Center for Asian American Media

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Board

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Dipti Ghosh
Board Chair
Dipti Ghosh is Senior Vice President of Investments for Ghosh Financial Group in San Francisco. She has been in the financial services industry for 20 years and has also spent time as a fund development coordinator at Asian Women’s Shelter. She is currently, chairperson of The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, and past board member of Trikone a South Asian LGBT organization. When not managing money for clients, or fulfilling community obligations, she spends time discovering the greater bay area on her bicycle and traveling with her partner Meggy, and of course, taking time off to watch the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.

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David Lei
Vice Chair
David Lei worked as social worker in San Francisco’s Chinatown with at-risk youths before starting his business in 1981 specializing in exporting consumer products to Mexico. He recently sold his business and retired at the end of 2006. David has a passion for building communities, social changes/improvements, youth education and the arts so he actively participates on following non-profit boards: Asian Art Museum, Chinese Performing Arts Foundation, San Francisco Lunar New Year Parade & Festival, Chung Ngai Dance Troupe, Academy of Chinese Performing Arts, World Arts West - San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, Berkeley China Initiative – University of California, Berkeley, and the Asian Chefs Association. David has been married for 33 years with one grown daughter. He attended public schools in San Francisco and graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a degree in Business Administration.

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Johnnie D. Giles
Secretary
Johnnie D. Giles is Vice President of Government Affairs for the Bay Area at Comcast Corporation. He serves on the California Cable Television Association Law and Public Policy Committee, and is associated with National Association of Minorities in Cable, APAPA, and Vision New America. He started his career at the Chronicle Publishing Company helping the firm double its size in just over 4 years. He then worked in Chronicle’s Cable Television division and held numerous position before returning to Chronicle’s Corporate office with a particular interest in emerging technologies. During the late 90’s Johnnie took a break from the telecommunications industry and worked at Age Wave Inc., a start-up incubator with an initial investment fund of more than $250M, where he served as the VP of Administration before becoming a partner at, Blacksquare, LLC in 2000. Johnnie graduated from UC Berkeley and received his MBA at Pepperdine University.

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Christine Chen
Board Member
Christine Chen serves as President of Strategic Alliances USA, a consulting firm specializing in coalition building, institutional development, and partnerships among the corporate sector, government agencies, and the nonprofit and public sector. Previously, Chen served as one of the founders and as executive director of Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote (APIAVote). a national nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that encourages and promotes civic participation of Asian Pacific Islander Americans in the electoral and public policy processes at the national, state and local levels. Profiled by Newsweek magazine in 2001 as one of 15 women who will shape America’s new century, Chen served from 2001 to 2005 as national executive director of the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA), one of the leading APIA civil rights organizations in the country. She has served on numerous boards such as the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, Conference on Asian Pacific American Leadership (CAPAL), Youth Vote, Gates Millennium Scholarship Advisory Council, and Board of Advisors for the Midwest Asian American Students Union, East Coast Asian American Students Union, and the Asian Pacific American Medical Students Association. Chen currently serves on the Kennedy Center Community Advisory Board, Demos Board of Trustees, and the advisory board for the Progressive Majority Racial Justice Campaign.

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Ken Ikeda
Board Member
Ken Ikeda is the Executive Director of the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) the leading independent non profit media arts and training center in the United States, serving the digital media industry, producers and next generation storytellers. Prior to BAVC he was founder and Executive Director of Youth Sounds, an Oakland-based network of after-school digital music and video programs. He has also been a program manager for New York City’s Department of Homeless Services, a policy analyst for New York University’s Institute for Education and Social Policy, a graduate researcher with the Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities, a community organizer with the East Bay Asian Youth Center, and a special consultant to San Francisco State University’s Institute for Next Generation Internet. He is a graduate of Columbia College in New York and received his Masters in Education Anthropology at Stanford University.

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Bill Imada
Board Member
Bill Imada is the chairman and chief executive officer of IW Group, Inc. (formerly Imada Wong Communications Group), a Los Angeles-based marketing communications company specializing in the Asian-Pacific American markets in the U.S. Bill has over twenty years of experience in marketing, public relations, advertising and human resource development, and has served as a consultant to over a dozen Fortune 500 companies. Bill currently serves on the boards of several non-profit and professional organizations, including Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Asian Business Association and The Stage in Santa Monica, Calif. He also serves in an advisory role for groups such as Asian Professional Exchange, Asian American Justice Center and the Advertising Educational Foundation. Bill has a bachelor’s degree in business administration and is a graduate of the Coro Foundation’s leadership training program in public affairs. He is a graduate of the AMBEP Program at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

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Philomena King
Board Member
Philomena King is the Managing Director of King & Co. Works of Art, which specializes in Fine Chinese works of art dating back to 6000 B.C to the Qing Dynasty. Being the fourth generation is this industry has enabled her to see and experience Chinese art in a new light. She has also worked with several non-profit organizations in San Francisco such as being a founder and charter member with Monsoon, at the Asian Art Museum; on the Board of San Francisco Performances for 6 years and Co-Chaired their annual gala 4 years in a row. She has also helped put together the San Francisco Symphony’s Chinese New Year Gala two years in a row and Co-Chaired the After Party for the Symphony’s Opening Night. She has also helped various groups fundraise such as VNHelp to bring wheelchairs back to Vietnam and the CAA (Chinese For Affirmative Action).

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David Lei
Board Member
David Lei worked as social worker in San Francisco’s Chinatown with at risk youths before starting his business in 1981 specializing in exporting consumer products to Mexico. He recently sold his business and retired at the end of 2006. David has a passion for building communities, social changes/improvements, youth education and the arts so he actively participates on following non-profit boards: Asian Art Museum, Chinese Performing Arts Foundation, San Francisco Lunar New Year Parade & Festival, Chung Ngai Dance Troupe, Academy of Chinese Performing Arts, World Arts West - San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, Berkeley China Initiative – University of California, Berkeley, and the Asian Chefs Association. David has been married for 33 years with one grown daughter. He attended public schools in San Francisco and graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a degree in Business Administration.

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Konrad Ng, PhD
Board Member
Konrad Ng, PhD. is an assistant professor in the Academy for Creative Media (ACM) at the University of Hawai‘i-M?noa (UHM) where he teaches courses in Critical Studies with a focus on the art, history, politics and philosophy of film and digital media; Asian, Asian American/Canadian cinema and media cultures; film festival and film industry culture.  Ng earned his PhD in political science from the UHM and MA from the Cultural, Social and Political Thought Program at the University of Victoria.  His dissertation explored formations of Chinese cultural identity in narrative and experimental film and video.  Prior to joining the ACM, Ng was a film programmer for the Hawaii International Film Festival and the Museum Curator of Film and Video at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.  From 2007 – 2008, Ng volunteered for the Obama for America campaign and was a regular contributor to the campaign’s blog for Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders. His current research explores theories of agency, cinema, new media and civic engagement as points of departure for contemporary Asian American cultural, political and intellectual work.  Ng us a board member of the Global Film Initiative and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program’s 2009-2010 Visiting Scholar.

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Susie Jin Pak
Board Member
Susie Jin Pak is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at St. John’s University where she teaches U.S. American History. Her classes include Asian American History, History Through Film, Women in American History, The Emergence of Modern America, and US History Post-1945. Pak received her Ph.D. in history from Cornell University in 2004 and her B.A. in history with a concentration in women’s studies from Dartmouth College in 1994. Pak has also worked in the field of documentary film, serving as the Director of Development and Outreach for ROJA Productions on Citizen King, a two-hour documentary film on the last five years of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life that aired on PBS’ American Experience in January 2004, and Matters of Race, a four-hour, six-part documentary film series that aired on PBS in September 2003, which studied the significance of race in contemporary American society. She has been a research consultant to the Ford Foundation’s Media, Arts & Culture program since 2004.

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Parmila Ramchandani
Board Member
Parmila Ramchandani is the Chief Financial Officer at Gen Art Productions, Inc. Previous to Gen Art, she was the Head of Finance at Plum TV. She also held senior Finance positions at Rosie O’Donnell’s production company, KidRo Productions, Inc. and at Firelight Media, Inc. Firelight produced the 2004 Sundance Jury Prize winning documentary, “The Murder of Emmett Till.” She began her career at New Line Cinema in Business and Legal Affairs. She has been a proud member of the Center For Asian American Media’s board of directors for the last 5 years. She earned an MBA and an MA in Management from The Garvin School of International Management (Thunderbird).

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Ann Ruckstuhl
Board Member
Ann Ruckstuhl is a seasoned Silicon Valley entrepreneur and executive with diverse experience in enterprise software, on-line auction/marketplace, electronic payments, digital content management, networking, servers and microprocessors. Most recently, as VP of Marketing of Sybase, Ann was instrumental in re-positioning Sybase from a traditional database company to a leader in enterprise mobility in areas of data connectivity, embedded mobile database, device management, security, and mobile applications. Ann held pivotal roles with a number of high tech firms and start-ups including HP, The Content Group, Billpoint and eBay. As VP of Strategy at The Content Group, Ann drove many early-stage Web projects that enabled media conglomerates to digitize, archive, index, search, distribute, meter and monetize their IP-based content. In the late 1990’s, Ann was a part of the core team at Billpoint (later acquired by eBay) that pioneered on-line person-to-person payments — further democratizing the Internet by allowing anyone to buy, sell and pay each other efficiently. Ann moved to the US from Taiwan at the age of 15 and enjoys projects that allow her to bridge and foster collaboration between the US and Asia. Ann earned both an MBA and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida.

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Jean Tsien
Board Member
Jean Tsien has been working in the field of documentary for the past 20 years mainly as an Editor. Tsien’s PBS editing credits includes the 2001 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature, “Scottsboro: An American Tragedy”, the film also won a Primetime EMMY for the American Experience. “A Hymn for Alvin Ailey,” won the Primetime EMMY for the PBS Great Performance, Dance in America series. Tsien was the Editor for two Peabody Award and Christopher Award winning films such as: “Malcolm X: Make It Plain” and ITVS produced documentary “Travis”, a film about a boy’s fight with AIDS. Tsien got involved with CAAM when she was editing “My America: or Honk If You Love Buddha.”

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France Viana
Board Member
France Viana is a strategic marketing consultant for top brands and Fortune 100 companies with expertise in brand management, advertising and nonprofit marketing. She has led marketing campaigns for top brand names include Visa and AAA, and in Asia, for the Asian Development Bank and Philippine Airlines. A dedicated nonprofit contributor, she headed the marketing department of the San Francisco World Affairs Council, and co-founded the World Ecologists, which grew to be one of the largest Asian grassroots urban reforestation organizations, winning a UN “Global 500” award at the Rio Earth Summit. She claims to be able to bake Thirty Minute Brownies in twenty minutes.

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Mona Lisa Yuchengco
Board Member
Mona Lisa Yuchengco is the founder and until recently, the publisher of Filipinas Magazine, the only nationally circulated, glossy publication for and about Filipinos in America. She is also the founder and chair of Philippine International Aid, a non-profit organization that provides educational assistance to indigent children in the Philippines. She is active in the following non-profit boards: Asian Pacific Fund, Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Inc. (LEAP), CAAM, USF’s Center for the Pacific Rim, Asia Society (Northern California) among others. She has won numerous community leadership awards; the most recent include being named “Woman of the Year”, District 8 and “Asian Leadership Award” from Asian Business League.