KaYing Yang of RedGreen Rivers

For more than two decades, KaYing Yang has been a social justice advocate who builds and leads community organizing, public policy engagement, and development efforts locally, nationally, and globally. Since the mid-1990s, she has been a community organizer and executive manager providing social services and advocacy for the protection of refugees and immigrants for a number of organizations, including the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) in Washington, DC, where she partnered with community-based organizations throughout the nation and Asian American civil rights groups to address gaps in educational achievements, lack of disaggregated data, and economic and health disparities persistent in large sectors of the Asian American community.

From 2004-2006 Yang worked for the International Organization for Migration in Thailand, then in Laos from 2006-2013 with the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group. From 2015-2020, she served as the director of policy for the Coalition of Asian American Leaders (CAAL) in Minnesota. As an entrepreneur, Yang is president of RedGreen Rivers, LLC, a social enterprise to promote and lift up artisans globally and KaYing+Community, a nonprofit management consulting business. Yang’s commitment to nurturing community power to shape policy and systems has earned her many recognitions, including the 2019 recipient of the Bush Foundation Fellowship. Since 2022, Yang has served on President Biden’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.