A Sample of Conference Presenters...

Wenda Fong banquet keynote (sat 6 pm - 8 pm)

Wenda Fong is a well-respected producer and director of television and live events with a remarkable track record as an executive and community force.

Some highlights of her career include four Emmy telecasts, five Disney specials, and seven specials with Presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush and Clinton.

Ms. Fong joined FOX as its first Vice President of Creative Diversity Development Department in 2001 where she created and launched its successful diversity initiatives. In 2002, she was appointed the project coordinator for American Idol, in addition to her diversity responsibilities. In 2003, she was promoted to her current position of Vice President of Specials and Alternative Programming for FOX Broadcasting Company.

Ms. Fong is co-founder and chairperson of CAPE, the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment and has served as president of East West Players, the nation's oldest Asian American theatre. A member of the Directors Guild of America since 1980, Ms. Fong serves as founding co-chair of the DGA Asian-American Committee.

Jon Iwata welcome keynote (friday 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm)

Jon Iwata is responsible for worldwide communications for IBM. His organization manages the company’s communications with the media, industry analysts, employees and shareholders. In addition, IBM communications is responsible for corporate brand strategy and design, and the company’s global intranet, which serves 329,000 employees. It coordinates IBM’s corporate affairs initiatives and plays a leading role in instilling IBM Values into the company’s practices and culture. Jon is a member of the IBM Strategy Team, the IBM Performance Team, and the company’s Intellectual Property Policy and Open Standards Advisory Council. He reports to IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano.

He joined the communications function of IBM in 1984 at the company’s Almaden Research Center in Silicon Valley, where he was born and raised. In 1989, he came to IBM corporate headquarters in Armonk, New York, and held a variety of communications positions, including providing support for the president of the company. He was appointed vice president of corporate communications in 1995 and assumed his current responsibilities as senior vice president, communications, on January 1, 2002.

Jon is a co-inventor of a U.S. patent for advanced semiconductor lithography technology.

He is Chairman of the Public Relations Seminar, a professional group consisting of chief communications officers of Fortune 500 corporations and is also a trustee of the Arthur W. Page Society.

Jon holds a B.A. from the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, San Jose State University.

Valarie Kaur film screening (friday 9:30 pm - 11:30 pm) workshop presenter (saturday 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm)

Valarie Kaur was twenty years old when she got in her car and began driving across the country. A man from her community had just been murdered. An elderly man nearly beaten to death. A woman stabbed in the head. Fragments of these stories sent across e-mail lists were not making the nightly news, only the towers falling over and over again between headshots of turbaned and bearded Osama bin Laden.

As a Sikh American college student, Valarie wanted to reconcile the two faces of America - the unity of a grieving nation and the fear dividing her country. At the end of September 2001, she left behind her junior year and began a journey across the country, looking for the heart of America. She was swept into a whirlwind of stories as Sikh Americans and others told her about their encounters with fear, violence, loss, and hope.

From California's Central Valley to the streets of Manhattan to Capitol Hill to the farming villages of India, Valarie's journey spiraled into larger questions about how we see one another: Who looks like an enemy? Who looks like an American? Who counts as 'one of us'? Divided We Fall is a moving story that brings us to the intersections of violence, identity, and power in America, and forces us to confront where we stand as a people.

Valarie is a graduate student of ethics at Harvard University, where she is the founding director of the Discrimination and National Security Initiative affiliated with the Harvard Pluralism Project. She earned bachelor’s degrees in international relations and religious studies at Stanford University, where she also taught courses on philosophy, comparative religion, and Sikh studies. In 2003, she won Stanford’s Golden Medal for her honors thesis on discrimination and violence in post-9/11 America, which she then developed into a speaking series and the film Divided We Fall. Valarie will continue her studies at Yale Law School in Fall 2007.

Akhil Amar welcome keynote (friday 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm)

Akhil Reed Amar is the Southmayd Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law at both Yale College and Yale Law School. He received his B.A, summa cum laude, in 1980 from Yale College, and his J.D. in 1984 from Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of The Yale Law Journal. After clerking for Judge Stephen Breyer, U.S. Court of Appeals, 1st Circuit, Professor Amar joined the Yale faculty in 1985. Along with Dean Paul Brest and Professors Sanford Levinson, Jack Balkin, and Reva Siegel, Professor Amar is the co-editor of a leading constitutional law casebook, Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking. He is also the author of several books, including The Constitution and Criminal Procedure: First Principles (Yale Univ. Press, 1997), The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (Yale Univ. Press, 1998), and most recently, America’s Constitution: A Biography (Random House, 2005).

Nina Elgo workshop presenter (saturday 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm)

Judge Nina Elgo was appointed in May 2004 to the Superior Court of the State of Connecticut. She is the first Asian Pacific American Judge appointed to the Connecticut Superior Court. Judge Elgo is currently assigned to the Civil Division of the Hartford Superior Court. Prior to that assignment, she handled habeas corpus cases and criminal cases, including criminal jury trials and youthful offender matters. In 2005, she served as a faculty member for the 2005 Connecticut Judges Institute.

Prior to her appointment, she was an Assistant Attorney General in the Office of the Connecticut Attorney General for fourteen years, representing the state of Connecticut in child abuse and neglect cases, and termination of parental rights cases. She also handled special education cases as well as wrongful death/civil rights litigation. As an Assistant Attorney General, she briefed and argued a number of cases before the Appellate and Supreme Courts. Judge Elgo is a first generation Filipino-American, born and raised in Connecticut. She received her BA from Connecticut College in 1984 and her JD from Georgetown University Law Center in 1990. Judge Elgo is on the Board of Directors for the Connecticut Asian Pacific American Bar Association.

In March 2005, Judge Elgo was recognized by the Women Consuls General and the Consul General of the Philippines for outstanding professional achievement and in May 2005, she was recognized by the Filipino Heritage Foundation for outstanding government service.

When she's not busy being Judging Nina, she enjoys gardening and playing the keyboard. Judge Elgo currently lives with her husband and their daughter in West Hartford.

Khin Mai Aung workshop presenter (saturday 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm)

Khin Mai Aung is a Staff Attorney at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) in New York City where she works on educational equity and youth rights issues, including school discipline, access to bilingual education, language access, anti-Asian violence in public schools, post 9/11 and gang profiling, school testing, and affirmative action. This fall, she worked with some 15 Asian American education and youth advocacy groups to file an amicus brief in two cases before the United States Supreme Court concerning voluntary desegregation plans in Seattle, WA and Louisville, KY. Among other matters, she also works with immigrant Chinese students in Bensonhurst (Brooklyn), NY to monitor a federal consent decree concerning English Language Learner rights, and recently won reinstatement for three veteran Asian Pacific Islander and Latino teachers in Lowell, MA who were dismissed after faulty fluency testing. She has co-authored a paper on Southeast Asian students' educational experiences in an upcoming publication by the Harvard Civil Rights Project, and has spoken numerous times about Asian American students' educational experiences around the country.

Before joining AALDEF, she was the Director of Policy and Civil Engagement at Youth Leadership Institute, a community-based youth development nonprofit advocating for and supporting youth voices in public policies and initiatives impacting children and youth. She has also been a Staff Attorney at Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco were she ran a direct legal service program serving Asian Pacific Islander elders and launched a pilot youth law project. She began her legal career in commercial business litigation at the San Francisco office of Morrison and Foerster.

Ms. Aung is a 1996 graduate of Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, where she was the Book Review Editor for California Law Review and an Articles Editor for the Asian Law Journal. She conducted her undergraduate studies at Georgetown University.

Jane Hyun workshop presenter (saturday 3 pm - 4 pm)

Jane Hyun, President of Crossroads Associates, is an executive coach, speaker, and leadership strategist to Fortune 500 companies, top MBA programs, and non-profit organizations. Previously, she was a Vice President of Human Resources at JP Morgan, and Director of Recruiting at Deloitte & Touche and Resources Connection. She has worked with various diversity councils and senior management teams to raise awareness about the critical role that the global talent pipeline plays in today’s multicultural workplace. A graduate of Cornell University with a degree in Economics and International Studies, she is active with the University Women’s Alumnae Council. She serves on the Board of the Johnnetta B. Cole Diversity and Inclusion Institute at Bennett College. She is also an advisor to the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force/Center for Work Life Policy, the organization which authored Harvard Business Review’s “Leadership in Your Midst” and “On-Ramps and Off-Ramps for Women in the Workplace” Her work has received international recognition, and she has appeared in a variety of media outlets, including CNN, CNBC, National Public Radio, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, CEO, Working Mother, DiversityInc, and Crains. In 2005, HarperCollins released her first book, "Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling: The Essential Guide to Getting In, Moving Up, and Reaching the Top.” Jane lives in New York City with her family.