Brief Bios:
CYJO is a Korean American, born 1974 in Seoul, who immigrated to the US in 1975. Her KYOPO Project is a photographic and textual project about immigration and identity through the lens of the Korean ancestry. Her most recent work, Substructure, is a photographic, textual and video portrait series documenting 50 Chinese migrants in Beijing. CYJO’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including: The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., T. Art Center, Beijing, The Art Atrium, London and The Korea Society, New York. Her work has been featured in numerous publications and broadcast including ELLE Korea, Global Times, La Lettre De La Photographie, The New York Times and PBS Sunday Arts News.
In 2009, Kevin Kim became the first Korean-American to win a primary in New York City when he won the Democratic nomination for NYC Council in the 19th Council District. Prior to his run, Kevin served as the Deputy Director of Community Affairs for Congressman Gary L. Ackerman (D–NY). His previous professional experiences include working as a federal law clerk to Judge Denny Chin (SDNY), corporate real estate attorney at Davis Polk & Wardwell and founding partner of Yoon Suh & Kim LLP. His active community involvement includes serving as a member of midtown Manhattan Community Board 5’s Public Safety and Quality of Life (Liquor License) and Parks Committees. He also sits on the boards of several non-profit organizations, including the American Red Cross (Queens), International Student Conference (Washington, D.C.) and the Korean American Community Foundation. Kevin received his B.A. and M.A. from Stanford University and his J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and a member of the Columbia Law Review.
Greg Pak is a writer and filmmaker best known for his feature film Robot Stories and for comic books such as Planet Hulk, Magneto Testament and the Hercules/Amadeus Cho saga for Marvel. He's currently writing Alpha Flight (with Fred Van Lente) and Astonishing X-Men for Marvel and Dead Man's Run for Aspen. For more, visit gregpak.com and twitter.com/gregpak.
She’s Korean. She’s Jewish. She’s a comic, wife, mother/slave. She’s that wacky oriental beauty, Esther Paik Goodhart. Esther was born in the heart of Texas to Korean parents. Her father, the famous Korean Presbyterian Minister and mother, the Oriental Tammy Faye Baker, are hoping she’s adopted...it would explain a lot. Driven nuts by her family, Esther found that performing in comedy clubs was a lot cheaper than psychotherapy. Esther made her debut at CAROLINE’S Comedy Club and has since played all of the major clubs in America from New York City to California. She enjoyed success with her one-woman Broadway play Out of the Wheelchair and Into the Fire!, which she wrote. Esther’s greatest thrill is her membership in the famed Friars’ Club and working for people who don’t call her “mommy.”
Anchor/Reporter Vivian Lee joined NY1 in September of 2008. Since then, Lee has covered topics ranging from a Russian national suspected of selling weapons to rebels across the world, to the closing of St. Vincent's Hospital, to hour-to-hour coverage of the Times Square foiled bomb plot and the mid-air collision of helicopter and plane that claimed nine lives in August 2009. Early in her tenure at NY1, Lee covered the mortgage crisis and MTA doomsday budget hearings. Among her accolades, in February 2011 Lee received the Asian American Business Development Center's award for Outstanding Community Service. She was also honored with the Asian Professional Exchange (APEX) Volunteer award in 2008.
A native Brazilian of Korean heritage, Jussara Lee was born in Sao Paulo in 1967 and relocated to the United States to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Upon graduating in 1991, she began her carrier selling to Big Drop, Barneys and Bergdorf Goodman followed by international distribution to Japan’s Isetan and Hong Kong’s Joyce. She has spent the last two decades mastering design on a large scale and as well as making custom made, hand tailored clothes. Her first flagship store was in Soho and she moved west to its current location in the Meatpacking District, in 2001. Jussara Lee creates with a purity of thought and design, producing timeless pieces that emphasize fit with fine custom tailoring and quality fabrics. As Lee's passions run beyond the world of fashion, she continues to educate her community on the importance of sustainability from both a business and environmental perspective, working on a small scale while making a great impact.
Alexandra Chang is the Director of Public Programs & Research Manager at the A/P/A Institute at NYU and is Co-Director of the NEH Summer Institute “Re-envisioning American Art History: Asian American Art, Research, and Teaching.” She is the author of Envisioning Diaspora: Asian American Visual Arts Collectives and recently curated the 2010-11 exhibition “Happy Together: Asian and Asian American Art from the Permanent Collection” at The Bronx Museum of the Arts.
Suk Park is co-founder of DramaFever.com, a video streaming website featuring prime-time television content from Asia. Founded in 2008, DramaFever is now the largest aggregator and distributor of the Korean ‘drama’ genre in North America, streaming over 8 million videos a month. Suk has an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA in Economics from the University of Rochester. He was born Seoul, Korea, raised in the Canary Islands of Spain and has lived in New York since 1997. He currently resides in Manhattan’s Upper West Side with his wife Boram and their baby girl.