Our Team
Jason Bayani, Co-director
Jason Bayani grew up in the Bay Area and has a graduated from San Francisco State University and earned his MFA degree in Poetry at Saint Mary’s College of California. He spent nine years working for Larkin Street Youth Services and has worked as an educator, copy writer, and arts organizer. In recent years Jason has served on the editorial staff at Omnidawn Publishing and on the curatorial council for YBCA’s triennial, Bay Area Now 9. An accomplished poet and performer, Jason is the author of Locus (Omnidawn Publishing 2019, Norcal Book Award finalist) and Amulet (Write Bloody Publishing 2013) and is the recipient of the 2021 California Arts Council Established artist fellowship and is a featured artist for the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists Festival in 2022. He performs regularly around the country and debuted his solo theater show "Locus of Control" in 2016 with theatrical runs in San Francisco, New York, and Austin.
Mihee Kim, Co-director
Mihee Kim (she/they) is a visual artist, writer, and cultural organizer. She works intuitively across disciplines and traditions, foraying between writing, multi-modal collage, painting and craft forms. Her writing has been nominated for a Best of the Net, Pushcart Prize, and her poetry manuscript Nomenclature was named a finalist for the Bergman Prize.
She earned a B.A. from UC Berkeley and an MFA at California College of the Arts. Her background includes media studies, rhetoric, brand strategy, advertising, philanthropy, nonprofit admin and fundraising. She creates on Chochenyo Ohlone land, also known as beloved Oakland, California. See more of Mihee’s work here: https://www.miheekim.art/
Lehua Taitano, Programs & Community Manager
Lehua M. Taitano is a queer CHamoru writer and interdisciplinary artist from Yigu, Guåhan (Guam) and co-founder of the artist collective Art 25: Art in the Twenty-fifth Century. She holds an M.F.A. from the University of Montana and is the author of two volumes of poetry—Inside Me an Island and A Bell Made of Stones. Her chapbook, appalachiapacific, won the Merriam-Frontier Award for short fiction. She has two chapbooks of poetry and visual art: Sonoma and Capacity.
Her poetry, essays, and Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction have been published internationally. She regularly serves as a visiting writer/lecturer at colleges and universities and as a curatoral advisor for institutions like YBCA and the Smithsonian Institute's Asian Pacific American Center. Taitano's work investigates modern Indigeneity, decolonization, and cultural identity in the context of diaspora.
Board
Cristiana Baik, Board Chair
Cristiana Kyung-Hye Baik is the Deputy Director of Strategy and Growth at Everyday Impact Consulting, a racial and social justice-based consulting firm in Sacramento. She's also a writer who is currently working on her first novel. She lives in Oakland with her partner, son and two fur babies.
Josh Wheeler, Vice Chair
A father, educator, and artist living in the East Bay. Joshua is an English teacher at an East Bay continuation High School. He was honored as the 2019/2020 Alameda County Teacher of the year. Joshua is a poet who has been published in numerous anthologies including [m]aganda Magazine and Tandem. He is a Slam Poetry National finalist as a member of team Berkeley in 2004 and the 2005 Oakland Grand Slam Champion. He is a founding member of the Filipino-American Spoken Word collective, Proletariat Bronze. He has performed poetry across the country and his work has been taught at San Francisco State University in the Asian American Studies Department. On a rare occasion, you can still catch him performing spoken word in the Bay Area.
Irene Gutierrez, Secretary
Irene Gutierrez is an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council who works to promote sustainable fishing practices, fight dirty energy development and climate change, and uphold workers' rights through litigation and policy advocacy. She is also an immigrant and a third culture kid. Her love for the arts began at a young age and never really stopped. She is excited about supporting the voices of API artists and social movement work through the arts.
Jenny Ton, Board Member
Jenny has over fifteen years of experience building nonprofits and companies and consulting in social impact, advocacy, community building and community relations, business and people development, operations, branding, marketing and communications, the arts, and education. Jenny is the founder of Jenny Ton Consulting, Co-Executive Director at a community based health and wellness nonprofit, Safer Together, and a longtime activist for the most vulnerable communities: low-income women and girls, disinvested students and youth, survivors of human trafficking and violence, im/migrants and emerging artists of color. Jenny has been the voice for these communities locally and nationally at the White House. Additionally, she serves on the nonprofit board of Sol Sisters.
Paul Ocampo, Board Member
The Development Manager at Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus. He remains committed to the work of social justice. In 2006, he assisted Maxine Hong Kingston in editing an anthology of writings by veterans titled Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace. While attending graduate school in Arizona, he co-wrote a petition responding to SB 1070 and other anti-immigrant legislation and demanding universities in Arizona maintain the classroom as safe spaces for all students. He also co-directed a reading titled Out of Silence that featured Afghan women’s poems and essays found on the Afghan Women’s Writing Project. He comes to Kearny Street Workshop with a broad experience in education and the non-profit sector.
Terri Le, Board Member
Since 2010, Terri has been dedicated to the non-profit sector, focusing on promoting arts, culture, and humanities as catalysts for change. Her versatile experience encompasses roles as a museum educator, summer field trip curriculum developer, public program/events manager, communications and social media coordinator, grant writer, and development/fundraising director. Terri holds a B.A. in Art History and History from the University of Maryland, College Park (2010), and she furthered her education by earning an M.A. in Museum Studies and an M.B.A. from John F. Kennedy University in 2016. Currently, Terri serves as the Major Gifts Manager at Stop AAPI Hate.
Ploi Pirapokin, Board Member
Ploi Pirapokin sits on the board for Khōréō magazine, Hivemind: Global Speculative Fiction Magazine, the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference, and the Ragdale Foundation. Her work is featured in Tor.com, Pleiades, Ninth Letter, Sycamore Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, The Art and Craft of Stories from Asia: A Writer's Guide and Anthology from Bloomsbury Academic, and more. She has received grants and fellowships from the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Creative Capacity Fund, Headlands Center for the Arts, Djerassi, Kundiman and others. A graduate of the Clarion Writers Workshop and the MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, she currently teaches at the Writers Program at UCLA Extension, WritingWorkshops.com, Story Studio Chicago, and the University of Hong Kong.
Trina De Joya, Board Member
Trina de Joya is a bicultural and (somewhat) bilingual Pinay over two decades of experience in the Human Resources field. She is the Director of Human Resources at Richmond Area Multi-Services (RAMS), a community-based mental health services organization with historical expertise in serving the Asian & Pacific Islander American communities. Her experience includes regulatory compliance, employee relations, consultation and support with personnel management, recruitment & employer-based immigration sponsorship, employee safety & risk management, and compensation. Prior to RAMS, she worked in ethnic television & print media and dabbled in the spoken word poetry scene. She is a graduate of San Francisco State University, with a bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences (minor in Asian American Studies). Her interests include obscure pop culture references, staying in on Friday nights, and the works of Neil Gaiman.