Douglas S. Chan

Director and Chairman of the Board

Douglas S. Chan is a veteran attorney with more than 40 years’ experience in international and domestic business law. He has held a variety of positions in public service and administrative law. He currently serves as a two-term commissioner with the San Francisco Civil Service Commission, and he is a former member of several other San Francisco commissions and boards. His previous public appointments over four decades include service on the California Small Business Board; San Francisco’s Human Rights, Police, Permit Appeals, Tax Assessment Appeals, and rent control commissions; and as a director and chairman of the Mayor’s Chinatown Economic Development Group, Inc., a quasi-governmental, nonprofit corporation charged with promoting the economic recovery of the Chinatown community after the Loma Prieta earthquake.

Prior to private practice, Chan served as a legislative aide to U.S. Senator Alan Cranston in Washington, D.C., advising on the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, Postal Service reorganization, civil aviation deregulation, labor law reform legislation, federal procurement policies and practices, and product liability insurance reform. In 1984, he was the principal author of Asian Americans and the Presidency of the United States, the first nationally-circulated position paper on Asian American issues.

He has received the highest (“a-v”) peer-review national rating and been named a Northern California “Super Lawyer” for business law. Chan's professional affiliations include memberships in the Business Law section of the State Bar of California; and the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area. He also serves as the president and chairman of the board for the Chinese Historical Society of America.

Nebi Alemu

Director

Nebi Alemu has over 20 years history of professional management experience in media, technology and transportation companies in Africa, Asia, Europe and the U.S. He possesses extraordinary knowledge of nonprofit and private organizations in international environments.   He has successfully engaged in a myriad of national and international issues. Mr. Alemu is active in political and grassroots community organizing, ethnic outreach, public speaking, diversity, and advocacy experience both internationally and domestically.

Mr. Alemu earned a Bachelors of Business Administration degree from University of Phoenix and received a higher business education certificate from Stanford University.

Keith Phillips

Director

Keith Phillips is a 20-year resident of Northern California. He has decades of experience in the financial services industry, chiefly insurance, and has co-founded several multibillion-dollar insurance companies in the US and abroad.

An avid student of military history and Pacific Island cultures introduced him to issues associated with recovering the missing soldiers of 20th century wars in Asia and Europe. Keith has for the past 20 years advocated in Washington for the recovery of the missing-in-action and has researched and assisted in the recovery of cases in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Philippines. To that end he founded Project Homecoming, for which he is Executive Director. He is a member of the Anthropology Faculty of the University of Illinois-Chicago and co-leads their Center for the Recovery and Investigation of the Missing in its efforts in support of the US Military’s efforts in this arena.

Keith is a graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the Booth School of the University of Chicago and has been active in several non-profit boards in the Bay Area.

Judy Rickard

Director

Judy Rickard is an equity and equality advocate and activist. She has worked on LGBTQ+ discrimination and solutions issues since the early 1970's. She is a past board member and president of BAYMEC, a five-county LGBTQ+ non-partisan political action committee. She now serves on the advisory board of the new BAYMEC Community Foundation. Judy has decades of experience working with candidates, politicians, educators, immigration groups, and community activists to halt discrimination, expand awareness and create lasting solutions to the negative scripting that separates people and groups.

She lives in San Jose, CA with her German-born wife Karin Bogliolo, who were instrumental in the fight to let American citizens sponsor their same-sex spouses for immigration to the U.S.

Everest Wong

Director

Everest Wong is the founder and managing member of Tactivest LLC, Registered Investment Advisor, founded 2014 in San Francisco, CA with branches in SF, Beverly Hills, and San Diego. Prior to founding his own investment businesses, Everest was asset manager with Citicorp (currently Morgan Stanley Smith Barney), WM Financial Services, and John Hancock. In 2020, Everest became a founding member of recently formed The Crypto Brokers ™ a crypto currency and NFT advisory firm.

Everest is a graduate of University of California at Berkeley and is an avid Tough Mudder competitor and cook. He a founding member of Project Homecoming which focuses on finding and retrieving the remains of service member who died overseas. He is also an active member of his children’s PTA chapters.

Mark Young

Director

Mark Young is a real estate and tech investor with projects throughout the Bay Area and California. He founded Young and Partners Inc. in 2015 and is partner in over 20 private equity companies. Mark is heavily involved in non-profit community work including co-founding Stand with Asians and promoting Black Asian Solidarity events. In 2022 he co-organized a National Justice for Asian Women rally to commemorate the 1-year anniversary of the Atlanta Spa shootings across 10 cities: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Twin Cities, New York, Sacramento, San Francisco, and Washington DC. He also co-organized a National Asian Justice rally to commemorate the 1 year anniversary of Vicha Ratanapakdee across 6 cities: San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta and Philadelphia.

Mark is a graduate of University of California Berkeley – Haas Business school.

Johnny Wang

Executive Director

Johnny Wang is a public relations and political consultant based out of San Francisco since 2002 and founded JKW Political Consulting in 2005. He has lead election campaigns including elections for Congressman Tom Lantos, Save JROTC in SF, Marin Healthcare District, SF Building and Construction Trade, and others. JKW Political has run proponent work for Earthlink, Google, EDS, Equality CA, and others and is a Pollie Award winning firm.

In 2013 he pursued his hobby of cooking and became chef for Wolfgang Puck and has appeared in multiple shows on Food Network. During this time, he continued his political involvement as executive director of Motor Voter CA focusing on GOTV operations in battleground congressional districts in CA and other states. Johnny has decades of experience working with non-profits including: Neighborhood Parks Council as Director of Strategic Development, Project Homecoming as Board of Directors, Motor Voter CA as Executive Director, A Healthier WE as Director of Business Development, and Chinese Historical Society of America as Board of Directors.

His hometown is Oakland and San Francisco and is a graduate of Haas Business School at UC Berkeley.