Our Board Members

Daphne Kwok, Executive Director

Daphne Kwok has served the Asian American community as Executive Director of Asians and Pacific Islanders with Disabilities of California, Executive Director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation in San Francisco, Executive Director of the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies, and for 11 years, as the Executive Director of the Organization of Chinese Americans.

In July 2010, President Obama appointed Ms. Kwok to Chair the President's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders.

Empowerment of all APAs has long been one of Ms. Kwok's core values. In 1997, Ms. Kwok was the first elected Chair of the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, a network of national APA organizations.

As a founding member of APIAVote, she was part of APIAVote’s historic Presidential Town Hall in May 2008. Ms. Kwok was the first Asian American elected to the Wesleyan University Board of Trustees where she is currently serving a second term. Additional board service includes: Comcast & NBCUniversal Joint Diversity Council, National Japanese American Memorial Foundation, founding board member of the Asian Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund, Southeast Asia Resource Action Center and the Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development

Her views have been featured on national radio and TV programs as well as in major newspapers and magazines. Ms. Kwok has a B.A. in East Asian Studies and Music from Wesleyan University, a Masters in Public Administration from New York's Baruch City College, and a Management Development for Entrepreneurs Certificate from the Anderson School of Management, University of California Los Angeles.

Jean Lin

Jean Lin, Outreach Coordinator As a Chinese-American with a disability (cerebral palsy), Ms. Lin has first-hand experience in confronting the many barriers that people with disabilities often face in maneuvering throughout the disability services system. Through this personal experience, she strongly believes that it is vitally important for service providers to maintain consistency in their service delivery in multi-cultural communities in order to foster trust in under served communities who are traditionally mistrustful and tend to "fall-into-the-crack," and raise issues about disability rights and awareness to the cultural comfort level. Ms. Lin believes that service providers need to not only respect different cultures, but at the same time promote diversity awareness which will in turn promote increased knowledge regarding disability issue acceptance in all cultures.

Ms. Lin worked as a Multicultural Affairs Advocate for Protection and Advocacy, Inc. (PAI) for 7 years working with the under served multi-ethnic communities in disability right issues, particularly equal access to services for minorities with disabilities. A Chinese-American who grew up in Berkeley, California just one block away from the well-respected Center for Independent Living (CIL). Ms. Lin believes she is the product of the independent living movement.

Peter Wong

Peter J. Wong, Research Director, Dr. Wong received his PhD in urban planning at UCLA.

With UCLA Professor Lois Takahashi, Mr. Wong published a chapter on APIs with disabilities and employment in a forthcoming book on Asian American Health edited by the New York University School of Medicine.

He has presented his work on API with disabilities at conferences including: the Society of Disabilities Studies in San Francisco, the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Summit in San Jose, California; and the APIDC Regional Conference in Garden Grove, California.

Mr. Wong has been active in the Asian and Pacific Islander disability community for over ten years, and has been a research contributor to APIDC.

Peter received his B.A. from UCLA, and holds master’s degrees in public policy from the University of Michigan and in economics and planning from the London School of Economics. He served as a senior advisor at the White House National Economic Council to President CLinton, where he specialized in income maintenance and poverty statistics. Prior to the White House, Mr. Wong worked on Capitol Hill as a Budget Associate on the House Budget Committee, and as a Budget and Tax Advisor for the Los Angeles City Council. He is a first-generation Chinese American who lives in Southern California.

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Asian and Pacific Islander Americans and Diabetes

Although data on the number of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans who have diabetes are limited, studies show that type 2 diabetes is a growing problem among some groups within this population. For example, the prevalence of type 2 diabetes is 2 to 3 times higher among Japanese Americans living in Seattle compared with non-Hispanic whites. The prevalence is 2.5 times higher among Native Hawaiians compared to white residents of Hawaii.

Bridging service and cultural barriers for:

• API individuals with disabilities
• Community-based organizations in the API community
• The disability community
• Family and friends of APIs with disabilities

Funding provided By