Our Staff

Daphne Kwok, Executive Director

Daphne Kwok has serves the Asian American community as Executive Director of Asians and Pacific Islanders with Disabilities of California, Executive Director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation in San Francisco, Executive Director of the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies, and for 11 years, as the Executive Director of the Organization of Chinese Americans. Empowerment of all APAs has long been one of Ms. Kwok's core values. In 1997, Ms. Kwok was the first elected Chair of the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, a network of national APA organizations. As a founding member of APIAVote, she was part of APIAVote’s historic Presidential Town Hall in May 2008. Ms. Kwok was the first Asian American elected to the Wesleyan University Board of Trustees where she is currently serving a second term. Additional board service includes: National Japanese American Memorial Foundation, 1990 Institute, San Francisco Architectural Heritage and an Advisory Board Member to the National Conference on Citizenship. Ms. Kwok has served as Co-Chair of the Asian Pacific American Caucus of the American Political Science Association, founding board member of the Asian Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund and a board member of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center and the Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development. Her views have been featured on national radio and TV programs as well as in major newspapers and magazines. Ms. Kwok has a B.A. in East Asian Studies and Music from Wesleyan University, a Masters in Public Administration from New York's Baruch City College, and a Management Development for Entrepreneurs Certificate from the Anderson School of Management, University of California Los Angeles.

Jean Lin

Jean Lin, Outreach Coordinator As a Chinese-American with a disability (cerebral palsy), Ms. Lin has first-hand experience in confronting the many barriers that people with disabilities often face in maneuvering throughout the disability services system. Through this personal experience, she strongly believes that it is vitally important for service providers to maintain consistency in their service delivery in multi-cultural communities in order to foster trust in under served communities who are traditionally mistrustful and tend to "fall-into-the-crack," and raise issues about disability rights and awareness to the cultural comfort level. Ms. Lin believes that service providers need to not only respect different cultures, but at the same time promote diversity awareness which will in turn promote increased knowledge regarding disability issue acceptance in all cultures.

Ms. Lin worked as a Multicultural Affairs Advocate for Protection and Advocacy, Inc. (PAI) for 7 years working with the under served multi-ethnic communities in disability right issues, particularly equal access to services for minorities with disabilities. A Chinese-American who grew up in Berkeley, California just one block away from the well-respected Center for Independent Living (CIL). Ms. Lin believes she is the product of the independent living movement.

Carolyn Leung

Carolyn Leung, Development Coordinator Ms. Leung completed her Ph.D at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her dissertation, “Intellectual landscapes: Doing work that honors our communities” is an in-depth, case study of Asian American women faculty who do community-based research at different universities. She has been trained in a variety of research methods including focus groups, interviews, case study, and ethnography and has done research on a variety of populations including housing residents, students, parents, community organizers, teachers, and principals. She has taught Asian American Studies classes at San Francisco State University and the University of Massachusetts Boston. She has a collaborative research article being published by Teachers College Press titled, “Beyond the Bake Sale: A community-based, relational approach to parent engagement.” She has been a community educator and advocate in the Asian American community for over ten years, serving as staff, Board member and consultant for several community-based organizations. Prior to graduate school, Ms. Leung was the Assistant Director for the National Asian Family/School Partnership Project, a national project in five cities that targeted building the capacity of community-based organizations and schools to better serve Southeast Asian American families. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, San Diego, a master’s degree from the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Life experiences have taught her about disability issues; both she and her mother have a disability. She wrote the conference report from APIDC’s first intervention in 1999. She is a second-generation Chinese American and is planning to move to San Francisco (her birthplace) with her husband upon graduation in June 2009.

Peter Wong

Peter J. Wong, Research Director Mr. Wong is a PhD candidate in urban planning at UCLA. His dissertation, “Hurdling Barriers: Labor and Employment Experiences of Asian Americans with Disabilities” focuses on employment challenges and successes for Asian Americans with disabilities. This is a mixed-methods approach that utilizes Census Data, focus groups, and in-depth interviews. It is the first study of its kind to take a holistic approach to address employment barriers for APIs with disabilities.

With UCLA Professor Lois Takahashi, Mr. Wong published a chapter on APIs with disabilities and employment in a forthcoming book on Asian American Health edited by the New York University School of Medicine. He has presented his work on API with disabilities at conferences including: the Society of Disabilities Studies in San Francisco, the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Summit in San Jose, California; and the APIDC Regional Conference in Garden Grove, California.

Mr. Wong has been active in the Asian and Pacific Islander disability community for over ten years, and has been a research contributor to APIDC.

He received his B.A. from UCLA, and holds master’s degrees in public policy from the University of Michigan and in economics and planning from the London School of Economics. He served as a senior advisor at the White House National Economic Council to President Clinton, where he specialized in income maintenance and poverty statistics. Prior to the White House, Mr. Wong worked on Capitol Hill as a Budget Associate on the House Budget Committee, and as a Budget and Tax Advisor for the Los Angeles City Council. He is a first-generation Chinese American who lives in Southern California.