J. Mae barizo

Born in Toronto, J. Mae Barizo is a poet, performer and author of The Cumulus Effect (Four Way Books) and Tender Machines (Tupelo Press 2023). Her book of hybrid essays, Pink Noise, was a finalist for the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from Bennington College, The New School, Jerome Foundation and Poets House. Recent writing appears in Poetry magazine, Ploughshares, Esquire, Iowa Review and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She has taught writing and transdisciplinary studies at the Pratt Institute, Eugene Lang and Parsons School of Design. She is on the MFA faculty of The New School and lives in New York City.

WYLIE CHEN

Wylie Chen (Vice President) has nearly 20 years of experience in nonprofit management focusing on social justice, youth development, and sports philanthropy. He has worked with numerous national and regional non-profit organizations where he led programmatic and grantmaking efforts, and implemented out-of-school time literacy and enrichment programs nationwide. He holds an Ed.M. in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from Harvard University and a Bachelors in Public Policy from the University of Oregon. Wylie lives in Washington, DC and enjoys traveling, writing, and spending time with his family.

DICKSON CHIN

Dickson Chin is a partner at Jones Day in New York City. He has 20 years of experience representing investors, financial institutions, utilities, developers, energy marketers, commercial users, and other market participants in a wide range of energy transactions. His practice encompasses energy marketing and trading, renewable energy, project finance and development, construction, joint ventures, and mergers and acquisitions.

CHIA-CHEE CHIU

Chia-Chee Chiu is an educator and school leader with 25 years of experience. She began her teaching career as a middle and high school science teacher. As a systems thinker, Chia-Chee has led organizational transformation at schools through her work as a strategic leader in curriculum development, social-emotional learning, instructional coaching, faculty evaluation and supervision, and recruitment and retention best practices. She is a faculty member of the School Leadership Institute with NAIS, ASeA Leadership Lab, and currently serves as the Middle School Head at the Shady Hill School. Chia-Chee earned her Masters in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Masters in Curriculum & Instruction from the University of Kansas, and her Bachelors in Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology and English from Tulane University. She is a lifelong learner, a lover of poetry, and currently resides in Cambridge, MA.

Nina M. Chung

Nina M. Chung (Secretary) is an Account Director at Fenton Communications, providing strategic communications counsel to clients in corporate social good, global health and social advocacy. She has advanced social impact communications for over a decade, beginning her career at arts institutions such as the Getty Museum and Stanford Cantor Arts Center, as well as performing arts funder Doris Duke Foundation. Nina earned her M.Sc. degree in media and communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science and her B.A. degree in international relations at Stanford University. She also voices/narrates the poetry and prose of literary and visual arts publication Passengers Journal. After about 8 years of life in Brooklyn, she now resides near Los Angeles in Southern California

Sarah gambito

Sarah Gambito (Co-Founder) is the author of the poetry collections Loves You (Persea Books), Delivered (Persea Books) and Matadora (Alice James Books). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, POETRY, Harvard Review, American Poetry Review, The New Republic and other journals. She holds degrees from The University of Virginia and The Literary Arts Program at Brown University. Her honors include the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets and Writers, The Wai Look Award for Outstanding Service to the Arts from the Asian American Arts Alliance and grants and fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York Foundation for the Arts and The MacDowell Colony. She is Professor of English / Director of Creative Writing at Fordham University.

Joseph O. Legaspi

Joseph O. Legaspi (Co-Founder), a 2015 Fulbright fellow, is the author of the collections Threshold (CavanKerry Press, 2017) and Imago (University of Santo Tomas Press (Philippines); CavanKerry Press (U.S.)), and two chapbooks: Aviary, Bestiary (Organic Weapon Arts), winner of the David Blair Memorial Prize, and Subways (Thrush Press). A graduate of New York University’s Creative Writing Program, his poems appeared or are forthcoming in American Life in Poetry, World Literature Today, PEN International, North American Review, Callaloo, Bloomsbury Review, Poets & Writers, Gulf Coast, Gay & Lesbian Review, and the anthologies Language for a New Century (W.W. Norton) and Tilting the Continent (New Rivers Press). A recipient of a poetry fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, he resides in Queens, NY and works as Assistant to the Administrator at The Pulitzer Prizes.

Sonia Mukherji

Sonia Mukherji is a Vice President and Manager in Marketing at Neuberger Berman New York. Prior to this, Sonia led the EMEA and APAC Marketing Collateral Management teams in London and Hong Kong. Before that Sonia was part of Neuberger Berman’s Investment Strategy Group, responsible for customized asset allocation recommendations, portfolio implementation, tactical rebalancing, and manager research, following her completion of the analyst program at Lehman Brothers. Sonia received an MBA in Financial Instruments and Markets and Corporate Finance from New York University Stern School of Business and a BS in Math with a concentration in Economics from the University of Maryland. She is in the steering committee of the NB Asian Network, an employee resource group that focuses on advocacy, diversity, and leadership for pan-Asian employees globally. As a recipient of the Kundiman fellowship at the University of Virginia, her writing has been published and translated in literary journals across the US, South Asia, and the UK, while her screenplay was selected by the Oscar qualifying Rhode Island International Film Festival.

Leslie P. Norton

Leslie P. Norton is editorial director, sustainability, at Morningstar, where she makes sustainable investing legible to investors and the advisors who serve them. Previously, she was a writer and editor at Barron's, where she managed the magazine's well-known Q&A feature and launched its sustainable investing coverage. Before that, she was Barron's Asia editor and mutual funds editor. She holds degrees from Yale College and Columbia University. She lives in NYC with her son.

RICCO SIASOCO

Ricco Siasoco (he/him) is President of the Board. He is a writer and educator with more than 22 years of leadership experience. Ricco is currently the Dean of Student Life and Culture at The Waverly School, where he supports students in navigating academic, co-curricular, and socio-emotional life. He has served in senior leadership, classroom teaching, and diversity practitioner roles at The Urban School of San Francisco, The Chadwick School, The Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Prep for Prep, and Boston College. Ricco is a frequent speaker and facilitator on diversity, equity, and inclusion topics including the NAIS People of Color Conference, Asian American Educators, NYSAIS Gender and Sexuality Diversity, and is on faculty of the NEH Institute on Immigration in California. He holds a BS from Boston University, an MFA from Bennington College, and is completing his EdD from Teachers College, Columbia University. Ricco is a board member at Marin Primary & Middle School, California Teacher Development Cooperative, and Kundiman. Ricco published a collection of short stories entitled The Foley Artist (Gaudy Boy Press, 2019) and lives with his husband and senior dog in Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

Stephen hong sohn

Stephen Hong Sohn, a former University of California President’s Postdoctoral fellow (2006-2007), has edited or co-edited a number of different works and special issues, including Transnational Asian American Literature: Sites and Transits (Temple University Press, 2006); Studies in the Literary Imagination (SLI, Vol. 37.1, Spring 2004) on Asian American Literature; MELUS (Winter 2008) on the topic of “Alien/Asian”; and Modern Fiction Studies on the topic of “Theorizing Asian American Fiction” (2010). He is the author of a number of articles and book chapters. He co-edited Karen Tei Yamashita’s Anime Wong: Fictions of Performance (Coffee House Press, 2014). His first book, Racial Asymmetries (New York University Press, 2014), focuses on contemporary Asian American fictional production, social context methodology, and aesthetic practices. His second book, Inscrutable Belongings (Stanford University Press, 2018) considers alternative kinship, communal formations, and plots of survival in queer Asian North American fictions. It was the Winner of the 2020 Asian American Studies Book Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Humanities and Cultural Studies: Literary Studies, sponsored by the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS).

GENEVIVE TRENCHER

Genevive Trencher graduated from Emerson College with a BS in Communication Studies with a minor in psychology. She has spent the last 15 years working in various roles across the marketing and advertising ecosystems for both startups and enterprise companies. Some of these companies include Bloomingdale's, Meredith, Yahoo, Optimatic Media (acquired by Matomy Media), BlueKai (acquired by Oracle), Publicis, and Drawbridge (acquired by LinkedIn). She is also a certified yoga instructor and health coach. In her free time, she is passionate about reading, writing, and traveling.

Jimmy Yan

Jimmy Yan currently serves as Special Counsel to the Chief Investment Officer at the Office of the New York City Comptroller’s Bureau of Asset Management which manages the investments of the NYC pension funds. Prior to this, he worked as General Counsel in the Manhattan Borough President’s Office and General Counsel in the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs.  He began his career as a public interest attorney working in the areas of immigrant rights, education law and senior issues. Prior to law school at NYU, Jimmy was an English and Ethnic Studies double major at the University of California at Berkeley where he was a co-editor of Tea Leaves, an Asian American student literary arts journal. He grew up in Memphis, Tennessee.  Jimmy is proud to have been a supporter of Kundiman and the vision of its founders, particularly Sarah Gambito, from its inception and is gratified to see its ongoing success and support for Asian American poets. 

Margaret Breed

Margaret Breed is an event planner and non-profit fundraiser with particular expertise in event logistics, arts organizations, theater companies, and donor experience. She currently serves as the Director of Special Events for The Drama League and has served as Director of Special Events at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and as a Group and Event Sales Assistant at the New York City Opera.

Jennifer Ho

Jennifer Ho is a professor in the department of Ethnic Studies and the director of the Center for Humanities and the Arts (CHA) at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author of three books: Consumption and Identity in Asian American Coming-of-Age Novels (Routledge Press, 2005), Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2015), which won the 2016 South Atlantic Modern Languages Association award for best monograph, and Understanding Gish Jen (University of South Carolina Press, 2015). She is co-editor of a collection of essays on race and narratology, Race, Ethnicity, and Narrative in the United States (OSU Press, 2017) and a series of teaching essays on Asian American literature, Teaching Approaches to Asian American Literature (forthcoming MLA). She has just been elected incoming president of the Association of Asian American Studies, effective April 2020. 

AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the illustrated collection of nature essays and Kirkus Prize finalist, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, & Other Astonishments (2020, Milkweed Editions), and four previous poetry collections: Oceanic (Copper Canyon Press, 2018), Lucky Fish (2011), At the Drive-in Volcano (2007), and Miracle Fruit (2003), the last three from Tupelo Press.  Her most recent chapbook is Lace & Pyrite, a collaboration of garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Her writing appears twice in the Best American Poetry Series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and Tin House. Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant, and being named a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.

EILEEN R. TABIOS

Eileen R. Tabios has released over 50 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental biographies from publishers in nine countries and cyberspace. Additionally, she has edited, co-edited or conceptualized 15 anthologies of poetry, fiction and essays, as well as exhibited visual art in the United States, Asia and Serbia. Her writing and editing works have received recognition through awards, grants and residencies. More information is available at http://eileenrtabios.com

MARCI CALABRETTA CANCIO-BELLO

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello (Secretary) is the author of Hour of the Ox (University of Pittsburgh, 2016), winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. With E.J. Koh, she co-translated Yi Won’s The World’s Lightest Motorcycle (Zephyr Press, 2021). Cancio-Bello has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kundiman, the Knight Foundation, and the American Literary Translators Association, and her work has appeared in Best Small Fictions, Kenyon Review Online, The New York Times, and more. She is co-director for the Adoptee Literary Festival and PEN America Miami/South Florida Chapter, and a program coordinator for Miami Book Fair. www.MarciCalabretta.com

KIEN LAM

Kien Lam is a Kundiman Fellow and a 2017 Best New Poet. He received his MFA in Poetry from Indiana University. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming from the American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Nation, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Los Angeles, where he writes about esports. 

tiana nobile

Tiana Nobile lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Kundiman fellow, and a recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award. A finalist of the National Poetry Series and Kundiman Poetry Prize, her writing has appeared in Poetry Northwest, The New Republic, Guernica, and the Texas Review, among others. Her full-length poetry debut, Cleave, is forthcoming in Spring 2021 by Hub City Press. For more, visit www.tiananobile.com

LAURA PRISCILLA PAULE

Laura Priscilla Paule is a San Francisco Bay Area native with a degree in Film Studies and minor in Communications from UC Davis. Since 2012, Paule worked as an arts producer and artist with local Bay Area Asian American arts organizations including Kearny Street Workshop, Center for Asian American Media, Asian American Women Artists Association and Bindlestiff Studio. Paule currently works for the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center and the Center for Cultural Innovation. Paule strives to support the arts community in various capacities in order to provide opportunities that foster social consciousness, equitable representation, and cultural enrichment for underserved communities and for artists developing their craft.