AAPI TRAILBLAZERS CONFERENCE  

Jeannette M. Wing is Executive Vice President for Research and Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. Previously, she served as Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Research, held faculty and leadership positions at Carnegie Mellon University, and served as Assistant Director of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation.

A member of the National Academy of Engineering and the MIT Corporation, Wing is widely recognized for her contributions to computer science and for her influential work advancing the concept of computational thinking. Her current research focuses on trustworthy AI.

Lily is a Global Program Lead at Amazon Web Services, where she designs in-house accelerator programs for early-stage startups that have expanded across 10+ countries. A former founder with a successful exit, she brings firsthand experience to every program she builds, from navigating fundraising bias to finding product-market fit. Her programs have supported 2000+ startups globally, and she's personally guided founders who have gone on to raise millions in venture funding. Prior to Amazon, she created Sephora's first accelerator for women founders, funding 65+ women founders and brands over five years. She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with a concentration in Entrepreneurship and serves as an advisor to Stanford's consumer accelerator program, Techstars, and other startup accelerators and organizations. She's selected as one of the speakers for TedX in New York this upcoming November.

Paul Cheung is a mission-driven executive with 25 years of expertise in media innovation, philanthropy, and nonprofit leadership. As President of Committee of 100, he focuses on promoting the full participation of Chinese Americans in American society and advancing constructive dialogue between the United States and Greater China.

His career spans leadership positions at the Center for Public Integrity, Knight Foundation, NBC News, The Associated Press, The Miami Herald and The Wall Street Journal, where he drove digital innovation and inclusive practices that amplify underrepresented voices.

Paul serves as an advisor and sits on boards and committees for nonprofits including Hacks/Hackers, The Literacy Lab, the Institute for Independent Journalists, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Dr. Di Cai is a Partner at Sanders Capital, a global investment firm with over $150 billion in assets under management. Before working in public equity, Di was involved in APAC venture capital and private equity investments at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and The Carlyle Group.

Di holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, home to six Nobel Prize laureates in Medicine/Chemistry, and an MBA from The Wharton School, where she was a Kaiser Fellow. She is a member of the Economic Club of New York.

Outside of investing, Di is on a personal mission to bridge the perception gap between the US and China through stories and laughter. As a stand-up comedian, she has toured North America and Asia, with performances at Kenan Presents, the Apollo Theater, Tokyo Comedy Bar, and the Seattle International Comedy Competition. As a storyteller, she has toured nationwide with The Moth Mainstage and is a four-time Moth StorySlam champion. She received the Serica Women’s Gala Rising Star Award in 2022, recognizing “the next generation of women with enormous potential to create change in China and the world,” and has emceed the Serica AAPI Women’s Gala, China Institute’s Blue Cloud Gala, the HYSTA Annual Conference, and the TCFA Annual Conference, among others. Di’s life on stage began long before Wall Street: before moving to the US, she was a presenter at Tianjin TV Network, the fourth-largest TV network in China.

Di is passionate about water sports. An avid sailor, skipper, and racer, she is a certified J/24 and J/80 captain and competed in the Sailing for Scholars Regatta. She also served on the Planning Committee for the Sailing for Scholars annual fundraising gala at the New York Yacht Club.

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Rubina Madan Fillion helps lead a cross-disciplinary team that leverages A.I. and other forms of machine learning for the benefit of journalists and audiences. She previously worked for The New York Times Opinion section as the director of strategy and the director of audience. Before that, she was the founding director of audience engagement at The Intercept. Rubina spent seven years at The Wall Street Journal, most recently as a social media editor. She has served on the board of directors of the Online News Association and the Deadline Club, and taught graduate-level journalism courses at Columbia University and New York University.

Qin Gao is a leading authority on social policy, inequality and the well-being of Chinese and Asian American communities. She is the Maurice V. Russell Professor of Social Policy and Social Work Practice and Associate Dean for Doctoral Education at Columbia University's School of Social Work, as well as Founding Director of Columbia's China Center for Social Policy.

Her research examines poverty, inequality, social policy and population well-being in China and among Asian Americans. She led the State of Chinese Americans Survey in 2022, providing an important empirical foundation for understanding the experiences of Chinese Americans in the United States.

Columbia profile | LinkedIn

Bourree Lam is an experienced digital media leader who's seasoned at audience growth, distribution strategies, and scaling digital operations. She’s passionate about launching impactful news products, strategic partnerships, and driving unique audience-first storytelling.

She spent 7 years at The Wall Street Journal where, as bureau chief of personal finance, she relaunched the section to be digital and audience-first. She spearheaded digital innovation and was one of the first members of the Journal’s AI task force. Her work has been recognized by the Online News Association, Newswomen’s Club of New York, the Maynard Institute and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Prior to her time at the Journal, she was a staff writer at The Atlantic and a founding member of the Freakonomics Radio team.

Brian Pang (he/him) is Founder and Principal of SKYROCKET Management Consulting, leveraging his 20 years of experience and expertise in strategy, product, programs, marketing, developing teams and operations to support growth stage organizations scale to infinity. Previously, Brian held senior product and marketing roles at Electronic Arts, leading studio & brand teams to deliver 45+ AAA game titles across popular franchises such as FIFA, Madden, NBA Live, NHL, UFC, Star Wars, Need for Speed, The Sims, Battlefield, Apex Legends, while centering authentic, relatable, accessible,

and inclusive player experiences. Recently, Brian founded Asians in Gaming to uplift underrepresented talent, stories, content, art, and audio, across the interactive entertainment industry. 

In addition, Brian serves as an executive director, lead, board member, and advisor for several organizations, focused on advancing equal opportunity and justice movements. Through his work with

Harvard Business Review, Asians In Advertising, Asian Leaders Alliance, National ACE, ACE NextGen, National Council of Asian Canadians, Canada SCORES, Asian Hustle Network, Asian Justice Movement, Stand with Asian Americans, Ascend Leadership, Elimin8hate, Yi-Ping Collective, Chinatown Solidarity Network, Make Us Visible, Code Coven, Women in Games, Asians in Gaming, and the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, Brian is devoted to advocacy for marginalized communities, for-justice initiatives, systemic improvements to ensure diversity and equal opportunity are present across all domains and facets of society. 

For his efforts in these spaces, Brian has been honored by the 2022 Asian Hustle Network Top 50 Unsung Heroes, 2022 Ascend Vancouver MVP, 2023 ACE Next Gen Community, and GLAAD Media for Outstanding Video Game awards, and was featured in FeedSpot’s Top 40 Asian Canadian Influencers in 2025.

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Dr. Ngoc Cindy Pham is Founder and Principal Investigator of BRIDGE AI Lab, an independent research and workforce initiative focused on equitable AI literacy and professional readiness. She is an Associate Professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY; Visiting Research Professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering; and Fulbright Specialist.

She founded the CUNY AI Literacy & Professional Readiness Series and created the BRIDGE Framework for Equitable AI Literacy. Her work examines how individuals and institutions can move beyond simply accessing AI toward developing responsible, practical capabilities for education and the workplace.

BRIDGE AI Lab | LinkedIn | CUNY AI Series

First-generation Kalmyk-American poet and language artist whose work explores what it means to be human in a more-than-human world. Her interdisciplinary practice reimagines poetry as both an ancient technology and a living computational medium, advancing "poetic intelligence"—the synthesis of emotion and algorithm—as a philosophy for the generative age.

Her work has been honored with the Prix Ars Electronica and Lumen Prize and exhibited internationally, including at MoMA and Art Basel. A recent Monument Lab Fellow and Google Arts & Culture Artist-in-Residence, Stiles has been co-evolving with her AI alter ego, Technelegy, since 2018.

Website | Social: @sashastiles

Xintian Tina Wang is an award-winning journalist whose work explores the intersection of innovation, culture, art, and identity. Her recent reporting for Design Observer has examined how artificial intelligence is reshaping creative industries, including how artists, designers, and media organizations are adopting and responding to emerging technologies. Her work has appeared in TIME, HuffPost, NBC News, ELLE, ARTNews, Observer, and has been recognized by the Gracie Awards, the United Nations Correspondents Association, Gold House, and the Boston Short Film Festival.

As president of the Asian American Journalists Association’s New York Chapter, Wang leads programming that advances media equity and supports journalists across career stages. She has spoken about journalism at the City University of New York, Adelphi University, Asia Society, The Asian American Foundation, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Wang holds an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University and a B.S. in communication from Boston University.

Shelly Xu is the founder of zero-waste design-AI startup SXD and has spent more than 15 years specializing in zero-fabric-waste design. An alumna of Instagram, Prada and McKinsey and a graduate of Harvard Business School, Xu combines design and technology to address the environmental impact of material waste.

Through SXD, she has developed patented AI technology designed to scale zero-waste approaches for partners ranging from global luxury brands to performers. Her work has received recognition including SXSW's Top Innovative World Technology and the Global Change Award.

Xin Ying is a choreographer, interdisciplinary artist, dancer and mother exploring the intersection of movement, technology and digital legacy. Her work across performance, artificial intelligence, immersive media and archival research reimagines choreography as a living system connecting bodies, archives and machines.

A principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company since 2011, she is also the creator of projects including MarthaBot, Lamentation: Dancing the Archive, Letter to Nobody, and In the Folds of Her Purple. Her interdisciplinary practice offers a particularly human lens into questions of authorship, memory and what happens when technology becomes part of our cultural archive. She has been working to develop MarthaBot and technology-enabled archival projects.

Instagram: @xin_ying_dance