Join us for an evening of community building and networking featuring a brief yet powerful panel with Helen Zia and Henry Der, moderated by Bernice Yeung and Jana Kastuyama. Welcome remarks from Dean Michael D. Bolden.

Date: April 9, 2026
Time: 6-8 pm

Henry Der

Henry Der, Coordinator, CAA Oral History Project
A son of immigrant parents, for more than two decades, Der was the executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, working to promote the civil rights of Chinese Americans and other racial minority groups in employment, education, voting, immigration and language access to public services. From 2008 to 2020, Der was a senior program officer at Four Freedoms Fund, a national funders’ collaborative supporting pro-immigrant justice groups in 26 states across America. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya, he is currently the coordinator of the CAA Oral History Project, a collaboration among Chinese for Affirmative Action, UC Berkeley Asian American Research Center and Ethnic Studies Library, that produced the Block by Block film that details how San Francisco big money and political powerbrokers waged a public relations war against the construction of a community college campus in Chinatown.

Helen Zia

Helen Zia, award-winning investigative journalist and editor, an author and Fulbright Scholar

Helen Zia is an award-winning investigative journalist and editor, an author and Fulbright Scholar. A founding member of AAJA’s New York Chapter, she was Executive Editor of the Ms. magazine. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, her latest book, Last Boat out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese who Fled Mao’s Revolution, was an NPR best book of 2019 and shortlisted as a finalist for a 2020 national PEN AMERICA award. Her first book, Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, about the contemporary civil rights struggles of Asian Americans, received AAJA’s first Suzanne Ahn Award. Helen also has been outspoken on issues ranging from human rights to countering gender and hate violence and homophobia. Her work on anti-Asian violence appears in the Oscar-nominated film, “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” In 2010, Helen was an expert witness in the federal case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that recognized marriage equality. She holds honorary doctorates from the University of San Francisco and the City University of New York Law School. She attended Princeton University on scholarship and was a member of its first graduating class of women. Helen quit medical school to work as a construction laborer, an autoworker, and a community organizer, until she discovered her life’s work as a journalist and writer. @HelenZiaReal (FB, IG); www.HelenZia.com.

Moderators

Jana Katsuyama

Jana Katsuyama 勝山ジャナ, Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) SF Bay Area Chapter President and Fox2 News Reporter

Jana Katsuyama joined KTVU in 2007 and became part of the Ten o’clock News team in 2012. During her time at KTVU, Jana has won multiple Emmy awards and her investigation into paper automobile dealer plate loopholes led to an Assembly bill that changed California’s license plate laws so new cars no longer can be on the road without a license plate.

As a journalist, Jana has covered wildfires in the North Bay and southern California, been tear-gassed while reporting on Occupy protests, flown with the Red Barons in an open cockpit plane over Lake Superior, anchored breaking news coverage during the first hours of the Boston Marathon bombing, and did live reports from Tokyo just days after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster connecting with Bay Area residents in Japan.

Prior to working at KTVU, Jana was an anchor and reporter at the ABC affiliate WDTN-TV in Dayton, Ohio. She began her career at the NBC affiliate KBJR-TV in Duluth, Minnesota along Lake Superior. Before entering journalism, Jana worked as an international relations coordinator for the Hiroshima YMCA Medical College in Yonago, Japan. She also was selected to teach English in Japan through the Japanese Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Education’s JET Program.

Jana is originally from Dayton, Ohio and graduated with honors from Oberlin College with a double major in English Literature and East Asian Studies.

Bernice Yeung

Bernice Yeung is the managing editor of the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley Journalism. She is a co-founder and former board member of Hyphen, and has contributed to Asian American media outlets such as A. Magazine and public radio’s “Pacific Time.” Before coming to UC Berkeley, Bernice was a reporter for ProPublica and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. The author of In a Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers, Bernice’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times and PBS Frontline. She grew up in San Jose, California, to immigrants from Hong Kong.