Debbie Chen
Lynda M. Yoshikawa
Nathan Zanon
Ryan Nagahori
Ryan Young
Warren Fujimura

Christine Padilla
Christine Padilla is a Field Representative and Liaison to the Filipino and other API communities for the Office of Congressman Lantos (CA – District 12). Christine’s dedication and commitment to community building also keeps her eventful as a consultant. Her expertise is in event production, public relations, marketing and project building. She works with numerous arts, community and entertainment organizations, and holds the position of Program Director for the Asian Heritage Street Celebration in San Francisco. Christine was the first San Jose Coordinator for NAATA’s San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival in 2001, helping expand the festival’s reach and availability in the South Bay.

Christine is a native of the Bay Area and holds a degree in American Studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Grace-Sonia Lee
Grace-Sonia is the outreach coordinator for the College of Engineering at San Jose State University. Prior to her work at the College, she was the Director of Community Relations for the Camera Cinemas, where she diversified the film and festival programming for the Silicon Valley art house theater chain. Currently, Grace-Sonia serves as a project consultant for Contemporary Asian Theater Scene. Her interests include arts education, queer advocacy, and movies with subtitles.

Herbert Ho
Herb is a professional software engineer and a recent Midwest transplant from Chicago. He is a staff member for Asian Americans for Community Outreach (AACO), a volunteer-run, Bay Area organization dedicated to creating a forum for both area professionals and students to meet and foster the common goal of community service.

His interests in First Thursdays include technology and it’s role in the API community and issues related to community involvement balanced with a full-time for-profit career.

Shelley Tadaki
Shelley started her work in the nonprofit field as a Program Associate, running scholarship programs for the Asian Pacific Fund. She has a strong interest in education policy and is currently the assistant director of the Asian American Activites Center at Stanford University. Prior to that she was the conference coordinator for Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education’s (APAHE) 2004 national conference.

Shelley also serves on the Board of Directors for the Stanford Asian Pacific American Alumni Club and is a founding organizer of Third Thursdays, First Thursday’s sister organization in San Francisco.

Billy Lu
Billy is a staff member for Asian Americans for Community Outreach, a community organization providing a range of volunteer opportunities for API professionals in the Bay Area. Billy has been active with other organizations such as Third Thursdays and Drink Club Social Awareness.

Professionally, Billy is a retired engineer who is starting over in marketing. Billy hopes to build a network of opportunities for all Bay Area API to participate in the community.

Ellen J. Lin
Ellen is a staff psychologist at San Jose State University. She provides a full spectrum of psychological counseling services to university students and supervises advanced-level clinical trainees. She has presented at national psychological conferences and is integrally interested in multicultural issues, Asian American perspectives, and various women’s issues.

Ellen started volunteering as an organizer with South Bay First Thursdays a year after its inception, and she strongly believes in its mission to increase awareness of Asian and Pacific Islander issues. She considers herself a life-long learner, and feels consistently nourished by the educational aspects and community building of SBFT events.

Dawn Lee
Dawn Lee is currently a PhD student in the Cultural Studies Program at UC Davis. She earned her BA in Political Science, also at UCD and has an MA in American Studies from New York University. Her MA focused on Asian Americans and popular culture, more specifically Asian American identity development through hip hop cultural production. After her MA, she spent 3 years working in the field of higher education, and as a result, her research interests have shifted to Asian American students in colleges and universities and how diversity policies and multicultural education programs factor into their identity development.

As a founding organizer of South Bay First Thursdays, she hopes that SBFT will help foster a greater sense of community amongst and give voice to younger Asian American and Pacific Islander professionals. She believes it is vital for all Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to continue learning, being engaged with, being aware of, giving back and having access to information about what is going on in their communities.

Serena Hu
Serena moved to the states from Taiwan with her family back in 93. A self proclaimed 1.5 generation, Serena enjoys examining API issues through her bicultural lenses. In the spring of 05, She found SBFT as an outlet to do so with a group of other young APIs from the south bay. She has been hooked ever since….!

Mary Ho
Mary Ho currently works at Santa Clara University as the Associate Director at the Center for Multicultural Learning. Originally from Southern California, she received your Masters in Higher Education Administration from New York University and her Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Irvine. In her spare time, she enjoys watching Grey’s Anatomy and coordinating the Traveling Trunk Show with her partners.

Janice Casil
Janice received her BA in Psychology from University of San Francisco in 2004. Upon graduation, Janice joined Public Allies of Silicon Valley and worked as an after school programs coordinator at the Mountain View Whisman School District.

Michelle Masuda
As a relatively new transplant to the South Bay, Michelle found First Thursdays to be a chance to reconnect with the Asian Pacific Islander community. She soon came onboard as a team player to help others do the same.

Michelle is currently working on her Masters in Nutritional Science at San Jose State University. Her goals are to help others achieve and maintain good health so that they may live their lives to the fullest. She describes herself as a compassionate humanitarian that enjoys volunteering and contributing her time to help others in the community.