Steven Chu
Steven Chu is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology and of Energy Science and Engineering, Stanford University. He served as the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy under president Obama from 2009 to 2013. During his tenure, he started numerous initiatives including ARPA-E, the Energy Innovation Hubs, and the Clean Energy Ministerial meetings, and he was responsible for stopping the BP Oil leak. Prior to this role, he was the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 2004 to 2009.. He has made significant contributions in various scientific fields, including laser cooling and optical trapping of atoms, atomic clocks, and biomolecule research. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1997. He has been a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of eight other academies of science since 1992. He has won numerous other awards, including 32 honorary university degrees.
Diane Greene
Diane B. Greene is a technology entrepreneur and executive. She was a founder and CEO of VMware from 1998 to 2007, a co-founder and CEO of two startups, Bebop and VXtreme. She served as a board member of Google and CEO of Google Cloud from 2015 to 2019. She has served on the boards of Intuit, Stripe, the AP Moller/Maersk Holding company, Wix, SAP, and Alphabet. She was the 1976 women’s U.S. national dinghy sailing champion. Greene joined the MIT corporation in 2008, was elected as a life member in 2013, and served as the chair from 2020 to 2023. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
John Leroy Hennessey
John L. Hennessy is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and served as President of Stanford University from 2000 to 2016. In 2017, he initiated the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program, the largest fully endowed graduate-level scholarship program in the world, and he currently serves as Director of the program. He is Chairman of the Board of Alphabet and serves on the Board of Directors for Cisco Systems and the Board of Trustees for Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Hennessy is a pioneer in computer architecture. He was a co-receipt of the ACM Turing Award in 2017 for developing the reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture. He co-founded MIPS Computer Systems and Atheros Communications. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Karen Korematsu
Dr. Karen Korematsu is the Founder and Executive Director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute and the daughter of the late civil rights icon, Fred Korematsu. Since her father’s passing in 2005, Karen has carried on his legacy as a public speaker, educator and civil rights advocate. In 2009, she established the Fred T. Korematsu Institute to advance racial equity, social justice and human rights for all. The Institute’s work has expanded from K-12 civic education to promoting Public civic engagement and participation. Karen crisscrosses the country speaking to audiences from Kindergarten to Judges and inspiring and promoting Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution of January 30. She is a co-Chair of the Annual National Council for the Social Studies, Board of Directors of Advancing Justice, and NAPABA Law Foundation.
Ed Lazowska
Ed Lazowskais a Professor, and Bill & Melinda Gates Chair Emeritus. He was the founding Director, University of Washington eScience Institute and the Founding Chair, Computing Community Consortium. Lazowska’s national leadership activities include serving as Co-Chair of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee from 2003 to 2005, Chair of the Computing Research Association from 1997 to 2001, Chair of the NSF CISE Advisory Committee from 1998 to 1999, Chair of the DARPA Information Science and Technology (ISAT) Study Group from 2004 to 2006, and Founding Chair of the Computing Community Consortium from 2007 to 2013. He was the inaugural holder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering. He is a Fellow of the ACM, a Life Fellow of the IEEE, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Paula Williams Madison
Paula Williams Madison is the CEO of Madison Media Management LLC. She is a prominent American journalist, executive, and businessperson who spent over 35 years in the news media industry, retiring from NBC Universal as executive VP and company officer of General Electric in 2011. Her accomplishments include being named one of the "75 Most Powerful African Americans in Corporate America" by Black Enterprise magazine in 2005 and one of the Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business in 2014. She has also written a book, Finding Samuel Lowe: China, Jamaica, Harlem. Additionally, her documentary, Finding Samuel Lowe: From Harlem to China, received recognition for its impact on the Asian American community.
Jeannette M. Wing
Jeannette M. Wing is the Executive Vice President for Research at Columbia University. She joined Columbia in 2017 as the Avanessians Director of the Data Science Institute and Professor of Computer Science. Prior to Columbia, Dr. Wing was Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Research, the department head in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, and served as Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the National Science Foundation. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
John C. Yang
John C. Yang is the president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC. He was the president of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) from 2003 to 2004. He co-founded the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center in 1997, and served as chair of the Asian American Justice Center (former name of Advancing Justice | AAJC). He is a member of American Bar Association House of Delegates, and a board member of ABA Rule of Law Initiative. He has served as Co-Chair of NAPABA’s Judiciary and Executive Nominations & Appointments Committee since 1998. In this capacity, he has worked extensively with the White House and the U.S. Senate in securing the nomination and confirmation of over 20 Asian American and Pacific Islander federal judges and numerous other Senate-confirmed Presidential appointments.