We are proud to announces Don Young as the Center for Asian American Media’s new Executive Director. After a nationwide search led by our Board of Directors and the search firm Koya Partners, the Board has selected Young, a seasoned documentary producer and 30 year veteran of CAAM, who previously served as the organization’s Director of Programs.
“After a nine-month process, the board has unanimously voted to select Don Young as CAAM’s next Executive Director,” say board co-chairs Dipti Ghosh and Vin Pan. “Don’s experience has proven him to be not only a producer of ground-breaking films about Asian American experiences, but an advocate for inclusive representation in the independent documentary and public media world,”
Young was introduced to the public at CAAMFest 2025 Opening Night at the AMC Kabuki theater in San Francisco, before the screening of Tadashi Nakamura’s Third Act.
follows the 18-year tenure of CAAM’s previous Executive Director Stephen Gong, who is retiring after decades of work in media and arts administration, and steps into the role at a critical time for arts and public media funding.
“I’ve been at CAAM for 30 years. I’m more excited for our storytelling community than ever before. The talent of the next generation is inspiring and unstoppable,” says incoming CAAM Executive Director Don Young. “I recognize it’s a difficult moment, but it’s a time in which we’ve got to focus on building community, supporting one another, standing by one another, defending the work we all care about.”
Young is a San Francisco Bay Area native and fourth-generation Chinese American and a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
His credits include executive producing the Peabody Awards Nominee Rising Against Asian Hate (2022), the landmark PBS five-part docu-series Asian Americans (2020), and the critically-acclaimed independent feature Coming Home Again by Wayne Wang (2020). In community storytelling, Young served as a planning member on the historic Vincent Chin 40th Remembrance and Rededication activities in Detroit (2022), and produced APIAVote’s 2020 and 2024 Presidential Town Halls.
Follow our blog and social media to learn more about Don.
