Stephen Gong, President

Stephen Gong is the Executive Director of the Center for Asian American Media. Stephen has been associated with CAAM since its founding in 1980, and has served as Executive Director since 2006. His previous positions in arts administration include: Deputy Director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley, Program Officer in the Media Arts program at the National Endowment for the Arts, and Associate Director of the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute. He has been a lecturer in the Asian American Studies program at UC Berkeley, where he developed and taught a course on the history of Asian American media. In addition to writing about film history, Stephen has provided critical commentary on several DVD projects including Treasures From American Archives, Vol 1 & 5 (National Film Preservation Foundation), Chan is Missing (dir. Wayne Wang), and is the featured historian in the documentary Hollywood Chinese (Dir. Arthur Dong). He is the Board Chair of the Center for Rural Strategies and serves on the Advisory Board of the San Francisco Silent Film Society.

Buck Gee

Buck Gee is an Executive Advisor to Ascend, a nonprofit Pan- Asian organization of business professionals. In 2010, he co-founded the Advanced Leadership Program for Asian American Executives, an executive education program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Buck retired in 2008 from Cisco Systems, where he was Vice President and General Manager of the Data Center Business Unit. He joined Cisco with its 2004 acquisition of Andiamo Systems where he was President and CEO. Buck has held management positions at Hewlett Packard, National Semiconductor, 3Com, Crescendo Communications, and Com21. He has also taught computer and engineering courses at Stanford University and Howard University. He is a member of the Committe-of-100 and serves on its public policy committee. He is the Board Chair of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation and also serves on the board of the Asia Society of Northern California. Buck holds BSEE and MSEE degrees from Stanford University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Tom Kohler, Arts Administrator

With the proven ability to envision, design, integrate, and execute projects worldwide, Tom Kohler is a creative agent with years of experience in business development, change management, conceptual ideation, emerging technology, project management, strategy development, and user experience. Prior to following his passion into the arts and creative industries, Tom spent two decades in the corporate and start-up sectors in more than twenty-five countries across four continents. He managed a series of successful first-in-industry initiatives with budgets in excess of $10M, including the first Blockchain Hackathon for Good at the World Economic Forum, garnering numerous national and international awards for innovation. He continues to strive to amplify and empower creative voices as a cheerleader, guardian, and thought partner, fostering inclusiveness by socializing art in new ways.

Charise Fong, Consultant

Named one of San Francisco Business Times’ 100 Most Influential Women in Business for 2021, Charise Fong has twenty-five years of experience in all aspects of community development, affordable housing, and community advocacy. She has overseen Commercial Real Estate, Finance/Accounting, Human Resources/Administration, Impact Evaluation, Neighborhood Collaborations, Neighborhood and Economic Development, Property Management, and Real Estate Development. Charise was a longtime member of the executive leadership team at East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation, having served as their Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of Community Building, in addition to Interim CEO and Interim CFO. As a primary architect of the group’s Healthy Neighborhoods strategy, she guided collective impact initiatives in two Oakland neighborhoods. She was a co-founder of the SparkPoint Oakland financial center and currently has a consulting practice, CFong Consulting.

Vincent Pan, Vice President

Vincent Pan is the co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA), a community-based civil rights organization headquartered in San Francisco Chinatown and a national leader on issues of racial and social justice. Vincent also serves on the leadership team of the Stop AAPI Hate coalition, which was co-founded by CAA to address anti-Asian racism, and is a leader of Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality, a network of eleven Asian American social justice groups committed to progressive movement building. Prior to joining CAA in 2006, Vincent worked with the Clinton Foundation in Beijing on HIV/AIDS issues, and before that in Washington, D.C. as the co-founder of an AmeriCorps youth development group. Vincent also serves as Board Co-Chair of the Center for Asian American Media and on the boards of the Campaign for College Opportunity and the Chinatown Media and Arts Collaborative.

Jay Xu

Dr. Jay Xu has served as Director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco since 2008, and is the first Chinese American director at a major American art museum. Jay is committed to deepening understanding of Asian art and culture in the global context, and to advocating the art museum as an essential platform for cross-cultural understanding. Under his leadership, the museum launched the Transformation Project, which involved the launch of contemporary art, expansion of exhibition and public spaces, renovation of collection galleries and education classrooms, and investment in digital tools for deeper and richer audience engagement, all underwritten by a $100 million campaign that Jay personally led. Jay serves in a variety of professional and civic responsibilities including the J. Paul Getty Trust, Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Arts & Cultures Advisory Council at the America250 Foundation, Washington, DC. He earned his MA and PhD in early Chinese art and archaeology at Princeton University.

Linda Lui, Head of Marketing & Communications

A creative strategist with over fifteen years of international experience in the cultural arts, fashion industry, and academia, Linda Lui’s work ranges from commercial and luxury brands to nonprofit institutions, fine arts museums, and universities. The melding of these diverse worlds cultivated her interdisciplinary methodology for the practice of marketing to entail the application of social science, data, cultural forecasting and intellectual innovation. An early career in academia widened the aperture of Linda’s lens with critical analysis and theory, enhancing her work for brands such as Levi Strauss & Co. and Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy. Her international experience includes commissions for Musée de Montmartre and Jardins de Marqueyssac, experiential programs at Institut Néerlandais, editorial content for Highsnobiety, spearheading successful membership to the Fédération de la Haute Couture for emerging brands, and public relations and creative services during Paris Fashion Week. Linda is a native San Franciscan whose upbringing was directly impacted by the Chinatown community’s support and resources. Joining the CMAC team to realize its vision is therefore much like coming full circle. She holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and University of Michigan.