February 2008: EMW Board Members, with Executive Director John Anner, in downtown Oakland

Peter A. Singer, M.D.
Chairman of the Board

Chief, Clinical Endocrinology
Keck School of Medicine
University of Southern California

Peter A. Singer, M.D. serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of East Meets West, and has been an active board member since 1990. Dr Singer’s interest in East Meets West is an outgrowth of his experience as a battalion doctor with U.S. Armed Forces in Da Nang,Vietnam from 1966-1967. At that time he became aware of the significant needs of the very poor in Vietnam, and began medical and relief efforts. His association with EMW has allowed him to continue to assist the poor in Vietnam.

Peter is a native San Franciscan, and completed his undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley, and received his medical degree from University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). He currently is Professor of Medicine at the University of Southern California School of Medicine, where he is active in clinical practice, teaching, and research. Dr. Singer has been married since 1971 to Marjorie Kagawa-Singer, who is Professor of Public Health and Asian-American Studies at UCLA. Despite being employed by rival universities, Peter and Margie have set aside their academic differences and have raised two great kids, Jonathan and Joana.

Brian P. Dolan, M.D., M.P.H.
Vice Chairman/Secretary of the Board

Senior Medical Advisor
National Center for Health Statistics

Brian Dolan joined the Board of East Meets West in 1999, after having been project director of a nutrition program in Dong Thop Province in 1994 and 1995. An internist by training, with a degree in public health, Brian served as a Peace Corps physician in Africa, has worked for the Navajo Nation in Arizona, and has participated in health-related projects in other countries such as Brazil, Latvia, Bolivia, and Mexico. He previously served on the faculty of the UCLA School of Public Health.

For more than 18 years, Brian has been senior medical advisor on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) conducted by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). This study has collected data since 1959, by means of interview, physical exam, and analysis of biochemical and environmental samples, on the health and nutritional status of the US population. Brian also serves on the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Westat, a large research group in the Washington DC area. He is regularly called as an expert witness in cases of toxic exposure.

 

Eric Hemel, Ph.D.
Treasurer of the Board

Eric Hemel recently served as President of Alson Capital, a New York City based investment partnership, where he remains a Limited Partner and Advisor. Eric served as Co-Head of U.S. equity research at Merrill Lynch from 2000 to 2002. Prior to that, he was an analyst at First Boston, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch for 13 years, and was ranked in the annual Institutional Investor poll in the Financials and REIT categories for 12 consecutive years, nine as #1 in his sector. Before coming to Wall Street, Eric held several positions in the Reagan Administration, including serving as staff director of the President's Council of Economic Advisers.

Eric graduated from Stanford University, where he earned his B.A. (1974), M.B.A. (1977), and Ph.D. (1980). With his wife Barbara Morgen, Eric has committed the funds to EMW to sponsor 1,500 children through the end of high school through the SPELL program, EMW's scholarship program for impoverished primary school students in Vietnam and is a major supporter of the Breath of Life program.

Hang Le Bourque
board member

Community Programs Director
Pacific Links Foundation

Hang Le Bourque is a co-founder of Pacific Links Foundation (PALS) and currently serves as the Community Programs Director. For many years, she has been actively involved in community advocacy, principally on issues of social and educational equity for linguistically and culturally diverse students and their families. In 2001, Hang successfully raised funds for a professor at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies to write a book on the history of Vietnamese refugees. In 1993, she chaired the first public fundraising event in the Vietnamese American community in Northern California on behalf of the East Meets West Foundation. During her 15-year banking career, she was in charge of business development and managed a portfolio of Asian-American high tech companies and high net worth individuals.

Hang is a member of EMW's host committee for the Tet gala events. She is also a member of the planning committee for the Vietnamese American NGO conference and was instrumental in obtaining funding from the Ford Foundation for that historic event.

 

Stephen Gunther
board member

Principal, New Urban West

One of the co-founders and principals of New Urban West Inc., Steve served as president for over 20 years.  He maintains an active, leadership role in the company he helped create, overseeing residential, commercial and office development.  A former deputy attorney general for the State of California, a father, traveler, collector of vintage posters and member of several charitable foundations, Steve is active in the East Meets West Foundation.
 

 

Jerome Falk
board member

Senior Member, Howard Rice Law Firm

Jerry Falk joined the EMW Board in 2007. Jerry is a senior member of Howard Rice Law firm where he is a Certified Specialist in Appellate Law. Following law school, Jerry served as law clerk to Justice William O. Douglas of the Supreme Court of the United States. He then joined Howard Rice where he engages in civil trial and appellate litigation. For 10 years, he also taught constitutional law at UC Berkeley's School of Law. Jerry's litigation practice includes substantial cases in the fields of securities, antitrust, contracts, financing, professional liability, environmental, intellectual property and constitutional law. Representative clients include American Express, McKesson Corporation, Genentech, Inc., University of California, and the State of California. For more than 20 years, Jerry has been listed in Best Lawyers in America. For the third consecutive year, he was in 2006 recognized as a Top 100 Super Lawyer by Law & Politics, and he was recently recognized by The Best of The U.S. for his commercial litigation work. In 1994, he received the Distinguished Jurisprudence Award of the Anti-Defamation League. Jerry has received numerous other awards for his litigation service.

Jerry received his J.D. from the University of California Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, where he graduated first in his class in 1965 and his A.B. from the University of California at Berkeley (with honors, Economics) in 1962. Jerry lives in San Francisco with his wife, Nancy and became a supporter of EMW's Operation Healthy Heart program after visiting Vietnam and seeing the work that EMW is involved in there.

 

Tom Low
board member

Partner
Bridges SF, LLC

Tom Low joined the EMW Board in 2006. Tom is a partner with Bridges SF, LLC, an executive search firm specializing in the placement of senior financial executives.

Tom was the founding Chief Financial Officer of Restoration Hardware, where he was a member of a three man executive team that expanded the company from four stores to 100 stores with a direct mail and e-commerce business. The business grew to over $300 million in revenue. Tom took Restoration Hardware public in June 1998, one of the most successful IPOs of that year. Tom also has been CFO of Ask Jeeves and Safeway.com.

Tom graduated from the University of California, Davis with a B.S. degree and holds an MBA in Finance from the University of California, Irvine where he won the Arthur Andersen & Co. Entrepreneur of the Year award.

Tom is a former board member and Treasurer of St. Paul's Episcopal School in Oakland, and a founding board member of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the Ascend.

 

Linda Meier, R.N., C.N.P.
board member

San Francisco State University
Student Health Services

Linda's initial contact with EMW was on the film set of Heaven and Earth, Oliver Stone's movie based on EMW founder Lely Hayslip's life in Vietnam.  After they met, Lely asked Linda to volunteer in her clinic on China Beach in Danang, where Linda spent four months exploring the state of medical care in Danang and Quang Nam province. After her return, Linda joined the EMW Board.

Linda's first venture into the world of developing communities was when she joined Vista, a domestic arm of the Peace Corps where she worked in Southeast Utah with the Ute and Navajo Indian populations establishing a nursing school, which is thriving today, as well as doing community organizing and mental health work.

Linda recently collaborated with family friends in raising money for and awareness around Operation Healthy Heart (OHH) . Through friends and business acquaintances, their original goal of supporting the costs for heart surgery for 2 or 3 children grew into supporting eight children through the program. Additionally, classmates of Linda's daughter, Amelia, in the second grade class chose to raise money for OHH, choosing donations over gifts and asking Santa for money for the 'heart children' as they came to be called.  Hopefully, Linda says, "we are cultivating the next generation of global citizens."

Linda grew up in northern New Jersey and received her B.S. in Nursing at Duke University, her M.S. in Nursing from Sonoma State University with a
family nurse practitioner certificate. She lives in San Francisco with her daughter Amelia. 

 

Ms. Ly-Huong Pham
Board member

CEO, Mobiscale LLC

With over twenty five years of system software management, consulting and entrepreneur experience, Ly currently serves as chief executive officer and founder of Mobiscale, a provider of strategic consulting and software services for the mobile industry.

Prior to Mobiscale, she was CEO at Bluekey Services Inc. and Turbolinux Inc., SVP at Cray Inc., COO at Onscreen24, CTO at Vtel corp, and held other senior management roles at Apple Computer Inc. and Wang Laboratories, Inc.

Ly-Huong is chairperson of the board of advisors of Vietnamese Silicon Valley Network. She is a co-inventor of ten granted patents. Ly received a B.A. in Mathematics and an M.S. in Information Systems from Boston University. She is a Presidential/ Key Executive M.B.A. from Pepperdine University, and is currently enrolled in the Human and Organization Systems PhD program at Fielding Graduate University.

 

Brenda Ringwald
board member

While traveling in Vietnam after doing a volunteer project there in 1995, Brenda Ringwald found East Meets West - literally. The office in DaNang was across the street from her hotel. A visit with the Country Director convinced her that this was an organization both efficient AND effective. Soon after, she raised funds from a group of friends for a microfinance project through EMW and gained additional respect for the organization and for the needs of the people in the country.

Brenda received a BA from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, with a major in Government and International Relations. She gained her "global citizenship" after a ten-month trip around the world in the mid-1990's. She has participated in volunteer projects in Viet Nam, Costa Rica, India and El Salvador. In the spring of 2006, she started a Global Giving Circle in Phoenix, Arizona, with a focus on women's issues. Brenda is also a member of Grantmakers Without Borders. Brenda joined the Board of Directors of The East Meets West Foundation in 2000 and soon after completed a certification program from the Non-Profit Management Institute at Arizona State University. Her board work often involves governance issues.

 

ALL PHOTOS BY MICHAEL HUYNH PHOTOGRAPHY