Committee of 100 Newsletter

Committee Co-sponsors “New Yorkers for Japan” Benefit for March 11 Earthquake and Tsunami Victims

 
On March 31, the Committee joined the Japanese American Association of New York, the Japan Society, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, and other Asian American groups in sponsoring a benefit at Circle in New York City to raise funds for disaster relief and recovery in Japan. The Japanese American Association has created a Japan Disaster Relief Fund to accept donations online.

     
Ming Tsai              Ta-lin Tsu

Committee Bridges: 20th Annual Conference News April-May 2011

• Letter from Chairman John S. Chen
• Chinese Economic Policy Official Liu He and Artist Cai Guo-Qiang to Receive Highest C100 Honors at New York Gala on May 12
• Seeking Common Ground:  Four Roundtables of American and Chinese Executives Look Ahead to the Sino-American Future
• Committee Awarded Fulbright-Hays Grant To Send California Teachers to China for Summer Institute
• Southern California Members Mentor Young Professionals to Nurture Career Success and Community Service

 

COMMITTEE DIPLOMACY

• Committee Hosts New Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy, Beijing

C100 EDUCATION INITIATIVE

• Committee of 100 Joins One Hundred Thousand Strong:  U.S. State Department Initiative to Boost Numbers of Americans Studying in China

C100 IN ACTION

• Committee Co-sponsors “New Yorkers for Japan” Benefit for March 11 Earthquake and Tsunami Victims

MEMBER NEWS

• New Members
  
  • Zheng Cao
  • Anna Mok
  • Ted Wang
• Honorable Mentions: Recent Awards to C100 Members
  • Maya Lin, Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal
  • Alice Young, Boy Scouts of America Greater New York Councils, Distinguished Woman Award, and Association of Asian American Yale Alumni
  • Shirley Young, National Dance Institute
  • Albert Y.C. Yu, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Distinguished Alumni Award
• C100 Members on the Lecture Circuit
  • Frank H. Wu
• Members In Print
  • Iris Chang

Committee Awarded Fulbright-Hays Grant To Send California Teachers to China for Summer Institute

The 2009 San Mateo Country China Summer Institute at the Yellow Crane Tower in Wuhan.

For the fourth summer, the Committee of 100 Education Initiative, under the leadership of Leslie Tang Schilling and C-100 Education Consultant Karen Leong Clancy, will be organizing “Silk Roads to the Silicon Highways,” a comprehensive program for middle and high school teachers to study Chinese culture and history and bring lessons and tools for teaching about China to their classrooms. Seventeen teachers will attend the five-week program from June 20 to July 23.

This time, however, will be different. The U.S. Department of Education has awarded a grant of $83,200 under its Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad Program to the Committee for the Summer Institute, making possible for teachers from all over California to participate in the expanded program, which now includes a full month of China experience.

Honorable Mentions: Recent Awards to C-100 Members—Alice Young, Boy Scouts of America Greater New York Councils, Distinguished Woman Award, and Association of Asian American Yale Alumni

Alice Young was presented with the Distinguished Woman of the Year Award by the Greater New York Councils, Boy Scouts of America, on April 15 for her career achievements and community service. The award recognizes “the vital role of women in Scouting and identifies positive role models for our youth members.” Young said this was “an amazing and heartwarming event—30 % of Boy Scouts are now girls and 70% are from single-parent homes, so this provides them with a safe learning environment. Many have never camped, never traveled—they learn strong values, responsibility and leadership.” Nickie Patterson of the Boy Scouts said that “women have played an essential role in all facets of Scouting from the Cub Scout Pack to the Executive Board level. In the 1970’s the young adult Exploring Program became co-educational, and today our Learning for Life Program that is conducted in classrooms also includes girls.”

Honorable Mentions: Recent Awards to C-100 Members—Maya Lin, Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal

The University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation which operates Jefferson’s home, Monticello, gave Maya Lin the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture. The medals are given “to recognize achievements of those who embrace endeavors in which Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, third U.S. president and U.Va.'s founder, excelled and held in high regard.”

Talking Points: C100 Members on the Lecture Circuit: Frank H. Wu

On April 11, Frank H. Wu, Chancellor and Dean of University of California Hastings College of Law, spoke at the Museum of Chinese in America in New York about Vincent Chin’s murder in Detroit in 1982 and how it sparked “the single moment when Asian Americans were born.”  Wu’s talk, “After Vincent Chin: A New Civil Rights Movement,” was introduced by United States Circuit Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Denny Chin.  Vincent Chin’s case awakened Wu and other Americans of Asian descent to the fact that in the eyes of mainstream America, “we were all lumped together.”  “It was the Chin case that taught me how important it was to stand out and speak up.  Coalition building is the key.  Chin was killed because people mistook him for Japanese.”  From this event, said Wu, a positive Asian American identity and movement was born.  View the full talk here.

Members In Print: New Publications by and about C-100 Members: Iris Chang

Author Iris Chang is remembered by her mother, Ying-Ying Chang, in a memoir to be published this May by Pegasus Books, The Woman Who Could Not Forget: Iris Chang Before and Beyond The Rape of Nanking. A member of the Committee until her untimely death in 2004, Chang was best known for her account reviving the forgotten horrors of the Rape of Nanking in World War II. Helen Zia wrote, “This beautiful and courageous memoir is the gift of a mother’s love and has a storyteller’s fine detail and is told with heartfelt honesty. Ying Ying Chang’s moving insights help us to better understand the triumphs and travails and the life and suicide of her beloved warrior-daughter Iris.” Ying-Ying Chang will be speaking about her book at the Museum of Chinese in America in New York City on May 22.

New Member: Zheng Cao

In March, mezzo-soprano Zheng Cao was the unexpected star of a concert series in the Bay Area for Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra that symbolized her renewed life as an operatic singer and as a survivor of stage-four lung cancer. Only a month before, Cao had been asked by her mentor, the beloved San Francisco mezzo Flicka (Frederica von Stade), to sing in her place in what was to have been von Stade’s farewell performance.  To refuse Von Stade was unthinkable, because it was von Stade, said Cao, who “saved my life and my voice, by my side at the hospital for two years” as she underwent treatment for the tumors which had spread from her lungs to her brain. Von Stade describes Cao’s voice as “liquid gold and best of all it pours out of a soul that is the most gracious, courageous, warm and generous I’ve ever known.”  Cao’s performance and her medical and personal triumph over cancer were the subject of a CNN profile by Sanjay Gupta on April 7 and a December 22 story by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s Good Morning America about Cao’s marriage last year to the radiation oncologist who removed 24 tumors from her brain, David Larson.

New Member: Anna Mok

Anna Mok is a Partner at Deloitte & Touche LLP, the first Chinese American woman admitted to partnership at what is now the largest of the Big Four international accounting and consultancy firms. Mok began her career at Deloitte as an entry level staff accountant more than twenty years ago, developed expertise in a variety of business advisory areas as well as a regional focus in Asia, and became Partner in 2000. Currently, Mok has three responsibilities: 1) Global Lead Partner managing the account teams that work with Fortune 100 companies in the financial services and technology sectors; 2) Northern Pacific Regional Leader and National Leader of Regions for Deloitte’s advisory services, which include risk consulting, mergers and acquisitions, and financial accounting and reporting; and 3) Managing Partner of Deloitte’s U.S.-Southeast Asia desk, liaison with Deloitte’s offices in Guam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand.