AAPI

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Asian American Pacific Islander Workshop

Workshop Leaders

Dennis Arguelles is the Director of Community and Economic Development for Search to Involve Pilipino Americans, a social service agency serving the Historic Filipinotown community of Los Angeles and Filipino Americans throughout Los Angeles County. He is the past Executive Director and current President of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON), a federation of over 35 Asian and Pacific Islander community-based organizations in the greater Los Angeles area. He previously served as the Assistant Director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center where he co-edited The New Face of Asian Pacific America: Numbers, Diversity and Change in the 21st Century. He also co-authored Beyond Asian American Poverty, one of the first studies to examine poverty in Asian and Pacific Islander American communities. In 2007 he was appointed to the City of Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Review Commission by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. He received his B.A. in Political Science and M.A. in Urban Planning from UCLA.

Yen Ling Shek is the Chief of Staff for the UC Asian American and Pacific Islander Policy Multi-campus Research Program. She is a doctoral student in Higher Education and Organizational Change at UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. Her research interests include racial diversity and equity in higher education, Asian American student development, and cultural resource centers. Prior to UCLA, she served as the Coordinator of the Multicultural Leadership Center at Cal State Fullerton, Special Assistant to the Associate Provost for Equity and Diversity at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Program Coordinator of the Pan-Asian American Community House and Greenfield Intercultural Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her M.A. in Counseling and Personnel Services from the University of Maryland, College Park and her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Virginia

Eric C. Wat is the Director of Research and Evaluation Unit at Special Service for Groups, where he provides research and evaluation services, training and technical assistance to nonprofit organizations and public agencies. SSG also partners with other community-based organizations to conduct original research projects and disseminates Census and other community data through research publications. Mr. Wat has been the chair of the Asian Pacific American Community Research Roundtable, a committee within A3PCON, dedicated to building equitable research relationships among faculty, students and CBO staff. He is the author of *The Making of a Gay Asian Community: An Oral History of Pre-AIDS Los Angeles*, and has taught at CSU Long Beach, CSU Fullerton, CSU Northridge, and UCLA.