Common Ground Program
COMMON GROUND
CLARK KERR CAMPUS
2601 WARRING STREET
BUILDING 10 GARDEN ROOM
GOLD SPONSOR 
Silver Sponsor
A huge shoutout to our planning committee, Dave Liu & Mark Young and our volunteer, Mathew Yoshimoto.
Big hugs for our sponsors, Liucrative Media and East West Bank
We are grateful to all our speakers
Plus a high five to my family who’s endured a lot of stress for this conference
Ditto for the community members who helped us spread the word: Chinese for Affirmative Action, California Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs, Stand with Asians, Stand with Asian Americans, Asians are Strong, Asian American Journalist Assocation, Helen Zia, Dianne Fukami, Jon Funabiki, Bruce Koon, and our Board of Directors- Dave Liu, Dickson Louie, Annie Lam and Ulash Thakore-Dunlap.
Schedule
9:00 – 9:30
Check in/Morning coffee & pastries/networking
Welcome
9:30 – 9:40
Randall Yip, Founder & Editor AsAmNews and President, Asian American Media Inc
Session 1:
9:40 – 9:50
Discord & Division in America
Neil Ruiz, Head of New Research Initiatives, Pew Research Center
Host: Randall Yip
Session 2
9:50 – 10:30
How Misinformation is used to divide us
Guest: Jinxia Niu, program manager for Chinese Digital Engagement for Chinese for Affirmative Action and editor of Piyaoba, the first Chinese-language fact-checking website
Moderator: Gabriel Young, Former White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islander Staff
Break 10:30-10:40
Session 3:
10:40 – 10:50
The Bridge
The film, The Bridge documents the growth of the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities through the eyes of East West Bank, established in 1973 to serve Asian Americans neglected by mainstream banks and the discrimination faced by the community. The movie features Academy Award Best Actress winner Michelle Yeoh and Olympic Gold Medalist Michelle Kwan.
Guest: Evan Jackson Leong, Hollywood Director
Moderator: Dave Liu, Liucrative Media
Session 4
10:50 – 11:00
Asian American Unity
Khydeeja Alam, Executive Director- California Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs
Session 5:
11:00 – 11:10
Pressure Cooker: Asian American Youth
Guest: Neil Ruiz, PEW Research: data on pressures faced by Asian American Youth
Session 6
11:10 – 11:50
Tiger Parenting: A Tiger Mom and Her Cub
Guest: Deb & Bethany Liu — Deb Liu is CEO of Ancestry.com and a self-proclaimed Tiger Mom. Bethany is her daughter who is not always appreciative of her mom’s parenting techniques
Moderator: Ryan Yamamoto, Anchor CBS5 San Francisco
Session 7
11:50 – 12:00
Break out: Your Turn
An opportunity for audience members to share their Tiger parenting experiences
Lunch until 1:00
Session 8:
1:00 – 1:10
Zumba demo and audience participation
Denise Lum, Fitness by D’sign
Session 9:
1:10- 1:20
The Facts on anti-Asian hate
Guest: Neil Ruiz share the latest data on prevalence of anti-Asian hate
Session 10:
1:20 – 2:20
Tough on Crime or heart of gold? Dealing with Anti-Asian hate?
Guests: Eddy Zheng, founder of Asian Prisoner Support Committee
Carl Chan, Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce
Moderator: Robert Handa, NBC Bay Area
Session 11:
2:20- 2:30
Breakout: Your Turn
Audience engages in discussion on criminal justice reform
Session 12:
2:30 – 2:40
The ABCs of the Race to College
Guest: Neil Ruiz of Pew
Session 13:
2:40 – 3:40
Race in college admissions
Guest: Sally Chen, Harvard graduate who while a student testified in federal court in support of affirmative action at Harvard
Nan Zhong, the father of a student who opposed use of race in college admissions. His son got hired by Google at age 18,but couldn’t get into an elite college.
Moderator: Ryan Yamamoto, Anchor, CBS5
Session 14
3:40 – 3:50
Breakout: Your Turn
Where do you stand on the issue?
Session 15:
3:50 – 4:30
Afternoon Mix & Mingle
Optional Awards Banquet (must purchase separate ticket)
5:30
Hong Kong East Ocean Seafood Restaurant
3199 Powell St, Emeryville, CA
Honorees:
- Asm. Phil Ting (D-SF) winner of the Lifetime Community Service Award
- Christopher Chow, the first Asian American TV News reporter to appear on local television in Northern California- winner Pioneer Journalist Award
- Dave Liu, Venture capitalist, author, cartoonist and Hollywood Executive Producer, Didi. Winner: Entrepreneurial Spirit Award
Speaker Biographies
Khydeeja Alam, Executive Director-California Commission on Asian and Pacific islander American Affairs (CAPIAA)
Khydeeja Alam is the Executive Director of the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs (CAPIAA). She was recently named the Sacramento Bee’s top 20 AAPI Change Maker of the Year.
With over 15 years of experience in California policy and politics, Khydeeja has advanced key legislation and state budget investments that have been transformative and meaningful.
Khydeeja serves on the University of California Center Sacramento (UCCS) Advisory Board appointed by the UC President’s Office. She serves on the Muslimahs in Policy (MIPS) Advisory Council and the National Advisory Board of APAPA.
Khydeeja previously was the Director of External and Legislative Affairs for California Volunteers under Governor Gavin Newsom. She also led Catalyst California’s Statewide policy and advocacy work for over a decade. Khydeeja is the immediate past president of CAIR Sacramento Valley/Central CA.
She was recognized as one of the top 40 Under 40 AAPI political professionals by NAAPPPA.
Carl Chan, Community Leader
Sally Chen is an organizer and advocate dedicated to building the capacity of working-class communities of color in their own neighborhoods. She is currently the Deputy Director of the nonprofit Livable City, whose mission is to empower and inspire San Franciscans to co-create an equitable, healthy, and joyful future. Before her current position, she held a variety of roles in her hometown of San Francisco, from running vocational training for Chinese immigrant workers to advocating for race conscious university admissions policies. As a first-generation college graduate from an immigrant family, she is a proud alumna of Harvard College, where she organized for racial justice issues including ethnic studies and affirmative action. Her testimony, writing, and analysis is featured in the Los Angeles Times, Bustle Magazine, and CalMatters.
Christopher Chow, Distinguished Journalist
In 1970 Christopher Chow became the first Asian American TV news reporter in Northern California.
He began his television career at KPIX-TV in San Francisco from 1970 – 1973 covering such stories as the killing of George Jackson trying to escape from San Quentin Prison, the second trial of Black Panther co-founder Huey Newton, bussing to desegregate San Francisco public schools, the outbreak of Chinatown youth gangs, and the abuses of agribusiness in California, the last two of which earned him Associated Press and Emmy awards.
He went on to work at PBS station KCET in Los Angeles where he served as a reporter and producer for the Dupont-Columbia Award-winning magazine show, 28 Tonight from 1976 – 1978.
His pioneering work paved the way for generations of Asian American journalists to follow him.
For that, Chow is the winner of AsAmNews Pioneer Journalist Award.
Besides his work in television, Chow has been a documentary film producer and director, working on the award-winning films Fall of the I-Hotel. Wendy…uh What’s Her Name?, Dupont Guy: The Schiz of Grant Avenue, and Lest We Forget: Highlights of Korean American Oral History. More recently Chow consulted on the making of the films Chinatown Rising, Like a Rolling Stone: The Life and Times of Ben Fong-Torres, and Free Chol Soo Lee.
He retired this year as a spokesperson for the California Public Utilities Commission Chow is now working on a history of Asian Americans in U.S. journalism.
He is the winner of the Bad Ass Asian Pioneer Journalist Award.
Robert Handa, Reporter, NBC Bay Area
Named the 2015 Reporter of the Year by the Associated Press, Robert Handa is a reporter for NBC Bay Area News. He joined NBC Bay Area in June 2014, returning to the station where he began his career more than three decades earlier.
In addition to his reporting duties, Handa hosts Asian Pacific America with Robert Handa, a weekly talk show featuring Asian newsmakers, events, community accolades, and youth perspectives. The program airs Sundays at 5:30 a.m. on NBC Bay Area, with an encore at 6 p.m. on COZI TV.
A South Bay native, Handa attended De Anza College, where he won a journalism contest that led to an internship at KNTV Channel 11.
Some of his most memorable assignments include flying with the Blue Angels, covering the 49ers’ Super Bowl victory, participating in an ocean rescue with the Air National Guard, producing a five-part series on Alaska, reporting from a boat during the Mavericks surf competition, and covering Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip’s visit to Hewlett-Packard.
Handa has interviewed a number of prominent figures, including President Jimmy Carter, the Dalai Lama, Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton, UFW founder Cesar Chavez, Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, 49ers quarterback Joe Montana, baseball legend Willie Mays, 49ers head coach Bill Walsh, Star Trek actors George Takei and John Cho, and TV star and producer Mindy Kaling.
He has received numerous awards from the Asian American Journalists Association, the Associated Press, and the Emmys.
Evan Jackson Leong, Hollywood Film Director
Director Evan Jackson Leong is a director and documentary filmmaker. Leong is most known for his documentary Linsanity about Jeremy Lin, which made its world premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. In 2017, he directed I AM MORE: OBJ an Uninterrupted produced docuseries following Odell Beckham Jr. for Facebook Watch. In
2021, his first narrative feature film SNAKEHEAD premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2023, he directed the Snapchat series Level Up with Stephen Curry. In 2024, Leong directed The Bridge, a story chronicling the 50 year journey of East West Bank.
Dave Liu, Hollywood Producer, Author and Wall Street Entrepreneur
Dave A. Liu, an award-winning movie producer, author and veteran of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood, is the winner of the inaugural AsAmNews Bad Ass Asian Entrepreneurial Spirit Award.
Liu is executive producer of DÌDI (弟弟), a feature-length film released nationwide in theaters this year and winner of the Audience Award for U.S. Dramatic film at the Sundance Film Festival.
He is also the author of the best selling book The Way of the Wall Street Warrior which Bloomberg selected as one of the best books of 2021.
During his career on Wall Street, Liu raised more than $15 billion for hundreds of companies and start-ups. In addition, he has started multiple companies employing hundreds of people.
Liu is an active philanthropist and serves on the board of Asian American Media Inc, the non-profit organization that publishes AsAmNews.
He also serves as Chairman of the Philanthropic Advisory Council of Smile Train, the world’s largest cleft-focused organization dedicated to bettering the cleft affected people, and the executive board of the Management & Technology program at the University of Pennsylvania.
Deb Liu, Ancestry President and Chief Executive Officer
Deb Liu is the President and CEO of Ancestry. She was previously a senior executive at Meta, where she created and led Facebook Marketplace, a platform for over a billion people to buy and sell. She also led the development of Facebook’s first mobile ad product for apps and its mobile ad network, in addition to building the company’s games business and payments platform. Prior to Facebook, she spent several years in product roles at PayPal and eBay, where she led integration between the two products. She serves on the board of Intuit and Ancestry.
Actively involved in promoting diversity in tech, Deb founded Women In Product, a nonprofit with over 30K members, with the goal of connecting and supporting women in the product management field. She is a member of the Committee of 100, and was named an A100 by Gold House, an honor recognizing impactful Asian Americans.
Deb received a BS in Civil Engineering from Duke University and an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Each week, she posts her thoughts in Perspectives, her Substack newsletter. She lives in California with her husband and three children.
Beth Liu, High School Junior
“Bethany Liu is a high school junior at Palo Alto High School. She enjoys writing, public speaking, and playing with fluffy dogs named Wonton.”
Denise Lum, Fitness by D’sign
Lum is a trainer and coach whose mission is to serve individuals that are ready to make themselves a priority. If you are willing to commit to a healthy lifestyle and step into your most confident self, as a Certified Personal Trainer and Nutrition Coach, she will help you to discover what will make fitness something you are passionate to have in your life. We’ll put together a plan and do the work. Together we will face challenges, but she will support your efforts and we will celebrate the wins!
Lum volunteers for numerous philanthropic causes including the Alzheimer’s Association
Jinxia Niu, Chinese for Affirmative Action
Jinxia Niu is the Program Manager of Chinese Digital Engagement at Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA), a San Francisco-based civil rights organization, where she leads efforts to combat online disinformation. She manages multiple digital platforms, including Piyaoba, the first Chinese-language fact-checking website, and oversees disinformation research and data analysis, such as the Chinese-language 2024 Election Disinformation Reports. Jinxia has also partnered with an NSF-funded AAPI disinformation research project, Co.Insights, and has worked closely with other Asian community leaders. Her work has been featured in major media outlets such as The Washington Post and NBC News, and she has spoken at various national and international disinformation conferences. Jinxia is also the author of two books on technology and society in Chinese and was previously a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Peace Innovation Lab.
Neil Ruiz, Head of New Research Initiative, Pew Research Center
Neil G. Ruiz is responsible for inspiring and advancing new opportunities for organizational growth and evolution. Neil is also the principal investigator of the Center’s comprehensive study of Asian Americans, which received the 2023 Inclusive Voices Award from the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). He has a background in applying demographic, qualitative, and survey research methods in the U.S. and around the world. He utilizes this mixed methods approach to studying Asian Americans, other racial and ethnic groups, and immigrant populations.
Prior to joining the Center, Neil worked as a migration and economic development expert at the Brookings Institution, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. He was also the executive director of the Center for Law, Economics and Finance at George Washington University. He is a political economist with a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master’s degree from Oxford University, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
Asm. Phil Ting
(D-SF)
California Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) will be awarded the AsAmNews Bad Ass Asian Lifetime Community Service Award Saturday in Emeryville.
Ting is being recognized for his 12 years in the California State Assembly, eight of those as chair of the Assembly Budget Committee.
During that time, the state passed a massive $160 million AAPI Equity Budget in response to the rapid rise of anti-Asian hate and racism that swept the country beginning with the pandemic.
Part of that money included $10 million for ethnic media. AsAmNews received two grants over two years of $100,000 which enabled us to establish ourselves as a non-profit and begin hiring a full-time staff.
Prior to his time in the legislature, he spent eight years as San Francisco’s County Assessor. There he audited the foreclosure of 400 homes in the city during the mortgage meltdown, finding irregularities and legal violations in 80% of the cases.
The findings lead the state legislature to push for legal oversight of the mortgage industry.
Ting also served as executive director of the Asian Law Caucus, a civil rights organization founded in 1972 to provide legal services to the Asian American community.
Ryan Yamamoto, News Anchor CBS Bay Area
Ryan Yamamoto is currently the Noon and 5pm anchor at KPIX CBS News Bay Area — where as a reporter he also led the station’s coverage at the Democratic National Convention this past month in Chicago, and last year’s APEC conference in San Francisco.
He has served as a reporter and anchor for 30-years, covering major California stories from the Ted Kaczynski “Unabomber” trial, the Yosemite Murders and arrest of Cary Stayner, the Scott Peterson case, the recall of Governor Gray Davis, the election of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. and several California wildfires.
Ryan has also covered many issues impacting the AAPI community, from the power of the Asian American vote, to covering his father’s journey during the Japanese Incarceration, and producing a documentary on Tommy Kono – a Japanese American who learned how to lift weights at Tule Lake, and went on to become the most decorated weightlifter in American history.
He is a six-time Emmy winner — including winning an Emmy this year for MMJ reporting.
Randall Yip, Founder & Editor, AsAmNews & President, Asian American Media Inc.
He just wrapped up a 40 year career as a newscast producer, segment producer, senior producer and executive producer at TV stations in California, Nevada and Oregon. In 2012, he launched AsAmNews as a one person passion project while still working full time in TV News. AsAmNews expanded to an all-volunteer staff of 20 publishing content 365 days a year.
In 2022, AsAmNews received non-profit status under the name Asian American Media Inc. Through donations, government and foundation grants, it now has a full time staff of four and a freelance staff of about two dozen.
The Library of Congress just selected AsAmNews to be part of its digital news archive, an honor reserved for news outlets of both cultural and historical significance. This means our content will be available to researchers and the general public for centuries to come.
AsAmNews has also been recognized by Ethnic Media Services, the Asian American Journalist Association, California Black Media, the AAPI Legislative Caucus, the Asian Hustle Network and the National Association of Asian Pacifics in Politics and Public Affairs.
AsAmNews is now translatable into traditional and simplified Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese.
Gabriel Young, former Staff White House Initiative on Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders
From San Jose, California, and Washington D.C., Gabriel Young (he/his) strives to be one for and with others by serving the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander community through multiple ventures. As a Masters of Public Policy candidate, Gabriel hopes to hone his skills in developing socio-economically equitable policies and laws while continually fighting for social justice.
Previously, Gabriel had the great honor to serve as the Staff Assistant for The White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (WHIAANHPI) where he helped the Biden-Harris Administration pursue Equity, Justice, and Opportunity for AA & NHPI communities by leading the youth engagement, higher education, and cultural outreach portfolios while supporting the Executive Director’s day-to-day administration, scheduling, and operations.
When not serving the administration, Gabriel co-hosted LEAD Filipino’s Policy, Politics, and Puto show where he led discussions and workshops surrounding how Filipino American identity influences policy change. Additionally, Gabriel served as the Filipino Young Professionals – DC Secretary, organizing events surrounding professional development and cultural education for Filipino Americans moving to the D.C. area.
Eddy Zheng, Founder New Beath Foundation
New Breath Foundation President and Founder Eddy Zheng (he/him) has been bridging communities for decades, particularly Black, Asian American, formerly incarcerated, immigrant, and refugee groups. Zheng spent over 20 years in California state prisons and immigration jails. During his incarceration, he earned his college degree, mentored youth, and reformed in-prison programming to make it more transformative and culturally relevant. His awards and fellowships include Open Society Soros Justice Fellow (2015), the Rosenberg Foundation’s Leading Edge Fellow (2019), and Frederick Douglass 200 awardee (2019).
Zheng is the subject of the award-winning documentary “Breathin’: The Eddy Zheng Story,” and has also been featured in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the New Yorker, PBS, NPR, the Guardian, SXSW, and at many more events and media outlets. Eddy is eager to collaborate with new partners in empowering marginalized communities and promoting cross-cultural healing and global racial solidarity, through engaging in culture, history, and identity.
Nan Zhong, Software engineer
Nan Zhong is a software engineer in Silicon Valley. He came from China in 1997 for his graduate study. After his son Stanley’s college application story hit national news in 2023, he received numerous emails from other Asian parents about similar cases. They organized a grassroot team of several thousand Asians, demanding more transparency in college admissions despite what he considers continued stonewalling by the University of California and the California governor.
