The Sacramento Bee’s AAPI Change Makers: The Top 20 leaders you need to know in the region

Bold. Dedicated. Remarkable.

These are just some of the words community members used when nominating the following capital region leaders who have made significant contributions to Sacramento and beyond.

The Sacramento Bee’s Top 20 Asian American and Pacific Islander Change Makers include judges and lawyers, small business owners and nationally recognized nonprofit and private sector leaders. What they have in common is the ability to activate those around them.

Ranging in age from 27 to 91, this cohort of change makers is a reminder that making a difference can happen at any time and in any sector, including community advocacy, consulting and politics.

The Change Maker series is a collaboration between The Sacramento Bee’s Equity Lab and the Nehemiah Emerging Leaders Program . The project celebrates pioneers in the Latino, Black and Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.

This round of AAPI Change Makers represents the first in a series of three which will run into early next year. During this time, we’ll honor leaders in the Latino and Black communities, too. The nomination portal for the Latino series is open through mid-October.

We’ll honor the latest round of change makers, bringing together the latest 60 leaders, at an event at Sacramento State’s University Ballroom on April 4, 2025. Tickets can be purchased here.

Since the change makers project’s inception in 2022, it has honored 155 individuals from all walks of life.

The selection committee — made up of past Change Makers, members of the Nehemiah Community Foundation and The Sacramento Bee — convened in August to analyze the community’s nominations and condense the list down to 20.

Our selection committee included: Debra Ota Kent, executive director of the Health Education Council; Jim Tabuchi, serial social entrepreneur; Scott Syphax, founder of the Nehemiah Emerging Leaders Program; Scot Siden, chief operating officer of the Nehemiah Community Foundation; Deneva Shelton, chief executive officer of the Nehemiah Community Foundation; Sabrina Bodon, editor of The Sacramento Bee’s Equity Lab; and Colleen McCain Nelson, executive editor of The Sacramento Bee.

Now, let’s meet The Sacramento Bee Equity Lab’s Top 20 AAPI Change Makers:

Khydeeja Alam

Executive Director, California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs

If you ask Khydeeja Alam what makes her proud, she’ll tell you a story. While visiting a class of 30 college students in March, she met a young woman.

“I’m happy to see you in this position,” the girl said. “Because I see myself through you.”

Alam, 41, is the first South Asian and Muslim American to take the helm as executive director of the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs. Her job is to assist policy makers in identifying issues affecting AAPI communities in California.

For Alam, her achievements help her community and show girls and women they deserve a seat at the table, she said.

“We have to tell ourselves that we belong in places like these,” she said. “We need to reassure that we belong in these spaces.”

Alam has been described as a “significant problem solver” in Sacramento by her colleague, Chao Vang. Throughout her career, she has helped pass legislation that benefited vulnerable communities, including Proposition 38, which increased funding for early education and K-12 schools.

As the former board president of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Sacramento Valley/Central California, she helped the organization secure statewide grants and positioned it as a leading advocate for California’s Muslim community. She also serves on the Advisory Council for Muslimahs in Policy, a nonprofit that seeks to amplify women’s voices in policy and to engage in civic engagement and advocacy.

Throughout her life, Alam has always been motivated by the perseverance of her community.

She came to the U.S. from Pakistan when she was 13. She didn’t know any English and was bullied throughout grade school. But she didn’t let those hardships stop her.

“What my parents taught me was resilience,” Alam said. “This community taught me resilience. And that’s what keeps me going. All I want to do is make a positive impact for our community.”

Julie Cha Cruz

Owner, J Cruz Beauty Bar

Julie Cha Cruz’s journey into beauty began during her sophomore year of high school, when she marveled at how two sweaty friends managed to keep their makeup flawless while playing volleyball.

“How did they keep their makeup on them?” Cruz, 40, recalled thinking. “From there, I started to explore.”

At the time, Cruz struggled with insecurities centered around her physical appearance. She grew up in North Sacramento to refugee parents from Laos, a Southeast Asian country.

Beauty was never a priority in her family, Cruz said. Her parents were merely struggling to provide for their family of nine children.

“My parents only knew what they were taught, which was to constantly survive,” Cruz said.

Makeup offered Cruz an outlet to improve her self-confidence and break away from what she called the “generational trauma” of her parents.

During the last three years of high school, Cruz taught herself everything she could about applying makeup. By graduation, she dreamt of one day opening her own beauty salon.

Financial obstacles kept her from attending beauty school, so Cruz shifted to massage therapy. She spent the next several years working at a chiropractic office and practicing her beauty skills on family and friends.

In 2015, Cruz learned about paramedical tattooing — an advanced cosmetic procedure used to replace skin pigmentation and conceal scars. Cruz has since performed more than 6,000 procedures including tattooing areolas for breast cancer survivors and helping people dealing with alopecia and hair loss.

“I always enjoyed doing makeup, but that took it to another level,” Cruz said.

In 2018, Cruz reached the proudest moment of her career by opening J Cruz Beauty Bar — a salon off Broadway in Sacramento’s Land Park area. The business embodies her commitment to create “safe spaces” where women feel empowered and confident, regardless of whether it involves makeup.

“You need to do whatever it takes to make you feel good,” Cruz said. “That is the most important thing. What you don’t need is validation from anyone else.”

Dana Cruz

Governmental Affairs Attorney, Judicial Council of California

Born and raised in Pittsburg, California, Dana Cruz, 32, earned a law degree from UC Davis after studying political science and public policy at UC Berkeley. This led him to work in the state Senate as a fellow and then as a fiscal policy adviser at the California Department of Finance.

Prior to starting his career in public policy, Cruz served for several years in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. He has also volunteered as a military lawyer in the California State Guard, providing pro bono legal assistance to soldiers deployed around the world.

While working for Sen. Janet Nguyen, Cruz helped propose Senate Bill 410, which streamlines the process for veterans to apply for state government jobs, and shepherded it through the legislative process.

Cruz, who comes from a large military family, said that helping those who have served and want to continue their service at the state level was an accomplishment for him.

“I’m sure the state wants good, hard-working, service-oriented people,” Cruz said. “Helping connect those goals was great.”

Cruz also helped design the statewide eviction moratorium and rental assistance program during COVID-19 — the first such program of its magnitude in the nation.

The idea of service is always guiding Cruz in his pursuits, he said. He has been at the Judicial Council for about a year and enjoys his work, which continuously teaches him about the judicial branch of government.

“By your own existence, you have something to offer to society and to the world,” Cruz said. “You have a perspective. You have something special. Never doubt what you can bring to the table, never question whether you belong at the table.”

Mary Halterman, a budget manager at the state Department of Finance, noted that Cruz “found a calling in helping people,” particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, co-founding the Sacramento Filipino-American Lawyers Association to serve the Filipino-American community and mentor aspiring lawyers.

Rich Foreman

CEO, Apptology

While at a playground watching his young daughter in the early 2000s, Rich Foreman thought of an app.

“The iPhone had just come out,” Foreman, 55, said. “I had an idea for a talking book. It was called iMother Goose, and using that as a template, we probably created 25 apps.”

The venture wasn’t lucrative, earning Foreman only a few hundred dollars, but the script put him well on his way to developing apps for others. That was the start of Apptology , Foreman’s Folsom-based software company that specializes in custom-built mobile apps. Since 2010, it has been part of the development of more than 400 apps.

Foreman, an industrial engineer by trade and a former U.S. Navy officer, singles out a wellness app for first responders used by police departments in Vacaville and Dixon as the one he’s most proud of. That app helped suicidal individuals and has since been purchased by a private equity firm.

Foreman has been on the forefront of connecting tech entrepreneurs in the Sacramento region. He launched Startup Folsom to build a network and recently began staffing up Medstar, a nonprofit to promote medical and life science startups in the region.

“There’s magic when I see people get together and they start talking and they actually create their own startup,” Foreman said.

His days primarily consist of working with two new startups: a marketing platform for real estate agents powered by AI and another business working to alleviate the side effects of chemotherapy.

“My mom died of cancer, which is why this is a little more personal to me,” Foreman said. “Personally, my big contribution to society is having it out here to help cancer patients.”

Andrew Frank

Emeritus professor of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, UC Davis

If you’ve ever traveled in a modern plug-in hybrid electric car, that’s thanks to Andrew Frank.

Frank is widely regarded as the father of the modern plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, which helped transform clean transportation.

“The objective was always to improve,” Frank, 91, said. “Improvement in terms of performance and improvement in terms of fuel economy.”

Frank has been teaching students about engineering since 1969. He’s currently an emeritus professor of mechanical and aeronautical engineering at University of California, Davis. He retired in 2017.

He was born in China and later grew up in Southern California. Even before he had his driver’s license, Frank spent his teenage years in the ’50s working on hot rod cars. Despite his interest in engineering, he was told by high school counselors in Southern California to become a mechanic, which he said was because of his Chinese heritage.

But he didn’t care what they thought and pursued engineering anyway. Years later, he built the first modern plug-in hybrid electric vehicle with his students in 1971.

“We didn’t have the advanced electronics we currently have today. And because of that, to do everything, we did almost anything mechanically,” Frank said. “But I showed that it could be done.”

The invention of the plug-in hybrid electric car has been considered key in the adoption of cleaner cars, said Zan Dubin, a friend of Frank’s. It allowed drivers across the world to reduce emissions and meet global climate goals.

Frank worked on high-profile projects throughout his career. He contributed to the X-15 research project and the Apollo spacecraft.

If you step foot on any helicopter today, you’ll experience Frank’s work firsthand. Frank built the first stability augmentation system, which is a control device that responds to disturbances and atmospheric gusts.

“What I have tried to show (is that) these concepts and these numbers are achievable with the technology we clearly have,” Frank said. “We don’t need new technology. We just need to manage the technology in a better way.”

Mindy Galloway

CEO, Khemia Manufacturing and The Pocket Dispensary

Before Mindy Galloway became a leader in Sacramento’s cannabis industry, she was a teenager using marijuana as an “escape.”

As she grew older, Galloway learned to become intentional with her use — leveraging it to enhance her creativity, physical wellness and mental health. Now, she’s on a mission to ensure others recognize cannabis’ many benefits.

“A lot of people buy things in their lives and it might give them some gratification,” Galloway, now 38, said. “But cannabis works a little bit deeper than that — on the spiritual, physical and the health level.”

Born in the Philippines, Galloway immigrated to the U.S. before she turned 1. At 5, her family moved to Del Paso Heights, where she spent most of her formative years.

After high school, she spent two years studying audio engineering at Sacramento City College. But cannabis remained her passion. She got her start in the industry as a dispensary delivery driver, and she soon became entrenched with the cannabis community and culture.

“There was creativity, there was brainstorming, there was idea sharing,” Galloway said. “There was always something of value working with and meeting other people within this community.”

She later transitioned to working with cannabis extracts and manufacturing.

In 2017, she helped found Khemia , Sacramento’s first woman-owned cannabis manufacturing business. The company packages and sells products throughout Northern California, emphasizing female and social equity branding.

In the spring of 2021, she was one of 10 people granted a permit to open a dispensary through Sacramento’s Cannabis Opportunity Reinvestment and Equity program. The initiative was created to support communities that disproportionately face barriers to starting cannabis businesses.

Last year, Galloway used that permit to open The Pocket Dispensary in south Sacramento. Beyond her business ventures, Galloway has also served on the board of directors for the Yolo County Cannabis Coalition and as director of The Eden Gathering, a nonprofit supporting women CEOs passionate about cannabis.

At her core, Galloway remains committed to combining equity and female empowerment with her love for cannabis.

“I run by a very feminine or heart-centered approach to doing business, so profit doesn’t drive me,” Galloway said. “Helping others and helping the community is what drives me.”

Kaying Hang

President, The Center at Sierra Health Foundation

Deeply engaged with foundations across the country and the movements around immigration reform, Kaying Hang has used philanthropy as a means to initiate change.

Hang, who serves as the senior vice president for programs and partnerships with Sierra Health Foundation and president of nonprofit The Center at Sierra Health Foundation , said she “came back to my roots in public health, working with the safety net and with health systems.”

The center works closely with community-based organizations to promote health equity and racial justice. Hang, 51, was key to the center’s development and its on-the-ground work in the San Joaquin Valley.

“Our focus is unapologetically on health equity. It’s the way we work, live, play and pray,” Hang said. “We’ve made a deep impact on the region.”

The center’s resulting work touches on nearly every facet of San Joaquin Valley life: health, immigration, housing, education, environmental justice and the digital divide.

The Minnesota-reared Hang sees in Sacramento and her work at the center a shared ethos of community that drew her west more than a decade ago.

“Sacramento, it is almost like a small town, the sense of community, the sense of ‘We can do this,’” she said.

She sees her role as a platform to mentor the next generation of leaders. Education, as it was for Hang and her siblings, is the key.

“Being a Hmong woman, it also disrupts what a senior VP of a private organization looks like. It’s interesting for people to see me in this role,” Hang said. “But it’s also a representation to young Hmong girls and others of color.”

Jeffrey Javinar

Attorney, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

Jeffrey Javinar understands the value of creating connections to his community.

The Sacramento government attorney and former administrative law judge learned this lesson at a young age.

Javinar’s parents were first-generation Filipino-Americans. His father served in the Navy; his mother was an accountant, raising their son to carry the spirit of Bayan.

“Bayan means a nation, a town, a community. It represents the Filipino spirit of helping community. People who you can rely on — a safe space,” Javinar said. “We may not know each other but we have a shared bond. We try to serve and help others create the community.”

Javinar, 44, an attorney at the state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and community leader, has dedicated his career to fostering that spirit in the classroom, courtroom and AAPI community in Sacramento.

Javinar is also at work in Sacramento on a new community law school workshop series to educate the public on the law, provide free legal services and give vulnerable communities the tools they need to navigate the legal system.

“It’s important to inform the community and create a resource,” Javinar said of the series still in development. “There’s more people who want to help to do things, but if you’re not informed with how the community works, one thing you can do is to make it easier for them.”

He is a mentor to students at Luther Burbank High School’s Law and Social Justice program. The program offers coursework designed for students interested in the legal profession and law enforcement.

Javinar is also founder and president of the Sacramento Filipino American Lawyers Association. The association of attorneys, judges and law students addresses legal issues facing the Filipino community and provides scholarships and mentorships to law students, cultivating the next generation of legal leaders.

“It’s important to continue to highlight people in the community, to change the conversation about what they’re going to do with their own lives,” Javinar said.

Allison Joe

Senior Policy Advisor, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg

Throughout her government career, Allison Joe has worked on a variety of issues including affordable housing, transportation and climate. But over and over, she has found one throughline in her work — her role as a “dot connector.”

Leading behind-the-scenes coordination between government agencies, Joe is particularly drawn to the issue of equity and how it manifests in the ways public agencies communicate with the communities they serve.

She is an urban planner by training, having earned a master’s degree in planning and community development, and she has worked for the state in various planning roles involving affordable housing, transportation and climate.

Joe was the chief of staff to former Sacramento City Councilman Jay Schenirer from 2017 to 2022 before joining Steinberg’s office in early 2024.

“We expect communities to know what we’re talking about, and to know that they need to be in a certain place to share their concerns or take the survey,” Joe, 48, said. “The work that I’ve done has often been about trying to encourage our public agencies to intentionally message and communicate.”

In Schenirer’s office, Joe played a leading role in community outreach surrounding UC Davis’ Aggie Square development, which was located in Schenirer’s district and faced community pushback about potential displacement of residents.

As deputy director of the California Strategic Growth Council, she also worked on the state’s pioneering Cap-and-Trade Program, which limits greenhouse gas emissions while generating funds for decarbonization projects.

After Steinberg’s mayoral term ends in December, Joe plans to continue her work in the public sector, aiming to create equitable policies and resources for underserved communities.

“My advice would be to stretch,” Joe said. “Think about what could happen … or the possibility of maybe trying something different or new.”

Maya Wallace, who serves on the city of Sacramento’s planning and design commission, called Joe a “driving force shepherding the city’s racial equity work” along with other mayoral staffers.

Paul Lau

Chief Executive Officer and General Manager, SMUD

Paul Lau entered Sacramento State University in 1979 and expected to become a dentist. But three months volunteering in dentistry at UC Davis Medical Center changed his mind.

“I hated it,” Lau, 62, said. “I still remember calling my mom and saying, ‘Mom, I am changing my major.’”

An immigrant who spent his formative years in Hong Kong and Nigeria, Lau earned his diploma from Norte Del Rio High School in Del Paso Heights before it closed. He’d decided on a career in medicine because his sister was a nurse, he said, and then suddenly, he had to find a new field of study.

A friend in his physics class told him that the Sacramento Municipal Utility District was seeking interns and that Lau had done all the coursework to qualify. Lau applied and was hired to write code to manage more efficiently the fuel rods used in the fission process at the utility’s Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station.

He was hooked — and switched his major to electrical engineering. After college, he went to work full-time for the utility.

SMUD executive Tom McIntyre saw management potential in the Sac State grade, but Lau resisted. So, McIntyre told him: “Why don’t you just do this for 18 months? If you don’t like it, you can go back.”

He didn’t. Lau has been SMUD’s CEO and general manager since October 2020.

Of Lau, SMUD Board Chair Rosanna Herber said: “He came to the top post sharing an ambitious vision — SMUD’s 2030 Clean Energy Vision, which sets an aggressive and nation-leading goal of absolute zero carbon emissions in SMUD’s power supply by 2030.”

Lau also led the installation of smart meters in more than 600,000 Sacramento-area homes, allowing customers to see their electricity use by the hour and act to lower their bills.

And, working with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Lau recently developed a training program to equip residents of Del Paso Heights and other under-resourced neighborhoods with the climbing skills needed to try out for apprenticeships as lineworkers. Depending on experience, the positions can pay $200,000 or more annually with overtime, he said.

Mary Yin Liu

National CEO, Asian Pacific American Public Affairs

Mary Yin Liu’s life has always been about uplifting others.

A daughter of Chinese immigrants, Liu said her family was treated as outsiders when they came to the U.S. They ran a McDonald’s chain in East Oakland and were often challenged because of their heritage. Not only did they work harder to prove themselves, but also to achieve success as a community.

That McDonald’s would become an avenue into Liu’s career. Over time, Liu and her family expanded their business to Yolo, Solano and Sacramento counties. She later served as the chair of the Ronald McDonald House Charities Scholarship Program, and she raised more than $1 million to support high school students.

But her achievements would have never been possible without her family and her community, she said. It’s her responsibility to continue her family’s legacy and extend a hand to others.

“The story of America is people helping others,” Liu, 55, said.

This dedication to uplift other AAPI communities would later inspire the creation of the Asian Pacific American Public Affairs. The national nonprofit, which was founded by her parents, is dedicated to advancing AAPI communities through civic engagement. Liu now serves as APAPA’s national chief operations officer. Her mission with APAPA is to ensure Asian communities “have a voice” and their stories are shared, she said.

Through her work with APAPA, Liu has organized an Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Advocacy day, partnering with 50 nonprofits and 120 community leaders.

“We truly are Americans, just like everyone else,” Liu said. “Some of our families have been here for generations, we have built this community. We have built this country.”

Lee Lo

Executive Director, Asian American Liberation Network

Guided by her empathy and genuine love for others, Lee Lo routinely finds herself absorbing the feelings of those around her and empowering community members to be there for one another.

“How do I channel my love of community to be able to change the systems so that future generations do not have to endure the level of pain and suffering and isolation that I experienced growing up?”

Her parents, Southeast Asian refugees, settled in Stockton before moving to the Sacramento Valley when Lo was a toddler. Her personal mission, she said, is informed by the poverty she experienced.

“Growing up in Del Paso Heights shaped who I am — my drive for work, growing up having experienced layers and layers of oppression in terms of intersectionality as a queer Hmong woman who is fat, who is BIPOC,” Lo said.

Lo felt her identity was questioned by others, invoking an anger she’s since learned to channel into organizing. She credits time with the Hmong Women’s Heritage Association for teaching her the foundation of advocacy, a skillset she’s developed over the years.

A UC Davis graduate, Lo has engaged with nonprofits in Sacramento through work with the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center. In 2020, Lo co-founded the Asian American Liberation Network , formerly Sac API Regional Network, to address the rise in anti-Asian hate and prioritize anti-raicst programming in Sacramento.

“When we expand our definition of community and the people we care for and the people who are connected to us, we expand the way that we move to support them,” Lo, 31, said. “We show up in a different way for them.”

Jamie Ross

Educator, Auburn Union School District

Jamie Ross had just graduated from California State University, Long Beach in 2005. A neighborhood flier changed the trajectory of her life.

“I was a starving college student and saw an ad that said ‘Rap Battle.’ That’s how it started,” Ross, 43, said. The Auburn native “knew I had the skill and the passion and I needed to eat.” She competed and won.

She followed her passion for music and her newfound dream to Jersey City, New Jersey. She found herself in the New York orbit of artists such as Wyclef Jean and John Legend, signed to Universal Music and toured the world. She left the business in 2012, discouraged by what she experienced as misogyny, and moved to California.

“I found the business wasn’t built for women,” Ross said.

Ross was disillusioned by the experience, but she saw the value of the art form and its potential to teach young people lessons about equity and inclusion.

Ross returned to Northern California and began working with Native American reservations in Washington and Oregon. She tapped into her influences, seminal artists such as Jurassic 5 and Pharcyde.

She remembers Jurassic 5’s breakdown of the art form: “‘Hip,’ to know. ‘Hop,’ to move. The movement of knowledge. How do you move knowledge from one generation to the next? There are so many elements you get to — knowledge of self,” she said. “We want to give kids hope and confidence, that knowledge of self. We’re just here to help them along the way,” Ross said.

Her Beats Lyrics Leaders helps young people use hip-hop to develop music production and entrepreneurial skills. Her Auburn nonprofit Kidzapalooza.org creates family festivals for children to explore music and art. She is an artist-in-residence with the city of Sacramento working with youth in Oak Park and in the Sacramento City Unified and Twin Rivers school districts. Her Any Given Child program trains artists to teach arts-integrated curricula.

She’s worked with educators, uplifted youth, advocated for the homeless and displaced, fought for arts and equity in area classrooms and for anti-bias training for local police.

Artist, entrepreneur, school board trustee, arts council director, creative director, nonprofit leader, community advocate, Ross, in one nominator’s words, “has given more than anyone I know.”

Megan Sapigao

Director of Special Projects, Everyday Impact Consulting

Megan Sapigao’s life story has been dictated by being a third-generation Filipino-American.

Her grandfather came to the U.S. as a farmworker and started his family in Sacramento.

While Sapigao’s father was discouraged from expressing his Filipino heritage because of the family’s focus on assimilating, she has made it a priority. Her interest only grew after college, where she studied ethnic studies and women’s studies at Sacramento State.

“There was a time where my Filipino identity was recovering a lot of what was lost and understanding the context of why it was lost,” Sapigao, 41, said.

Today, Sapigao’s career has been dedicated to not only serving Sacramento’s Filipino community, but the greater Asian and Pacific Islander community. Sapigao currently serves as director of special projects at Everyday Impact Consulting, a consulting firm for nonprofit, government and philanthropic entities.

For the past 10 years, Sapigao has served in leadership roles with the Philippine National Day Association, helping Filipino youth with scholarships.

During the pandemic, Sapigao’s work was focused on providing Asian communities with resources. Sapigao was also part of the SAVE Coalition, a community effort to help people get vaccines in South Sacramento. She served as a vaccine ambassador with Sacramento County Public Health. She also co-founded the Asian American Liberation Network, which gave Asian Americans access to COVID-19 testing, vaccines and other pandemic-related services.

In 2021, she led discussions and organized a town hall involving community organizations and Sacramento city councilmembers on anti-Asian hate.

She also leads two Northern California Stop the Hate collaboratives, where she helps organizations with approaches for addressing racist violence.

“I’ve just grown a deep affinity for being in the community because that’s where change actually originates,” Sapigao said.

Elizabeth Sarine

Deputy Attorney General, California Office of the Attorney General

A grand plan didn’t lead Elizabeth Sarine to the law. But for Sarine, 43, a natural resources attorney in the state Attorney General’s Office, the seed was planted at an early age.

After her father died of leukemia when she was 5, her mother moved the family from Taipei to the tiny Central American country of Belize.

“When we moved from this tall apartment building in Taipei to the tropics, it opened up the wonder of the natural world,” Sarine said.

The next move, when Sarine was 9, took the family to Redding with Mount Shasta and Lassen National Park as backdrops.

She earned an environmental sciences degree at UC Davis, taught for a time and worked with nonprofits. She returned to school, earned her law degree and found her calling.

“It speaks to both sides of my core passions: environmental science and justice,” she said.

Sarine’s work helps state agencies comply with laws that protect and manage the state’s natural resources.

Within the AG’s office, Sarine led community organizing ahead of California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s historic apology in August 2023 for the office’s role in the forced relocation, detention and dispossession of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Sarine is a mentor to law students and new deputies in her office and with the California Water Law Symposium, as well as with the Women Lawyers of Sacramento and the Asian/Pacific Bar Association. Sarine received the Asian/Pacific Bar Association of Sacramento’s 2023 Community Service Award for her work.

“Elizabeth believes in the importance of paying it forward,” said colleague and friend Tam Ma.

Sarine volunteers with My Sister’s House, the Sacramento nonprofit serving women and children escaping domestic violence.

Dale Shimasaki

Retired CEO, Strategic Education Services

For years, Dale Shimasaki’s family story existed only in the pages of history books. His parents and grandparents, like many Japanese Americans, were forcibly relocated to incarceration camps during the early 1940s.

They rarely spoke of those years, leaving Shimasaki to piece together their experiences from books in their home. These stories left a lasting impression, shaping his career and sense of purpose.

“It got me thinking about how to be involved in the government so they don’t abuse the power, and we don’t have incidents like this ever happening again,” Shimasaki, 70, said.

Born and raised in the Bay Area, Shimasaki spent most of his 20s at UC Berkeley earning degrees in economics and public policy. After a short stint in Washington, D.C., Shimasaki moved to Sacramento, where he would influence state policy for years.

He served in the Legislative Analyst’s Office, as principal consultant for the Assembly Budget Committee and chief consultant for educational policy and finance for then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

“He embodies — in generous measure — the qualities that successful change makers need,” Brown said in a statement.

While working in the California Legislature, Shimasaki worked extensively with the AAPI Legislative Caucus and helped found Asian and Pacific Americans in Higher Education — an organization devoted to addressing the community’s concerns.

“To create that group, to give them — the AAPI community — a voice, and to give them a safe haven to share their issues, I think that’s a big thing,” Shimasaki said. “It was just so unique.”

In 1996, Shimasaki’s life came full circle when he was appointed by President Bill Clinton’s administration to educate the public on the lessons learned from the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. In this role, he awarded grants to community organizations and educational institutions nationwide.

“It was one of the most rewarding experiences because it related to my family and my community more than any other job I held,” Shimasaki said.

In 1999, Shimasaki became the CEO of Strategic Education Services, a government relations and policy consulting firm advocating for education in California. He served in that role until retiring in 2022.

Today, Shimasaki is working with the California Public Employees Retirement System’s legislative unit.

Rau Mona Tawatao

Legal Director, Equal Justice Society

Rau Mona Tawatao, 63, grew up in largely white Apple Valley where her father, Dr. Manuel Tawatao, relocated to practice as an OB-GYN because the community didn’t have enough health providers.

Her schoolmates couldn’t figure out what Tawatao’s race or ethnicity was.

That might not seem all that important, but Tawatao was targeted with racial slurs intended to demean Asian Americans and with epithets typically reserved for Latino and African Americans.

Fortunately, though, her father wove a cocoon around his family by inviting other Filipino families in their region to join a social and cultural network called the Philippine-American Association of the High Desert.

While that group nurtured Tawatao’s pride in her ethnic identity, she said, the racism she faced outside it fueled a spirit of rebellion in her that awakened when she was 19, following the death of her mother, Goyie Tawatao.

After that monumental loss, Tawatao said, she no longer wanted to be “the good immigrant daughter” and follow her father into a career in medicine. Instead, she chose to go to law school where other Asian Pacific Islander students inspired her political activism and led her to volunteer with legal aid organizations.

“I fell in love with that work for social justice and for representing low-income people, mostly people of color,” she said.

At the Equal Justice Society, Tawatao collaborated with the Black Parallel School Board and won a legal settlement in 2019 that requires independent monitoring of the Sacramento City Unified School District to ensure equity in its disciplining and education of Black students with disabilities.

“They’re students and humans and young people like everybody else who has aspirations, dreams, challenges, and ... really the system is set up in so many ways to just fail them,” Tawatao said.

Vince Sales, the chief executive officer of Everyday Impact Consulting, nominated Tawatao for this award, saying she’s on a mission to “dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline and to fight race discrimination and promote equity in K-12 and higher education.”

Maikhou Thao

Director of Movement Building Initiatives, Everyday Impact Consulting

Consultant Maikhou Thao dives into under-resourced communities around the state, working with residents to identify the solutions they believe will improve their lives.

This work spoke to her, she said, because she grew up poor in Oroville, the youngest of 11 children. Her parents were among the thousands of Hmong political refugees who came to the U.S. after years of fighting against communism alongside American troops in the Vietnam War.

In high school, Thao got involved in the federally funded Upward Bound program, which prepares low-income students for college with tutoring, mentoring and enrichment activities. It’s aimed at youth whose parents didn’t go to college.

Thao got her first taste of being a bridge builder and change agent at the Cross-Cultural Leadership Center at Chico State. There, students of color find a place of belonging and a space where they can begin experimenting with how to tackle challenges of equity.

Thao, 27, was hired by Everyday Impact Consulting shortly after graduating in 2018, and her first project was to work with Sacramento County to ensure an accurate 2020 Census count.

While preparation for the census begins years in advance, U.S. citizens across the lower 48 see the results of all that work in March when they’re asked to fill out questionnaires. In March 2020, though, the coronavirus epidemic prompted a nationwide lockdown.

Everyday Impact and the county had to quickly pivot and take outreach and awareness events online, Thao said. So, what happened?

“Sacramento County actually had a higher count in 2020 than we did in 2010, and so we ranked eighth in the top response among 58 counties in California,” Thao said. “In 2010, we actually ranked in the 10 lowest.”

Nonprofit leader Kiara Reed of Civic Thread described Thao as “a compassionate and effective change maker, who is fine leading from behind, but will also step up and command a room when needed.”

Currently, Thao is working part-time at Everyday Impact and pursuing a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of California, Davis.

Dr. Elisa K. Tong

Professor of Medicine, UC Davis

When Dr. Elisa Tong visited China for the first time in 1991 to delve into her ancestral history, her group leader brought a box of Marlboro cigarettes and handed packs to people they met.

Tong was shocked, but the group leader told her: “Don’t worry about it. They like this stuff. They can’t get American cigarettes yet, so this is considered the good stuff.”

Tong, 50, has since dedicated herself to educating people about the dangers of tobacco, improving tobacco cessation programs, making inroads into racial and ethnic populations with high rates of tobacco use and drawing attention to how tobacco companies market to consumers.

As a medical school student, Tong said, she studied hundreds of documents that Big Tobacco was forced to release as part of lawsuits against the industry. One revealed that tobacco company Philip Morris had paid millions of dollars to undermine World Health Organization research showing that secondhand smoke causes cancer among people who had never smoked.

“It was just this whole roadmap into how an industry can try to subvert things that are a threat to their business,” Tong said.

The revelations influenced her to go into tobacco cessation research. One of Tong’s studies, which required modifying electronic medical records at all five UC health systems, showed that smokers were more likely to have long-term success with quitting when health care providers gave them an electronic referral to tobacco helplines such as Kick It California .

As director of the Tobacco Cessation Policy Research Center , Tong built upon this success by working with other health systems and Medi-Cal to adopt the e-referral strategy and advance research.

“Tong has been a dedicated problem solver, working within the Sacramento region to bridge the gaps between community, public health, health care and academia,” said UC Davis Health researcher Moon S. Chen. “For example, she helped educate local and state policymakers about the health risks of flavored tobacco products for young people and diverse communities, which led to … Sacramento’s law and also the state law (Senate Bill) 793 restricting the sale of flavored tobacco.”

Jeannie Wong

Senior Associate Vice President of University Communications, Sacramento State

As a child of Chinese immigrants, Jeannie Wong always envisioned a career that would reflect her background. But it wasn’t until her eighth-grade teacher suggested journalism that Wong found her true calling.

“I would look at my hometown newspaper back then and realize that there weren’t a whole lot of bylines that looked like mine,” said Wong, who grew up in Los Angeles.

Wong became an editor at her high school paper, and she earned a degree in journalism at the University of Southern California. From there, Wong spent more than 20 years working at California newspapers — The San Diego Union, Oakland Tribune and The Sacramento Bee — while participating in several chapters of the Asian American Journalists Association.

All the while, she maintained a focus on lifting up Asian and immigrant experiences.

“For me, it was always just a matter of equity,” Wong, 62, said. “I wanted to see these stories.”

Wong, who is married to Sacramento Bee Opinion Editor Marcos Bretón, left journalism in 2008 to raise her twin daughters. She later joined Sacramento State, where she helped develop the award-winning marketing campaign “Made at Sac State.”

Today, Wong is the senior associate vice president of university communications and the only female AAPI member of the president’s cabinet. In the role, she oversees strategic communications, marketing and brand identity for the university.

Wong currently serves as a vice chair of the board of directors for the Sacramento Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce , is a senior fellow of the American Leadership Forum Mountain Valley Chapter and sits on the board of directors for the Sacramento Literacy Foundation.

For Wong, these roles provide additional opportunities to advocate for equity and collaborate with like-minded individuals. She aspires to keep creating more pathways for future generations.

“We can’t effect change if we don’t have a seat at the table or be in the room where it happens,” Wong said.