All staff can be reached by phone at 703-256-2208. Click on each picture to learn more about them!
Staff
Our Staff
All staff can be reached by phone at 703-256-2208. Click on each picture to learn more about them!
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Ashley Elstad is Hamkae Center’s Advocacy Coordinator. They are a queer, 2nd generation Chinese and Taiwanese American from Woodbridge, Virginia. She studied social work, community administration, and policy practice.
From a justice perspective, they are committed to bridging connections between racially diverse youth and underserved communities with the legislation that should reflect their needs. She has pursued change through her previous role as Hamkae Center’s Policy and Communication Team Intern, connecting local leaders with state decision makers.
In their free time, Ashley likes to read, write, and enjoy a meal with family and friends!
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Ha Tang (Tăng Hoàng Hà) is a 1.75 generation Vietnamese/Chinese (aka: người Hoa, specifically, Teochew) American with a degree in Social Work. As a Community Organizer, she focuses on strengthening leadership and building power with community members to advocate for changes we want to see surrounded but not limited to education, language justice, immigration, and healthcare.
She found her passion for social justice, advocacy, and education as a participant in the Southeast Asian Action Resource Center Leadership & Advocacy Training (SEARAC LAT), where she advocated for increased funding for college access, completion programs, and ethnic data disaggregation. She later went on to serve as a mentor at Asian American Youth Leadership Empowerment & Development (AALEAD) and worked at a school. She was also an active civic engagement volunteer at Hamkae Center.
She enjoys playing video games, watching Asian dramas, puns/jokes, and eating spicy food that’ll make her cry.
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Hiesun was born in Vietnam and immigrated to the United States at the age of 3. She is also Korean from her father’s side but is only fluent in Vietnamese. Hiesun is a resident of Harrisonburg, VA and studied social work. Having witnessed her mother’s sacrifices to come to the U.S., she is passionate about working with the Asian American community because she understands the struggles Asian immigrants go through. Hiesun wants to uplift and be a representative of the Asian community, and she strives to give back to the community that has given her rich and beautiful traditions in culture.
Prior to starting her role at Hamkae Center, she was the Community Engagement Coordinator for First Step: A Response to Domestic Violence, a nonprofit domestic violence agency in Harrisonburg. In that role, she advocated for the agency’s mission and resources by networking, recruiting volunteers, and spreading awareness about domestic violence to the community. Her journey showcases a deep commitment to social work and community engagement, with a focus on helping underrepresented and marginalized populations. Hiesun wants to continue growing as a social worker and as a person, and connecting with many different people- because we all have a story and a journey.
In her spare time, she likes to read and watch Japanese animanga, play video games, and express herself freely while singing and jamming out to empowering songs.
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Joshua was born in South Korea and immigrated to the US when he was a high school senior. Due to California’s age limit, he was not able to complete his last semester of high school. After three years of struggles and cultural shocks, he needed something to change the direction of his life. He joined the US Navy and spent four years experiencing one of the toughest American cultures. While in the Navy, he saw that many people of color were placed in labor-centered jobs, including himself, due to various reasons.
Prior to his role at Hamkae Center, he served as a minister in various parts of the US, such as Southern California, Kansas City, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City. He experienced the diversities and complexities of cultural issues within Korean American communities. In addition to his ministry experiences, he had a chance to equip himself as a hospital chaplain. During his intensive training, his compassion and ability to accept people with various backgrounds stood out. Joshua aims to continue growing by engaging as a Community Organizer.
In his free time, he enjoys spending most of his time hiking with his wife. Finding new recipes and trying new restaurants brings him another source of joy.
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Megan Wu (吳燕芯) is the Field Coordinator for Hamkae Center. She is a second-generation Taiwanese American who grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia. Growing up in an area that did not have a huge Asian demographic, she realized the importance of having Asian American voices amplified.
With an educational background is in Government and East Asian Studies, she wanted to pursue a career that combined both her interests in politics and the desire to create positive change for Asian Americans. She provides voter education to underserved communities and is an advocate for voters.
In her free time, Megan enjoys being in nature (most likely on a walk), discovering new music to listen to, and spending time with friends and family.
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Miae Bok (복미애) works with a multilingual team to strengthen, grow, and support Hamkae Center’s Community Services & Outreach program. They are a 2nd-generation Korean American from Northern Virginia.
Believing that true sustainable social change must center the community, Miae joined Hamkae Center in 2018 as a Resource Organizer before moving into their current position. While completing their MSW, they interned with the Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance, providing data analysis and research support to foster more inclusive programs. They also interned with Diversity Richmond, kickstarting the organization’s first Bisexual+ support group.
In their spare time, Miae enjoys playing JRPGs, dreaming about big dogs, and planning their next cosplay.
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Mitch Chan is the Organizing Manager at Hamkae Center. Born in Flushing, New York, she is the daughter of low-income, working-class Chinese-Malaysian immigrants. As being Asian is not a monolithic experience, Mitch seeks to celebrate the differences in our backgrounds and experiences so that we can uplift Asian voices, while ensuring that we fight and win the tangible changes that our communities need. She is a dedicated grassroots community organizer and trainer with a focus on deep relational organizing in a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual capacity with a strong analysis of low-income struggles within the Asian American community.
She has a strong background in community and labor organizing. Prior to joining Hamkae Center, Mitch was the Lead Organizer at ACE Collaborative and New Virginia Majority. She organized Asian community members around housing and COVID-19 justice in Arlington, Virginia. She was also a staunch union organizer with her own graduate student union (Graduate Employees’ Organization, AFT/IFT Local 6300, AFL-CIO) in Champaign, Illinois.
Since 2018, Mitch has happily been building up community spaces in Virginia. In addition to her work with Asian Americans at Hamkae Center, she organizes with Asian LGBTQIA+ community groups in the DC-Maryland-Virginia area. In her spare time, she is attempting to perfect her culinary skills. She can be found in the kitchen, figuring out how to make Malaysian dishes and kuihs. Her dream is to open an underground queer Chinese-Malaysian cat cafe and bookstore.
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Quynh Nguyen (Nguyễn Quỳnh-Vân) is a queer 2nd-generation Vietnamese american rooted in what’s currently known as “northern Virginia”. They have a background in biochemistry and community participatory public health research, but it was through their student leadership involvements in college that they found a passion for helping people build political consciousness.
As Hamkae Center’s first-ever Digital Comms Coordinator, Quynh amplifies our work online by maintaining and strategizing content across all programs for the website, emails, and social media. Outside of work, they are a co-founder and core organiser of Viet Place Collective, a grassroots group formed in Dec. 2022 that organises for anti-displacement measures and Vietnamese cultural preservation in Falls Church.
Quynh firmly believes that the personal is political, and is passionate about learning local history, building community for liberatory change, and finding ways to get things for free. They enjoy eggplant, trying local immigrant-owned restaurants, and taking the stairs. Lastly, they encourage everyone to install uBlock Origin (not any other ad-blocker) and to check the privacy settings of all apps thoroughly- ESPECIALLY Facebook.
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Sami Watson is Hamkae Center’s Civic Engagement Manager. She is a queer, biracial Indian American who was born and raised in rural Central Virginia.
Sami is interested in social justice and promoting civic engagement, especially in underrepresented communities. Before coming to Hamkae Center, she was a field organizer on a Congressional campaign, a campaign manager for a VA House of Delegates campaign, and an account manager at a Democratic mail firm. These experiences taught her the importance of empowering the community to participate in the electoral process. Sami joined Hamkae Center (then NAKASEC VA) in Spring 2021 as a part-time canvasser and then re-joined in the Summer 2021 full-time as the Field Coordinator. As the Civic Engagement Manager, Sami hopes to continue building relationships with Virginia’s Asian American communities and promoting and protecting their right to vote.
In her free time, Sami enjoys playing guitar, longboarding, writing poetry, being in nature, and hanging out with her friends and family.
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Sejung Park (박세정) is fluent in Korean and English, and was born in South Korea. She majored in broadcasting and reporting in college. Before joining Hamkae Center, she helped small businesses at a Korean radio station in Northern Virginia. This is her first time working in the nonprofit field. She wants to help make a change in the community for the better.
In her free time, she likes working out, listening to music, walking, and hanging out with her family.
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Shina is a first-generation Korean American who has recently returned to the DMV area after spending the last 18 years in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Her professional background has been concentrated in client-facing customer service and vendor relation roles within the food and service industry. Her most recent experience as a general manager and event coordinator in Oakland, CA has sparked her interest in, and motivated her to concentrate on, community-focused approaches to running and supporting local small businesses. Her latest experience, combined with her degree in social psychology, has taught Shina to wholly believe in the power of building constructive relationships between people through meaningful communication that drive diversity, equity, and inclusivity to achieve common goals that will better our communities as well as the individuals who bring them to life. She also hopes to continue her education to complete her master’s degree in social work.
In her personal time, Shina loves to be outside in nature exploring and experiencing new places, admiring antiques and vintage artifacts, walking, reading, and being with her family, usually cooking and eating.
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Sookyung Oh (오수경) joined Hamkae Center as its first Executive Director in January 2017. Her role is to lead an awesome team and build a strong organization to realize the mission of organizing Asian Americans to achieve racial, economic, and social justice. She has spent two decades designing and leading issue-based campaigns, training dozens of organizers and community leaders, fundraising, providing data and policy analysis, working with decision-makers to approve solutions on a wide range of matters, and leading projects or organizations in Asian American communities.
Sookyung also serves as the Virginia Director of NAKASEC Action Fund, a political organization that supports progressive candidates for elected office. Currently, she participates on the executive board of the Virginia Civic Engagement Table and the board of the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights.
She is a 2nd-generation Korean American who enjoys comic books and exploring the Hampton Roads region with her family.
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Soyoung Yoon (윤소영) was born in Seoul, Korea. Before she joined Hamkae Center, where she focuses on providing immigrant legal services and other community support, she served immigrant-owned small businesses in Northern Virginia at several accounting firms and was a freelance graphic designer. She believes that every human being has equal rights and a duty to protect those rights, as well as fulfill their civic responsibilities.
In her free time, she likes drawing, reading, and walking.
