Ted Gong | Executive Director

Ted Gong is Executive Director of the 1882 Project Foundation and President of DC chapter of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance. Before retiring in 2012, Ted was a career diplomat in the U.S. Department of State where he served primarily in East Asia on policy and operational issues related to border management and security, migration and refugees, and consular affairs. He has degrees in History, Asian Studies, and National Strategic Studies form the University of California, University of Hawaii and the U.S. Army War College. Ted is also included in The Guardian‘s The Frederick Douglass 200, a list of two hundred people — abolitionists, diplomats, writers, feminists, and more — who best embody the spirit and work of Frederick Douglass.

Franklin Odo | Deputy Director and 1882 Symposium

Franklin Odo was Founding Director of the Asian Pacific American Center at the Smithsonian Institution, 1997-2010. He was Interim Chief of the Asian Division, Library of Congress in 2011. Odo was among the few faculty members when Asian American Studies was established at UCLA, and has served as a professor of Ethnic Studies, History and/or American Studies at several universities, from the University of Hawai`i, to the University of Pennsylvania, Hunter College, Princeton, and Columbia Universities in the 1990s. He has published No Sword to Bury: Japanese Americans in Hawai`i during World War II, and most recently in 2013, Voices from the Canefields: Folksongs from Japanese Immigrant Workers in Hawai`i. He has a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Asian American Studies and a Distinguished Service Award from the Asian American Justice Center. Odo was appointed Humanist in Residence at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities at Brown University in April 2013. He currently leads a “Theme Study on Asian American Pacific Islanders” for the National Historic Landmarks Project of the National Park System.

Ali Smith | Director of Communications & Public Affairs

Ali Smith is the Director of Communications and Public Affairs at the 1882 Foundation. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree at the City University of New York Graduate Center in International Migration Studies with a focus on Global Cities. She also works as a Museum Educator at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, facilitating dialogue on immigration history and leading student, private and public visits to the museum. She has previously worked in Client Service at an investment management firm in Connecticut, and prior to that as a paralegal at an immigration law firm in Washington, D.C. Ali graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies and Chinese, focusing on U.S. immigration history. She also has experience serving as a research assistant at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She has previously interned with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and the Asian American Justice Center.

Stan Lou | Talk Story Director

Stan Lou was born in Greenville, Mississippi, of immigrant parents from China. Stan earned Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Michigan and had a career with the Federal Aviation Administration before retiring in Washington, DC. He is most proud of his three accomplished children who all reside in California now. Upon retirement Stan went to China in 2003 to teach English to university students and to learn about himself there for almost three years. He returned to the Washington, DC, area where he has committed himself to become busily engaged with understanding more about his heritage as a Chinese American. With that as his motivation, he has worked with the Asian Pacific American community to improve the quality of life for its members. Most of his focus has been with OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates, where he has served as co-president of the Greater Washington DC Chapter and is currently the Vice-President for Education & Culture on the OCA National Board. He worked with the 1882 Project and is active with a group that created the Talk Story series that engages the DC community in sharing the stories of their experiences living as APAs.

Ting-yi Oei | Curriculum & Education Director

Ting-Yi Oei is a lifelong educator. He received his BA in History from Hamilton College and a Master of Arts in Teaching from Brown University. He taught middle and high school social studies for 20 years and was a high school administrator for another ten in Virginia. Along the way he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Korea, was a Fulbright Teacher in Scotland, and spent a year teaching in the Dominican Republic. He was also awarded a one-year research fellowship at Teaching Tolerance, the education project of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. Now he is a curriculum consultant with a particular interest in improving the quality of teaching of Asian Pacific American history.

Sojin Kim | Programs

Sojin Kim is a curator at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. She previously worked as a public historian in Los Angeles, collaborating with diverse local communities on exhibitions, documentation and media projects, and public programs. From 2008 to 2010, she was curator of history at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. From 1998 to 2008, she was curator at the Japanese American National Museum. Sojin holds a PhD in folklore and mythology from University of California, Los Angeles. She serves on the board of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts.

John Kusano | Historic Preservation Programs

Yuexian Huang | Historic Preservation Associate

Yuexian (Margo) Huang was born and raised in Southeast China. She received her Master’s of Science degree in Historic Preservation from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to that, she studied urban planning in Peking University in Beijing, China. During her study in the U.S., Yuexian has developed strong interest in utilizing preservation as a tool to increase the visibility of minority groups, and to bring them more social justice. She is particularly enthusiastic about making the history of Chinese immigrants recognized and preserved. She has been working with 1882 Foundation since the summer of 2018 on various historic preservation initiatives. Now she is working as a GIS Technician for Philadelphia Parks & Recreation.

Haipei Hsu | Press and Publicity

Beth Zhao | Education & Legislative Intern

Beth Zhao just finished her second year at George Mason University and is double majoring in government and Chinese. She immigrated here in 2005 with her parents as a first-generation Chinese-Americans. Through elementary and middle school, she was involved with her local Chinese school; in high school her involvement in model U.N. and college debate experience sparked her interest in government. She has previously worked at the Fairfax County Democrat Committee and seeks to gain more experience at the 1882 Foundation.

At the foundation, Beth hopes to learn how Chinese-American advocacy fills different facets of legislative efforts including Chinese-American education curriculum in public schools and its interaction with other civil rights movements with other groups. The education part is particularly important to her because state mandates on education curriculums shape the way Chinese-Americans are represented to the majority of the public and therefore public perceptions of the group. This public perception then sets the groundwork for the success of civil rights advancements. Advancements would be more successful if there was a receptive public who supports those advancements. Beth hopes that hers work this summer with the 1882 Foundation can help change the way we learn Chinese-American history in the classroom.

Linda Wen | Communications & Historical Preservation Intern

Linda Wen has just finished her first year as a student at Georgetown University (currently undecided but considering a major in Government and/or Economics). Although originally from California, she now calls Pennsylvania home. Linda will be interning with the 1882 Foundation this summer. She loves music, literature, and writing, and hopes to incorporate these outside interests into her work. Her main area of focus is communications/outreach using social media to the Chinatown community and beyond to expand the presence of the 1882 Foundation. In addition, she hopes to do work in storytelling/literature through the Foundation’s Talk Story series, which aims to preserve Chinese-American history through the re-telling of individual stories. She is excited to work with the 1882 Foundation this summer and become more immersed in the DC Chinese-American community.

Michelle Zhu | Design Intern

Michelle Zhu is a rising sophomore at Georgetown University majoring in Computer Science. She is interested in graphic and web design and has a background in studio art. She hopes to apply her experience with visual art to find the best way of representing the aspirations of the 1882 Foundation in order to encourage its audience to engage with its ideas and community. Her main focus is bolstering the foundation’s online presence, whether through revamping the website or boosting social media accounts, but she also wants to explore the prospect of a “digital platform” that connects cultural sites and museums across the country in collaboration.

Allison May | Communications & Public Affairs Intern

Allison May is a rising senior at George Mason University and is double majoring in Communications and Chinese. She has been living in the D.C area since 2011, having previously resided in Taiwan, mainland China, and Italy. As the daughter of a Taiwanese immigrant, Allison developed an interest in Chinese language and culture at a young age. Allison’s last internship was at the U.S Consulate General in Shenyang where she worked as a Public Affairs Assistant. She is looking forward to working with the 1882 Foundation’s team and increasing public awareness about Chinese-American discrimination as well as focusing on outreach and education programs for the local community.