Staff
National
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Peggy Saika President/Executive Director of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy; Strategic Advisor to NGEC
Peggy is the President and Executive Director of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy. Spanning a 30-year period of community involvement, Peggy was the founding executive director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network from 1993 to 2000, and from 1983 to 1991, the executive director of the Asian Law Caucus. Peggy is the co-founder of the Asian Women’s Shelter, Asians/Pacific Islanders for Choice, the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. She has served on the board of numerous organizations including Equal Rights Advocates, Progressive Assets Management and the Alston/Bannerman National Fellowship Program. She currently serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of The California Wellness Foundation.
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Lori Kodama Special Advisor to the Executive Director of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy
Lori is the Senior Advisor to the Executive Director of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy. Lori has over twenty years of experience in non-profit financial and administrative management, with expertise in grants and contracts management. Prior to joining the staff of AAPIP, Lori worked at the Asian Law Caucus for fourteen years and for seven years worked at Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum.
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Cynthia Choi NGEC Director
Cynthia is the Director for the National Gender and Equity Campaign. She has over 19 years of nonprofit management including, staff supervision, board development, fundraising/finance, program development, communications, organizational development, strategic planning and coalition building experience. Cynthia has worked in diverse settings from local grassroots organizations to national entities and has been involved in a range of issues including but not limited to reproductive justice, young women’s health, racial justice, environmental justice, immigrant and refugee rights, ending violence against women. In addition, she has several years of experience in grant-making at The California Endowment. Most recently, Cynthia served as the Interim Executive Director of Khmer Girls in Action. She has provided leadership for the following organizations, Center for the Pacific Asian Family, Environmental Justice Fund, Multi-Cultural Collaborative, Asians & Pacific Islanders for Reproductive Health and the Asian Law Caucus. Cynthia is the recipient of several fellowships including the Rockefeller Next Generation Leaders, The California Wellness Foundation Violence Prevention Initiative and Asian Pacific American Women’s Leadership Institute.
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Bo Thao BRIDGE Program Director
Bo is the BRIDGE Director for the National Gender and Equity Campaign. Before joining the NGEC, Bo worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis as Senior Project Manager responsible for assessing trends and issues related to access to credit, capital and related financial services for traditionally underserved and emerging markets throughout the Federal Reserve Bank system and its ninth district. Before joining the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, she served as Executive Director of Hmong National Development, Inc. (HND), a national advocacy organization in Washington, D.C. Her other experiences include developing professional opportunities for communities of color in the housing and economic development field; establishing comprehensive and coordinated communication and accessibility plans for underserved communities for the State of Minnesota; and serving as Executive Director of the Women’s Association of Hmong and Lao. Bo has been a long time community advocate, and was named a Pioneering Voice by the Saint Paul Pioneer Press and awarded the Newsmakers Award by the Minnesota Women’s Press. She is a founding member of the Coalition for Community Relations and the Hmong Women’s Action Team.
California
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Alice Y. Hom California Community Partnerships Program Manager
Alice is the California Partnerships Program Manager for the National Gender and Equity Campaign. As a community builder, educator, and writer, she brings over 17 years of experience in organizing and teaching on the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality while also linking academic issues to community based activism. From 2001-2006, she served as the Founding Director of the Intercultural Community Center at Occidental College where she worked on diversity and social justice issues. Alice serves on the boards of Visual Communications, an Asian American media arts organization, and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, a foundation that works for racial, social, and economic justice in the U.S. and internationally. She co-edited an award-winning anthology titled Q & A: Queer in Asian America. Alice received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University, a Masters Degree in Asian American Studies from University of California, Los Angeles, and is completing her dissertation on organizing and community building by lesbians of color from the 1970s to the 1990s in a Ph.D. History Program at Claremont Graduate University.
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Dana Kawaoka-Chen California BRIDGE Program Manager
Dana is the California BRIDGE Program Manager for the National Gender and Equity Campaign. Before joining NGEC, Dana served as the Executive Director for a community development credit union in West Oakland, California. Previously, Dana also served as the Executive Director of Public Allies Silicon Valley, the local chapter of a national leadership development organization. She brings more than ten years of experience working with community-based organizations. Dana obtained her Bachelor of Arts in American Studies and Visual Arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz, her Certification in Nonprofit Management from San Jose State University, and is currently working towards a Master’s degree in Organization Development from the University of San Francisco.
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Gladys Malibiran NGEC California Coordinator
Gladys is the California Coordinator for the National Gender and Equity Campaign. Before joining AAPIP, she spent 3 years at the Partnership for Immigrant Leadership and Action (PILA) helping to provide training and technical assistance in grassroots leadership development and movement-building organizing to Bay Area communities. Previously, Gladys was an outreach counselor for New Jersey immigrants who lost loved ones in 9/11 as well as for immigrant groups affected by post-tragedy injustices and discrimination. She also coordinated a multilingual ethnic media campaign in 50 print and broadcast outlets in the metro New York City area. After earning her BA at Boston College studying Communications, Diversity Studies and Art, she spent several years as a multimedia and graphic designer. She also brings years of consulting experience working with nonprofit organizations and community-based cultural arts groups.
Minnesota
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Kayva Yang Minnesota Community Partnerships Program Manager
Kayva is the Minnesota Partnerships Program Manager for the National Gender and Equity Campaign. Kayva has worked over eight years in the nonprofit and philanthropic sector focused on social justice work, the arts and capacity building within communities of color. Prior to AAPIP, Kayva spent a year at the Loft Literary Center, a comprehensive literary arts organization, in development and arts administration. She spent three and half years with Hispanics in Philanthropy as the Upper Midwest Regional Manager of the Funders’ Collaborative for Strong Latino Communities, a capacity building initiative to strengthen Latino-led organizations. Kayva has also consulted as a grant reviewer to The Saint Paul Foundation and is currently a member of the Social Change Fund of the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota. She also serves on the Steering Committee of Ananya Dance Theatre, a women of color dance company based in Minneapolis. She has served on various advisory committees including the Management Improvement Fund, Multicultural Endowment of Spectrum Trust, and Asian Pacific Endowment. Kayva is a former co-chair of the AAPIP-Minnesota chapter.
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Megan Powers Minnesota BRIDGE Program Manager
Megan is the Minnesota BRIDGE Program Manager for the National Gender and Equity Campaign. She has worked as an educator, trainer and human rights advocate for the past ten years. Megan is a former Rotary World Peace Fellow, where she earned her Masters degree in Conflict Resolution. Prior to her graduate fellowship, Megan served as Director of Education at Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights. She provided education on the needs and challenges of immigrant and refugee communities in Minnesota. Megan is also a former Fulbright scholar and UNESCO researcher.
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Margie Jo Eun Joo Andreason Minnesota Program Assistant
Margie is the Minnesota Program Assistant for the National Gender and Equity Campaign. She is a recent undergrad with experience in public health outreach to communities of color and community organizing to civically engage people to anti-racism, and alliance-building work. Her other experiences include tutoring English in Gumi, South Korea and mentoring Trans-racial Adoptees. Margie is a past National Conference on Race and Ethnicity student scholar and was recently selected to attend the Collegiate Women of Color Leadership and Development Institute where she received a grant to spearhead a project in Fargo/Moorhead. The financial support from the Institute enabled her to establish founding the Tri-college Women of Color Collaborative that continues to organize women of color in the Fargo/Moorhead community.