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AAJA Articles of Incorporation
AAJA By-Laws
AAJA Code of Conduct Policy
The AAJA National Officers are elected by the membership -- full members who are professional journalists.
The Advisory Board is composed of the five national officers and at least one representative from each AAJA chapter. Advisory Board members represent chapters' interests in the organization, the organization's interests in the chapters, and the interests of both in the community.
The Governing Board is composed of the five national officers and six board members elected from the Advisory Board every two years. The Governing Board ensures that the organization fulfills its mission, meets the needs of its constituencies, and operates legally, effectively, and efficiently.
National Officers
NATIONAL
PRESIDENT
Doris Truong* is a multiplatform editor at The Washington Post and is the 2011-12 national president of AAJA. She is on the board for UNITY: Journalists of Color. She has been a guest faculty member at the Poynter Institute and has spoken at multiple journalism conventions. Doris is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism.
(PHOTO CREDIT: HYUNGWON KANG)
NATIONAL VICE
PRESIDENT FOR BROADCAST
George Kiriyama*
News Reporter, NBC Bay Area News
NATIONAL VICE
PRESIDENT FOR PRINT
Thomas Lee* is a business reporter at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. He previously worked at Xconomy, MedCity News, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He also serves as board secretary for Mu Performing Arts in the Twin Cities.
NATIONAL
SECRETARY
Theodore Kim* is a staff writer and social media advocate at the Dallas Morning News and serves on the programming committee for UNITY:
Journalists of Color. Previously, he served as vice president of AAJA's Texas chapter and has worked at the Indianapolis Star, The
(Annapolis, Md.) Capital and the Montgomery Gazette in Maryland. He also is a visiting faculty member at the Poynter Institute. He has a
master's in journalism from American University and degrees in English and communications from Boston College. He roots for the New England
Patriots and Boston Red Sox.
NATIONAL
TREASURER
Rene Astudillo* is executive director of the Lupus Foundation of Northern California and was AAJA executive director from 1999-2008. A Certified Meeting Planner, his professional career spans more than two decades of nonprofit management and journalism. His is a board member of the Philippine International Aid and served as LGBT Advisory Committee member of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission.
Advisory Board Members
ARIZONA
Yvonne Leow is the west regional video producer for The Associated Press. She helps cover news, sports and entertainment video across 13 states. She has worked for several news organizations, such as ABC, NBC, Shanghai Daily, and The Seattle Times. She graduated from UCLA with a degree in political science, and is fascinated with the intersection of digital media and storytelling. Contact her at @YvonneLeow.
ASIA
Chi-Chi Zhang has worked as a reporter at The Salt Lake Tribune and The Denver Post. Since 2005, she has lived Asia, where for the last four years she's worked at AP and currently resides in Beijing as an associate producer for CNN. She enjoys hiking and is an all-around adventuring enthusiast.
ATLANTA
Maria Ebrahimji is the Director and Executive Editorial Producer for Network Booking at CNN Worldwide. In this position, she leads a team of editorial producers in guest coverage, newsgathering, and story planning for CNN's special events, breaking news, and multi-platform programming. She is based at CNN's global headquarters in Atlanta.
CHICAGO
As the Chicago reporter for the Changing Gears project, Niala Boodhoo covers the Midwestern economy at WBEZ/Chicago Public Media. Niala has been a business reporter for more than ten years, working in London, Washington and Miami for the Associated Press, Reuters, and most recently, The Miami Herald, where she was the first newspaper reporter to host her own radio and video business shows. Niala has a MSJ from the Medill School of Journalism and a M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from Florida International University.
DENVER
Tillie Fong
Freelance Journalist
FLORIDA
Victoria Lim is an award-winning, multi-platform storyteller who uses every traditional and new media format to reach audiences. Her versatility extends to her subject matter, from game-day sports coverage to consumer investigations. She is also a newsroom trainer, teaching multimedia reporting and diversity issues in newsrooms from California to China. As a reporter/anchor for Bright House Sports Network, Victoria’s work garnered a 2011 Emmy nomination. Her consumer investigations for WFLA-TV, the Tampa Tribune and tbo.com won more than a dozen national, regional and local honors including an Emmy, AP Individual Achievement Award. The Society of Professional Journalists named her Florida’s 2006 Journalist of the Year.
HAWAI'I
Wes Nakama
Assistant Director of Information, Hawai'i High School Athletic Association
LOS ANGELES
Jocelyn "Joz" Wang is an avid writer who embraced blogging at its onset. Known online– and offline– for her personal blog jozjozjoz.com, she is a Co-Editor of the popular Asian American collaborative blog 8Asians.com. She is also a long-time contributor blogging.la, flagship site of the Metblogs network, a massive local journalism and media project that began in 2003. She also contributes her web expertise in Information Architecture, User Experience (UX), and Social Media to UsabilityCounts.com.
MICHIGAN
Ankur Dholakia is currently a Multimedia Producer at The Detroit News. He has been with the paper for nine years, starting as a photo intern. Originally from Southern California, Ankur has lived in Alaska before coming to Detroit. He loves taking pictures, shooting video and playing ice hockey. (PHOTO CREDIT: THE DETROIT NEWS)
MINNESOTA
Nancy Ngo covers shopping and style at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. In addition to serving on the AAJA board, she is past president of the University of Minnesota - School of Journalism & Mass Communication Alumni Association. She is a regular mentor of 360 high school journalism workshop.
NEW ENGLAND
Tali A.B. Smith
Managing Partner/Editorial Director, TLABS Media LLC
NEW YORK
Paul Cheung iis the AP's Global Interactive Editor at its New York City headquarters and also teaches visual journalism at Columbia Journalism School. A former AAJA Governing Board member, he co-developed AAJA's OurChinatown project. Cheung is a programming chair for the UNITY 2012 Convention. He graduated from New York University.
Sital Patel is a business journalist working for Fox Business Network, based in New York. Sital covers financial stories including regulations changes impacting banks, the collapse of MF Global, the fall of Lehman Brothers, the housing market crisis, layoffs, bonuses and everything Wall Street.
Sital graduated Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism on an editorial scholarship, with a concentration in broadcast journalism, March of 2003. In school, she pursued the finer points of storytelling, as reporter for WCAX-TV in Burlington, Vermont and a writer for CBS MarketWatch.com. Patel has covered a range of issues from breaking news; D.C. sniper shootings, to long-term investigations; Anthrax to policy stories; Clean Water Act and SUV safety.
She attended Medill on an editorial scholarship and while there received another fellowship to study religion, spirituality and values in our society. Prior to graduate school, Sital lived in the Bay Area where she worked as an anchor and reporter for a weekend South Asian community-based show. In addition, she free-lanced as a writer at the San Jose Mercury News, India West, India Focus Magazine and India Post.
Her previous incarnation included 10 years in the financial industry in different capacities at Merrill Lynch in San Francisco, Heller Financial and North Trust Bank in Chicago.
Patel holds an undergraduate degree in Economics and Accounting from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She was born in Gujarat, India and grew up in London, England.
NORTH CAROLINA
Renee Chou
Reporter/Anchor, WRAL-TV
PHILADELPHIA
Juliana Reyes
City Services Reporter, It's Our Money (Daily News/WHYY)
PORTLAND
Nicole Dungca is currently a reporter at The Oregonian, and has also written for The Times-Picayune and The Providence Journal. She is a Bay Area native and graduated from Brown University.Reporter,
SACRAMENTO
Pamela Wu is a former Anchor/Reporter for several television stations across California, most recently KCRA-TV. She currently serves as the Director of Marketing and Public Relations for the University of California, Davis, School of Law.
SAN DIEGO
Hoa Quach is an editor for Patch.com, an AOL news company and a graduate of San Diego State University where she studied journalism, Spanish and Asian Studies.
SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
Tomoko Hosaka
Affiliate, John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University
Ellen Lee
Freelance Journalist
SEATTLE
Sanjay Bhatt
is an award-winning business reporter and data visualization specialist at The Seattle Times. He has worked for The Wall Street Journal, The Palm Beach Post and The Times Leader (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.). A native of Houston, he graduated from Duke University with a history degree and is enrolled in a master's program in information management at the University of Washington. From 2002 to 2006, he served on the national board of the Association of Health Care Journalists, including as its treasurer and vice president. He enjoys bicycling and travel that includes food and film festivals.
TEXAS
Tom Huang is Sunday & Enterprise Editor at The Dallas Morning News and Adjunct Faculty at The Poynter Institute, where he oversees the school's writing program.
WASHINGTON D.C.
Bobby Caina Calvan is a national political reporter in The Boston Globe's Washington bureau. He was previously the health care reporter at The Sacramento Bee. His long career in journalism has allowed him to travel the country and the world, including a stint covering the war in Iraq in 2007. Calvan is national co-chair of AAJA's MediaWatch program.
REPRESENTING AT-LARGE MEMBERS (Interim)
Thomas Lee
Business Reporter, The Star Tribune
*Governing Board officers and members.