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Stephen Gong
Stephen Gong is the Executive Director of the Center for Asian American Media. Stephen has been associated with CAAM since its founding in 1980, and has served as Executive Director since 2006. His previous positions in arts administration include: Deputy Director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley, Program Officer in the Media Arts program at the National Endowment for the Arts, and Associate Director of the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute. He has been a lecturer in the Asian American Studies program at UC Berkeley, where he developed and taught a course on the history of Asian American media. In addition to writing about film history, Gong has provided critical commentary on several DVD projects including the Treasures From American Archives, Vol 1 & 5 (National Film Preservation Foundation), Chan is Missing (dir. Wayne Wang), and is the featured historian in the documentary Hollywood Chinese (Dir. Arthur Dong). He is the Board Chair of the Center for Rural Strategies and serves on the Advisory Board of the San Francisco Silent Film Society.
Donald Young
Donald Young is the Center for Asian American Media’s Director of Programs. He oversees CAAM’s program areas, and specifically develops and implements CAAM’s national productions and national PBS strategies. In public television, Donald has supervised the national broadcasts of over 150 award-winning projects. As a producer, he has worked both in documentaries and independent feature films. Key projects include the epic five-hour PBS history series Asian Americans, a co-production with WETA and produced by Renee Tajima-Peña; Family Pictures, USA by Thomas Allen Harris; and a feature film adaptation of Chang-rae Lee’s Coming Home Again directed by Wayne Wang.
Sapana Sakya
Sapana Sakya’s background is in journalism and documentary filmmaking. She recently returned from four years in Nepal, working with the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival (kimff) to create kimff Doc Lab supporting Nepali filmmakers. Currently, she is the Talent Development & Special Projects Manager at the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM). In her previous work with CAAM, she served as Public Media Director, overseeing funding for independent filmmakers. She trained with distinguished filmmaker Jon Else at the University of California, Berkeley and has since produced and directed several documentaries (Daughters of Everest, Red White Blue November, Oklahoma Home). Prior to her documentary work, she was a feature writer with the English language daily, The Bangkok Post and worked in communications at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). She currently lives in El Cerrito, California with family.
Czarina Garcia
Czarina Garcia is the Media Fund Manager at the Center for Asian American Media. She is responsible for administering CAAM’s Media Fund initiatives, in accordance with the organization’s strategic direction and CPB guidelines. Born and raised in the Philippines, she received her bachelor’s degree in Communications from De La Salle University-Manila. Prior to joining CAAM, Czarina has worked on various film and digital projects in Manila. Since migrating to the Bay Area and joining CAAM in 2017, she has worked with the organization in multiple capacities; from CAAMFest staffer, to associate producer on a number of CAAM funded initiatives and productions. During her spare time, Czarina also works as a freelance video editor.
Grace Hwang Lynch
Grace Hwang Lynch is a journalist with an eye for Asian American culture, food, and education. Her work has been published by outlets such as NPR, Public Radio International, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She’s a member of Asian American Journalists Association and Asian American Women Artists Association and a graduate of UC Berkeley. In her free time, she enjoys cooking Taiwanese food and someday hopes to perfect the craft of wrapping bah-tsàng.
Thúy Trần
Thúy Trần is a multidisciplinary artist and experience curator. She was made in Vietnam, raised in Massachusetts, and matured everywhere in-between. A graduate of Georgetown University, she’s been producing community-based multimedia programming to elevate the nuances of AAPI and BIPOC narratives and experiences for nearly a decade. She’s been living in Thailand for the last two years and most recently worked with the Asian Art Museum as their Contemporary Art Curatorial Fellow. There she developed Global Art Dialogues, a series connecting emerging and established artists around the world to challenge and transcend physical, sociopolitical, and imaginary borders to empower change. Prior to that, she was an Associate Producer at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco where she curated a number of programs from onstage conversations to festivals and gallery exhibitions in collaboration with local Bay Area artists and organizations. Thúy co-founded The Rooted Recipes Project in 2018 to reflect on the ways that food has played a role in AAPI identity and resistance through meal gatherings and workshops. She was part of the 2019 cohort of APAP’s Emerging Leadership Institute, a 2017 YBCA Public Imagination Fellow and 2016 EAP Fellow with Emerging Arts Professionals SF/BA. She is the inaugural recipient of the Ebony McKinney Emerging Arts Leadership Award in 2018 and the 2021 recipient The Asia Foundation’s Margaret Williams Fellowship.
Anny Cheng
Huan Cheng (a.k.a. Anny) is an Independent Filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist. Her works often explore the stories about philosophical living, women, and marginalized voices. Beauty, impermanence, nuances, and fleeting moments of everyday life are recurring themes.
She was a Creative Leaders 2021 fellow at Pacific Arts Movement, and a selected annual fellow of Young Entertainment Professional 2021 at Hollywood Professional Association. Her previous films were selected in the 2021 Center for Asian American Media Film Fest, the 2019 Beverly Hills Independent Film Festival, and the Method Film Fest of 2020. She is a Digital Graphic Designer and Video Editor at the Center for Asian American Media(CAAM).
She is currently working on her directed and produced documentary, “Aftertaste” (Working Title), with Creative Producer James Q. Chan, an Emmy-nominated filmmaker of the documentary FOREVER, CHINATOWN (PBS).
Christian Yau-Weeks
Christian Yau-Weeks is the Center for Asian American Media’s Program Assistant. He is involved in CAAM’s yearly programmatic initiatives, CAAM’s Memories to Light: Asian American Home Movies, and aids in the development of creative and festival strategy. Born and raised in Oakland, California, Christian holds a BA in Visual Culture and Race/ Ethnicity studies from Wesleyan University and is driven by the generative possibilities of accessible, multimedia storytelling, the preservation of culture, and the cultivation of community. Prior to his work at CAAM, Christian has been involved in various non-profit organizations focused on camp resources for people with disabilities and educational/ emotional-learning resources for Bay Area youth.