2018 Washington Leadership Program Session I: Strengthening Our Roots

The first Washington Leadership Program (WLP) Session: Strengthening Our Roots will focus on the salient role of knowing and understanding AANHPI history. The session aims to provide attendees with a foundation of how AANHPI successes and lessons from key moments in American history relate to the struggles of other minority communities, and how that can inform modern advocacy efforts and movements. Registration for the event will begin at 5:30pm with our program following promptly at 6:00pm. All WLP sessions are free to the public, but seating is limited. Please register online to reserve your seat. Dinner will be provided.  

Directions

Enter the building via the 7th street entrance, and sign in at the front desk with valid ID. You will then be directed to the elevators where you will be sent up to the Hatchery.

Speakers

Ted Gong retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2009 as a Senior Foreign Service Officer. His assignments focused on policies, laws and operations related to visas, border security, immigration, refugees, citizenship and consular services. These assignments included as Vice Consul and Consul in U.S. embassies and consulates in Taipei, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Sydney and Manila, and as program director and senior advisor in the Departments of State and Homeland Security, including as a consultant for Customs and Border Protection. He is now Director of the 1882 Project Foundation, a non-profit organization that broadens public awareness and understanding of the history of Chinese in America, particularly of the civil rights significance of the Chinese Exclusion Laws. He is President of the DC Lodge of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance and National Vice President for Policy and Public Engagement for the Alliance, a member of the Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans of Virginia, a founding member of the Fairfax County Asian American Oral History Project, and an organizer of the monthly Talk Story Events held in Chinatown Washington DC. He has traveled extensively throughout the United States to speak on immigration processes and reform, the history and significance of the Chinese Exclusion Laws and cultural/historical topics related to China and United States. Ted was educated at the University of California in History, University of Hawaii in Asian Studies and U.S. Army War College in National Strategic Studies.

 

 

Samip Mallick is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of SAADA, the South Asian American Digital Archive. SAADA uses the digital medium to document, preserve, and share stories from the South Asian American community, a community that has traditionally been overlooked and excluded from the American historical narrative. Working at the intersection of technology and storytelling, Samip has a Bachelor’s in Computer Science and a Master’s degree in Library and Information Sciences. Prior to his work with SAADA, Samip was the Director of the Ranganathan Center for Digital Information at the University of Chicago. He has also previously served on the Pennsylvania Governor’s Advisory Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs, and the advisory boards for Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois – Chicago and the University of Minnesota Immigration History Research Center’s “Immigrant Voices” Project.

 

 

Janelle Wong received her PhD from the Department of Political Science at Yale University. She is also Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland. Prior to joining the University of Maryland in 2012, she was at the University of Southern California in the Departments of Political Science and American Studies and Ethnicity. She also served as Executive Director of the Institute of Public Service at Seattle University (2011-12). Wong is author of Democracy’s Promise: Immigrants and American Civic Institutions (2006, University of Michigan Press) and co-author of two books on Asian American politics. The most recent is Asian American Political Participation: Emerging Constituents and their Political Identities (2011, Russell Sage Foundation), based on the first nationally representative survey of Asian Americans’ political attitudes and behavior. This groundbreaking study of Asian Americans was conducted in eight different languages with six different Asian national origin groups. Wong has received research funding from the National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, Irvine Foundation, and Carnegie Foundation. She was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, in 2006-2007. Wong’s research is on race, immigration, and political mobilization. Her current book project focuses on how growing numbers of Asian American and Latino evangelical Christians will impact the traditional conservative Christian movement and immigrant political participation. The study is based on qualitative interviews, participant observation in Los Angeles and Houston, and analysis of survey data. As a scholar and teacher, Wong has worked closely with social service, labor, civil rights, and media organizations that serve the Asian American population.

 

 

Moderators

Session Moderator Viet Tran is a communications manager at the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP), where he manages CSSP’s communication activities, including publications, media relations and operations of the organization’s digital and online presence. Prior to CSSP, he was a communications assistant at Cultural Vistas where he assisted in implementing the social media strategy for a project under President Obama’s Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative in Jakarta, Indonesia. He has also collaborated alongside the ICS Center in Vietnam to push a digital campaign project advocating for transgender rights. Viet is a former ambassador with the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islander’s E3! Program, where he worked on engaging the AAPI community in the mid-Atlantic region on issues of healthcare, education, mental health and immigration. Viet has also worked in various communication roles at the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, Global Rights and the Office of Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and international relations from University of California, San Diego, where he was a recipient of the Dean’s Award for Leadership and Service.

 

 

 

 

Panel Moderator Scott Tong has reported from more than a dozen countries as correspondent for Marketplace, from refugee camps in east Africa to shoe factories in eastern China. He toured the oil sands of Canada and snuck into Burma. Currently he serves as correspondent for Marketplace’s Sustainability Desk, where his coverage focuses on energy, the environment, natural resources and the global economy.
In 2006, Scott opened Marketplace’s first permanent bureau in China, as Shanghai bureau chief. His first book, A Village with My Name: A Family History of China’s Opening to the World (University of Chicago Press, 2017), is a personal, journalistic discovery of China’s long and interrupted economic opening. More than a faraway story from a long time ago, it addresses the divisive questions about globalization and drawbridges that many countries are debating today.
His reporting includes special coverage of the 2016-2017 globalization backlash; Water: The High Price of Cheap; Venezuela’s economic collapse; the triumph of the shareholder value model in the U.S. and the Price of Profits; the challenge of long-term job creation in the United States; the 2011 Japan tsunami and recovery; the 2011 famine in the Horn of Africa; and the economics of one child in China. In 2013-14, Scott was awarded the Knight-Wallace journalism fellowship at the University of Michigan.
Scott joined Marketplace in 2004, after working as a producer and off-air reporter for the PBS NewsHour, where he produced a series of mini-documentaries from Iraq following the U.S. invasion in 2003. He’s appeared on the PBS NewsHour, the Aspen Ideas Festival and TedxFoggybottom.
A graduate of Georgetown University, Scott is a native of Poughkeepsie, New York. He lives in Arlington, Virginia with his wife Cathy and three children. He is an acknowledged soccer dad and cycles to work at a measured pace.

Support for the Strengthening Our Roots session is sponsored by AARP

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More About The Washington Leadership Program

The Washington Leadership Program (WLP) provides a space for young AANHPI students interning in Washington, D.C. to come together, build community, and explore their heritage within the context of public service. Through five sessions over the summer, WLP introduces students to AANHPI public service leaders who can inform and inspire students’ own civic engagement.

The Conference on Asian Pacific American Leadership (CAPAL) seeks to empower Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) youth by increasing access to public service opportunities and building a strong AANHPI public service pipeline. We envisions a future with equitable AANHPI representation throughout all levels of government and public service.

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By registering for CAPAL’s Washington Leadership Program, you give permission to be recorded or photographed during the session. Food provided at this event may contain nuts, dairy, gluten, and other allergens. Vegetarian options will be available.

Check out our other WLP sessions!