Josephine Lee is currently the Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities and Professor of English and Asian American Studies in the College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is the editor-in-chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture. Her other books include Race in American Musical Theater, Oriental, Black, and White: The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater, The Japan of Pure Invention: Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage, and the edited collection Milestones in Asian American Theatre.
Anh-Thu Pham is the managing director at Theater Mu. She is Vietnamese American with a background in finance and activism. As a refugee from Vietnam, she immigrated to Minnesota in 1975 and has since dedicated herself to community organizing and art. Pham joined Theater Mu after working in finance for 22 years at the University of Minnesota. She has sat on the boards of Pangea World Theater, Ananya Dance Theater, and the New Arab American Theater Works.
Kaysone Syonesa Schneider (she/her) is the co-executive director at The SEAD Project, an organization that aims at growing empowerment in the Southeast Asian diaspora community through storytelling, language, and arts advocacy. She has a unique background and multidisciplinary experiences that include community and youth development and engagement, facilitative leadership, theatre, and dance. She is a performance storyteller at her core, and flourishes at interconnecting creativity and community to continuously approach her work with an artistic and justice lens.
Moderator
Phil Chan is a co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, and author of Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing between Intention and Impact, and the President of the Gold Standard Arts Foundation. He is a graduate of Carleton College and an alumnus of the Ailey School. He has held fellowships with NYU, the Manhattan School of Music, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and is currently a fellow at Harvard University, Drexel University, and the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art in Paris. As a writer, he served as the executive editor for FLATT Magazine and contributed to Dance Europe Magazine, Dance Magazine, Dance Business Weekly, and the Huffington Post, and currently serves on the advisory board of Dance Magazine. He served multiple years on the National Endowment for the Arts dance panel and the Jadin Wong Award panel presented by the Asian American Arts Alliance.
