthick Ramakrishnan or Karthick Ramakrishnan, is an American political scientist, currently a professor of public policy at the University of California, Riverside. He is also a founder of AAPI Data and the UC Riverside Center for Social Innovation, and has been the Associate Dean of the School of Public Policy. He studies the political behavior and engagement of immigrants to the United States, and manages projects to gather data about minority groups in America.
For the Hong Kong actress and singer, see Miriam Yeung.
Sora Park Tanjasiri is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of California, Irvine, and Associate Director for Cancer Health Disparities and Community Engagement at the UCI Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her research focuses on community health in diverse populations, in particular Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans.
Glenn Duque Magpantay is the former executive director of the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance, an instructor at Brooklyn Law School and Hunter College/CUNY, and a former civil rights attorney in the role of Democracy Program director for the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. In 2023, Glenn D Magpantay was appointed as a Commissioner to the United States Commission on Civil Rights by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer. He is chair of the LGBT Committee of the Asian American Bar Association of New York, former co-chair of the Gay Asian & Pacific Islander Men of New York, and recognized as an "authority on the federal Voting Rights Act and expert on Asian American political participation, including bilingual ballots, election reform, minority voter discrimination, multilingual exit polling, and census." He has served as a commissioner on the New York City Voter Assistance Commission. He is also a contributing writer for the Huffington Post. The Glenn Magpantay Leadership Award at his undergraduate alma mater, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is named after him.
Chiling Tong is an Asian Pacific American activist and a public official. She has held various public offices under George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. She is currently the president and chief executive officer of The National Asian Pacific Islander American Chamber of Commerce & Entrepreneurship and the Founding President of the International Leadership Foundation. She is one of the most prominent female Chinese American politicians since Elaine Chao.
Judy Tzu-Chun Wu is an activist, historian, and Asian American Studies Professor at the University of California, Irvine, where she also serves as the director of the Humanities program. She taught at Ohio State University from 1998 to 2015 and at the University of Chicago from 2005 to 2006. She received her PhD in U.S. History from Stanford University in 1998. Her main areas of research include U.S. History, Asian Americans, women, immigration, gender, and sexuality. Currently, she is researching the Asian American women who attended the 1977 National Women’s Conference.
