Center for Asian American Media
Board
Michael Hsieh
Chair President
was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the United States at the age of 10. He graduated with a B.A. degree in Economics from Harvard College and received an MBA from Harvard Business School. In 1997, Michael and his wife Tonia found their passion in producing feature films and documentaries on Asian American stories. Together they co-founded Celestial Pictures, LLC and helped produce several feature films: Restless, The Debut and American Knees. He is currently President of LF USA Investments, Inc., a private equity fund that focuses on bringing U.S. businesses to Asia for outsourced manufacturing and distribution. Michael has served on the Board of the San Francisco Harvard Club, Center for Pacific Rim at the University of San Francisco, and serves as a Board of Trustee for the Head Royce School in Oakland.
Glenn Osaka
Vice Chair
Glenn Osaka was most recently the President and CEO of Reactivity, the leader in providing network appliances that secure, accelerate and simplify the use of XML technologies in the enterprise. Glenn has over 25 years of experience leading innovation in the technology industry. Glenn previously served as Vice President and General Manager of the Hewlett Packard Company where he held several key leadership positions in the company’s enterprise server, software and professional services businesses. Glenn currently serves as a board member at Glasshouse Technologies; a consulting firm focused on assisting Fortune 1000 companies navigate the complexities of enterprise storage solutions and as a board member for Cocoa Bon, an innovative company producing a new line of gourmet chocolates. He is a past board member of CommerceNet, a technology industry consortium that led many early efforts around the use of the Internet for electronic commerce. Glenn earned a bachelor’s degree and an MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Johnnie D. Giles
Secretary
Johnnie D. Giles is Vice President of Government Affairs for the Bay Area at Comcast Corporation. He serves on the California Cable Television Association Law and Public Policy Committee, and is associated with National Association of Minorities in Cable, APAPA, and Vision New America. He started his career at the Chronicle Publishing Company helping the firm double its size in just over 4 years. He then worked in Chronicle’s Cable Television division and held numerous position before returning to Chronicle’s Corporate office with a particular interest in emerging technologies. During the late 90’s Johnnie took a break from the telecommunications industry and worked at Age Wave Inc., a start-up incubator with an initial investment fund of more than $250M, where he served as the VP of Administration before becoming a partner at, Blacksquare, LLC in 2000. Johnnie graduated from UC Berkeley and received his MBA at Pepperdine University.
Dipti Ghosh
Treasurer
Dipti Ghosh is Vice President of Investments at UBS in San Francisco. She has been in the financial services industry for 20 years and has also spent time as a fund development coordinator at Asian Women’s Shelter. She is currently, chairperson of The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, and past board member of Trikone a South Asian LGBT organization. When not managing money for clients, or fulfilling community obligations, she spends time discovering the greater bay area on her bicycle and traveling with her partner Meggy, and of course, taking time off to watch the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.
Gaurav Dhillon
Board Member
Gaurav Dhillon is the CEO and Founder of jaman, an online world media community launching in the fall of 2006. Prior to jaman, Gaurav was a founder and CEO of Informatica (Nasdaq:INFA). As a founder and CEO throughout, he took the company from a two person idea in 1992 to a public company with over 1000 employees worldwide and over $200 million in revenue. Gaurav left Informatica in 2004, and started jaman in 2005.
Lisa Hsia
Board Member
Lisa Hsia is Senior Vice President of New Media at Bravo, the cable entertainment network owned by NBC Universal. She oversees Bravo’s programming opportunities in new and emerging media, including wireless, digital, interactive TV, electronic sell-through and VOD. She is responsible for all aspects of the business, including technology alliances, content and marketing partnerships. Prior to Bravo, Ms. Hsia was Vice President of News at NBC News, supervising the TODAY show, Dateline and NBC News Productions. She has had a long career as a documentary producer, mostly on topics relating to China, for PBS and produced the first co-production of a feature film in China. She is the recipient of six Emmy Awards. Ms. Hsia graduated from Harvard University and attended Beijing University and Stanford University on graduate fellowships.
Philomena King
Board Member
Philomena King is the Managing Director of King & Co. Works of Art, which specializes in Fine Chinese works of art dating back to 6000 B.C to the Qing Dynasty. Being the fourth generation is this industry has enabled her to see and experience Chinese art in a new light. She has also worked with several non-profit organizations in San Francisco such as being a founder and charter member with Monsoon, at the Asian Art Museum; on the Board of San Francisco Performances for 6 years and Co-Chaired their annual gala 4 years in a row. She has also helped put together the San Francisco Symphony’s Chinese New Year Gala two years in a row and Co-Chaired the After Party for the Symphony’s Opening Night. She has also helped various groups fundraise such as VNHelp to bring wheelchairs back to Vietnam and the CAA (Chinese For Affirmative Action).
David LeiBoard Member
David Lei worked as social worker in San Francisco’s Chinatown with at risk youths before starting his business in 1981 specializing in exporting consumer products to Mexico. He recently sold his business and retired at the end of 2006. David has a passion for building communities, social changes/improvements, youth education and the arts so he actively participates on following non-profit boards: Asian Art Museum, Chinese Performing Arts Foundation, San Francisco Lunar New Year Parade & Festival, Chung Ngai Dance Troupe, Academy of Chinese Performing Arts, World Arts West – San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, Berkeley China Initiative – University of California, Berkeley, and the Asian Chefs Association. David has been married for 33 years with one grown daughter. He attended public schools in San Francisco and graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a degree in Business Administration.
Susie Jin Pak
Board Member
Susie Jin Pak is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at St. John’s University where she teaches U.S. American History. Her classes include Asian American History, History Through Film, Women in American History, The Emergence of Modern America, and US History Post-1945. Pak received her Ph.D. in history from Cornell University in 2004 and her B.A. in history with a concentration in women’s studies from Dartmouth College in 1994. Pak has also worked in the field of documentary film, serving as the Director of Development and Outreach for ROJA Productions on Citizen King, a two-hour documentary film on the last five years of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life that aired on PBS’ American Experience in January 2004, and Matters of Race, a four-hour, six-part documentary film series that aired on PBS in September 2003, which studied the significance of race in contemporary American society. She has been a research consultant to the Ford Foundation’s Media, Arts & Culture program since 2004.
Parmila RamchandaniBoard Member
Parmila Ramchandani is the director of finance at Plum TV. Plum TV is a television production and distribution company based in New York with local presence in Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Vail, Aspen and the Hamptons. Previous to Plum, she was the business manager at Firelight Media, Inc. Firelight produced the 2004 Sundance Jury Prize winning documentary, “The Murder of Emmett Till.” She was the producing advisor on the film “Balikbayan,” which garnered the 2004 Cine Manila Best Short and the Best Experimental Video award from the 2004 San Diego Film Festival. She is an Omicron Delta Epsilon scholar and holds an MBA and an MIM from Thunderbird University.
Ann Ruckstuhl
Board Member
Ann Ruckstuhl is a seasoned Silicon Valley entrepreneur and executive with diverse experience in enterprise software, on-line auction/marketplace, electronic payments, digital content management, networking, servers and microprocessors. Most recently, as VP of Marketing of Sybase, Ann was instrumental in re-positioning Sybase from a traditional database company to a leader in enterprise mobility in areas of data connectivity, embedded mobile database, device management, security, and mobile applications. Ann held pivotal roles with a number of high tech firms and start-ups including HP, The Content Group, Billpoint and eBay. As VP of Strategy at The Content Group, Ann drove many early-stage Web projects that enabled media conglomerates to digitize, archive, index, search, distribute, meter and monetize their IP-based content. In the late 1990’s, Ann was a part of the core team at Billpoint (later acquired by eBay) that pioneered on-line person-to-person payments — further democratizing the Internet by allowing anyone to buy, sell and pay each other efficiently. Ann moved to the US from Taiwan at the age of 15 and enjoys projects that allow her to bridge and foster collaboration between the US and Asia. Ann earned both an MBA and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida.
Jean TsienBoard Member
Jean Tsien has been working in the field of documentary for the past 20 years mainly as an Editor. Tsien’s PBS editing credits includes the 2001 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature, “Scottsboro: An American Tragedy”, the film also won a Primetime EMMY for the American Experience. “A Hymn for Alvin Ailey,” won the Primetime EMMY for the PBS Great Performance, Dance in America series. Tsien was the Editor for two Peabody Award and Christopher Award winning films such as: “Malcolm X: Make It Plain” and ITVS produced documentary “Travis”, a film about a boy’s fight with AIDS. Tsien got involved with CAAM when she was editing “My America: or Honk If You Love Buddha.”
France Viana
Board Member
France Viana is a strategic marketing consultant for top brands and Fortune 100 companies with expertise in brand management, advertising and nonprofit marketing. She has led marketing campaigns for top brand names include Visa and AAA, and in Asia, for the Asian Development Bank and Philippine Airlines. A dedicated nonprofit contributor, she headed the marketing department of the San Francisco World Affairs Council, and co-founded the World Ecologists, which grew to be one of the largest Asian grassroots urban reforestation organizations, winning a UN “Global 500” award at the Rio Earth Summit. She claims to be able to bake Thirty Minute Brownies in twenty minutes.
L. Ling-chi WangBoard Member
L. Ling-chi Wang is Associate Professor and Director of the Asian American Studies Department at U.C. Berkeley. He is a founder of Chinese for Affirmative Action and former board member of Chinese Culture Center, Chinese-American Democratic Club, Youth Law Center, Chinese Historical Society and San Francisco Hearing Society. He was an advisor to the PBS Series on Asian American Civil Rights and is President of Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education. Ling-chi received a Masters Degree in Semetic Studies from U.C. Berkeley.
Mona Lisa YuchengcoBoard Member
Mona Lisa Yuchengco is the founder and until recently, the publisher of Filipinas Magazine, the only nationally circulated, glossy publication for and about Filipinos in America. She is also the founder and chair of Philippine International Aid, a non-profit organization that provides educational assistance to indigent children in the Philippines. She is active in the following non-profit boards: Asian Pacific Fund, Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Inc. (LEAP), CAAM, USF’s Center for the Pacific Rim, Asia Society (Northern California) among others. She has won numerous community leadership awards; the most recent include being named “Woman of the Year”, District 8 and “Asian Leadership Award” from Asian Business League.
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