AAJA-Asia board members are selected through a chapter-wide nomination and voting process. Board members serve a two-year term.
Rebecca Isjwara, co Vice-President, Hong Kong (2019-2020), Secretary (2021-2022)
Rebecca Isjwara is a reporter with Hong Kong-based trade publication Asian Private Banker, covering for all things tech — spanning from daily coverage responsibilities to chairing the annual technology awards. She currently serves as the co-vice president Hong Kong for the Asian American Journalists Association – Asia (AAJA-Asia), where she champions journalism through workshops, events, and annual conferences. She also volunteers as the marketing manager for TEDxWanChai and events coordinator for the Hong Kong International Literary Festival.
Rebecca graduated from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology with a BBA in Global Business and Finance. In her free time, she loves to brew a good cup of coffee and delve into third culture literary works.
Carina Lee, Secretary (2018-2019), Vice-President, Seoul (2016-2017 and 2021-2022)
Carina Lee is an assistant programmer at A+E Networks. She develops programming strategy in the Korea market for the History and Lifetime channels, both of which launched in 2017. Previously she was the affiliate sales coordinator at Discovery Networks as she distributed Discovery channels across TV platforms in Korea. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before her first career with Discovery, she has interned at CBS (WBZ-TV) and the Associated Press.
Marika Katanuma, co Vice-President, Tokyo (2019-2020)
Marika is responsible for spearheading Bloomberg Japan’s digital growth, as the regions Digital News Editor. Her multifaceted role convenes optimization across all digital medium channels, editorial production and assisting newsroom with valuable insights. Prior to Bloomberg, Marika spent 3 years studying Mass Communications and Sociology in Virginia and Boston and subsequently began her career at Yahoo! JAPAN in 2016. Twitter:@MarikaKatanuma
Soo Min Oh, Treasurer (2019-2020)
Soo Min Oh is a former US-based investigative journalist who has written and reported for Fortune magazine, Time Inc., NPR, The Village Voice, and has worked on longform reporting and book projects. Her political reporting was included in Wayne Barrett’s investigative biography (published by Crown Publishing Group) of Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York and now attorney to US President Donald Trump. She also was research/editorial assistant to biographer Eleanor Dwight on the authorized biography (published by HarperCollins) of Diana Vreeland, the legendary late editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine and special consultant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York City. Ms. Oh currently is a specialist for the Hyundai Group, where she works in global human resources development with the corporation’s key partners that include Fortune 500 companies. She is a lecturer at Yonsei University. A native of Philadelphia, Soo Min has lived and worked in New York and Los Angeles, where she worked in acquisitions and operations for private and nonprofit hospitals and health care companies in Southern California. She has a degree in Economics and Mathematics.
Mark Zastrow, Secretary (2020-2021), Co-Vice President, Seoul (2018-2019)
Mark Zastrow is a science writer based in Seoul. He’s written for Nature, New Scientist, Sky & Telescope, NOVA Next, Retraction Watch, and other outlets. He co-edits Back of the Envelope, the science section of the literary magazine The Offing. He is also a board member of the Asia chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association and co-vice president of its Seoul subchapter.
He received his bachelor’s degree in astrophysics from the University of Minnesota and masters degrees in astronomy and science journalism from Boston University. He is currently a full-time freelancer, photographer, licensed pilot, and devout Formula 1 fan.
Grace Lee, At-large Board Member (2019-2020)
Grace is the Tokyo Correspondent for Feature Story News, an international broadcast news agency based in the United States. She provides coverage for TV and radio stations around the world. At the moment she’s in Hong Kong, covering the city’s months-long protests. Before joining FSN she was a reporter/producer for Reuters, where she told stories across Asia – with a focus on news out of North Korea. Prior to that, she was a local journalist at CTV News in Vancouver, Canada. You can follow her on Twitter at @graceleenews.
Chloe Lim, Student Representative (2020)
Chloe Lim is a senior at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. Her AAJA journey began in 2019 with her internship with Tom Benner, VP of the Singapore subchapter. Chloe served as editorial assistant to AAJA-Asia’s N3Magazine and her work has been published in various media outlets. She has also recently interned at Forkast.News. Follow her on Twitter @chloelimjiahui.
Isabel Wong, Vice President, Hong Kong (2017-2018)
Isabel is a multimedia producer based in Hong Kong with more than six years of experience in digital and broadcast journalism. She produces stories related to business and finance, arts and culture, and current affairs. She has worked at Bloomberg TV Asia and Hong Kong Tatler and her works can also be seen on Travel Channel, That’s Shanghai, Equal Times, and Hong Kong Discovery. Isabel also has experience in branding and digital marketing for luxury fashion brands like YOOX NET-A-PORTER Group in Asia Pacific.
Angie Lau, President (2016-2018)
Angie Lau is Editor-in-Chief, CEO, and Founder of Forkast.News. She is an award-winning veteran journalist who interviews newsmakers, CEOs, and icons, including the exclusive with Li Ka-shing — his first television one-on-one in more than a decade. Angie is a respected thought leader in blockchain technology, having been featured in Vogue Hong Kong’s May, 2019 issue: “Power of Next” for her leadership in media covering blockchain for a global audience. Angie speaks at conferences around the world, including the Forbes Summit, Binance Blockchain Week, Paris Blockchain Week Summit, Asia Blockchain Summit, and many others.
Before founding Forkast in July 2018, Angie Lau anchored Bloomberg TV’s flagship morning show “First Up with Angie Lau” broadcast globally into 350 million homes, offices and trading floors. Angie’s TED Talk “I Am Not Supposed to Be Here” is now a TED Ed Lesson for its global audience of 6.7 million followers. She was the lead EMCEE for HK FinTech in 2018 and 2019.
Ramy Inocencio, AAJA-Asia President and National Board Representative (Hong Kong) (2013-2015)
Host/senior producer of Wall Street Journal’s “Digits” global tech show, Ramy was previously CNN International’s Asia Business Analyst based in Hong Kong. Prior to CNNi, Ramy worked at CNN domestic in New York reporting from the NASDAQ in Times Square. He’s also served as a digital news anchor at CBS News in the Big Apple, an anchor/reporter at Channel NewsAsia in Singapore, a host for China Central Television International in Beijing and a former Peace Corps China volunteer. Ramy counts himself as half-Chinese, half-Filipino and all-American. He was graduated from the College of William and Mary in Virginia, did a year-long Asia-Pacific Leadership Fellowship at the East-West Center in Honolulu, speaks Mandarin Chinese and will inevitably get you to go to karaoke with him. Find Ramy on Twitter @RamyInocencio.
President Ken Moritsugu (2006-2013) is the Tokyo bureau chief for The Associated Press. Previously he was the Asia enterprise editor for the AP based in Bangkok. He has also been a freelancer in India, a Washington correspondent for Knight Ridder and a reporter at Newsday, the St. Petersburg Times and The Japan Times. He was vice president for print of AAJA in 2013 and is a past president of the New York chapter. Find Ken on Twitter @kmorit.
Regional Vice President, Beijing, Allen T. Cheng ( 1996-2012)
Allen Cheng is the Asia bureau chief of Institutional Investor, a New York-based financial media company that specializes in analyzing the global financial services industry and is a subsidiary of London-listed Euromoney Institutional Investor. He also is managing director of II Magazine Group in Asia and editor-in-chief of IIChina.com, Institutional Investor’s new online Chinese language service that caters to Chinese investors globally. Cheng has more than 24 years of journalism experience covering business, finance and politics in the U.S. and Asia. Prior to joining Institutional Investor, he was Bloomberg News’ China political correspondent based in Beijing. Over the course of his career, he has worked for several Fortune 500 media companies, including Gannett Co., publisher of USA Today, and Time Warner Inc. He is the co-author of a major magazine package on global sovereign wealth funds, which won first place for magazine investigative journalism in the 2009 U.S. Society of Professional Journalists Deadline Club Awards. A bilingual writer, Cheng also won the 2001 Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award in magazine journalism’s Chinese category for “Rising Phoenix,” a feature story that appeared in Reader’s Digest’s global Chinese edition on the rise of China. Cheng holds a B.A. and M.A. in mass communications from Washington State University and was a fellow at the Summer Program for Minority Journalists at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. Cheng co-founded AAJA-Asia in 1997 and has been a member of AAJA since 1985. He was a founding member of the Seattle chapter in 1985 and was president of the Portland, Oregon, chapter from 1990-1992.
Yuriko Nagano, National Advisory Board Representative (2021); Treasurer, Tokyo Vice President (2012); Board Member (2014) ; Co-President (2015)Yuriko is a Tokyo-based American freelance reporter covering anything from business and technology, politics to breaking news. She reports for various trade publications and her coverage has included compliance and regulatory issues, the pharmaceutical industry and logistics. She writes for the Los Angeles Times, the New Scientist and the Christian Science Monitor. Her stories have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune and Newsweek Japan. Her radio stories have been broadcasted on Public Radio International, the Voice of America and KQED-FM San Francisco. She holds a masters degree from U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Regional Vice President, Tokyo, Mayu Yoshida (Tokyo) (2017)
is a Tokyo-based business news caster / reporter for NHK World’s flagship program Newsline. (Japan’s public broadcaster) She mainly covers financial beats in the Asia Pacific region – from stocks markets to central bank decisions – and reports live from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. She also presented an in-depth report on Japan’s nuclear power policy. Before switching to broadcast news, Mayu was a staff reporter at Kyodo News Agency’s English news section where she reported on a variety of topics, such as the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and World Bank-IMF meeting. Her stories and comments were carried by Japan Times, MarketWatch, ABS-CBN etc. A graduate of Keio University Faculty of Policy Management, BA. Follow her on Twitter @mayuyoshidanews and via her LinkedIn profile
Regional Vice President, Seoul, Tae-hoon Lee (Seoul)
Jihye Lee, co Vice-President, Seoul
Eunice Kim, Treasurer
Eunji Kim, At-Large Board Member
Shoko Oda, co Vice-President, Tokyo
Shoko Oda is an equities reporter for Bloomberg News in Tokyo. She covers the Japanese stock market and its inner workings. Before joining Bloomberg, she was a student at the University of Southern California, where she majored in International Relations and East Asian Area Studies. When she’s not reporting, she’s out running in the nooks and crannies of Tokyo.
Regional Vice President, Hong Kong, Billy Wong and Jenny Hsu (Hong Kong)
National Board Representative Chi-Chi Zhang (2012) is a former associate producer for CNN. She has previously worked in Asia for Time and the Associated Press, including stints in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. She has covered the 2008 Summer Olympics, earthquakes, environmental issues, migrants and human rights issues. Zhang was born in Jiangxi, China, and raised in Utah. She majored in journalism in university and worked as a reporter at The Salt Lake Tribune and The Denver Post.
Regional Vice President, Hong Kong, Wendy Tang (Hong Kong) was the digital editor at Asia Society Hong Kong Center. Prior to freelancing, she worked at CNNHong Kong as a digital media producer and CNN’s worldwide headquarters in Atlanta as an associate producer. She got her first journalism job through AAJA in New York as a news assistant with NY1 News. She has been an active AAJA member since 2006. She graduated from New York University and is a Hong Kong native. You can follow her on Twitter: @wwtang, add her to your Google+ circle and check out her website.
Regional Vice President, Seoul, Hannah Bae (Seoul) (2011-2013) formerly worked in public affairs for the U.S. State Department in Seoul. A native of Washington, D.C., she arrived in Korea in 2007 as a Princeton-in-Asia journalism fellow at the JoongAng Daily, the International Herald Tribune’s Korean news partner. During her time in Asia, she’s contributed to media organizations ranging from the AP, Yonhap News, CNNGo, IDG Connect and The Miele Guide to Asian restaurants. Previously, she was a journalism initiatives intern at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in Miami, Florida. Find Hannah on Twitter @hanbae.
Board Member Eldes Tran (Hong Kong) is a copy editor at the International New York Times. Previously, she was an online news producer at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. She has also worked as a copy editor at the Los Angeles Times, from 2006 to 2010. Before that she was at Newsday in New York, where she first joined AAJA. Eldes is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism & Media Studies Centre. She is also a part-time lecturer at Hong Kong Shue Yan University, where she helps journalism students refine their news writing. Find her on Twitter @eldestran.
Board Member Pradeep Kaphle (Nepal) is the news chief for Damauli FM 94.2 MHz in Nepal. He is also a reporter for Radio Nepal and president of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists chapter in Tanahun district. He previously worked for Gorkhaptatra National Daily, Rajdhani National Daily and Nepal Samacharpatra Daily. He is also chairman of the Damauli UNESCO Club and president of the WASH Journalists Forum in Nepal.
Board Member Amy Wu (Hong Kong) (2011-2013) is an American-born Chinese educator and journalist who was based in Hong Kong. She has been a member of AAJA since 1993 as an 18-year-old freshman at NYU in New York, and was one of the early college representatives for that chapter. Since then she has been an active member of AAJA’s New York chapter, and has attended national conventions and worked on the student-run convention newspapers along with the UNITY conferences in Atlanta and Seattle. She is a 2006 graduate of AAJA’s Executive Leadership Program. In 2010, Wu relocated to Hong Kong for work where she became re-involved in the AAJA-Asia chapter. As the development manager for The University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Center, she was involved in working closely with AAJA-Asia’s leadership in launching the AAJA-JMSC’s first New Media Conference last June. The event was a success with more than 100 attendees, and received much positive feedback from attendees and the attention of AAJA National’s office. She has spent 14 years working as a reporter at newspapers, magazines and websites. In 2009, she started working in higher education. She has played pivotal roles in the areas of marketing, communications, development, social media, and events planning for institutions including the New York Institute of Technology and The University of Hong Kong’s JMSC. She was formerly a full-time journalism lecturer at Hong Kong’s Shue Yan University, which has a well-regarded undergraduate journalism program. Wu, a native New Yorker, majored in history at NYU and earned her masters’ degree in journalism from Columbia University. She won best journalist award from the Organization of Chinese American (OCA) in 1993.
Board Member (South Asia Liaison) Roy Wadia (2011-2012) is an international media and communications consultant serving as executive director of Heroes Project, a Bombay-based HIV/AIDS communications and advocacy NGO under the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He was previously director of communications at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control in Vancouver. Before that, he worked in Beijing as a communications/advocacy officer for the World Health Organization, handling issues such as SARS, pandemic preparedness and HIV/AIDS. From 1989 to 2002, Wadia was at CNN where, as executive producer, he helped launch much of CNN’s Asia-Pacific news programming, as well as CNN’s TV/Web convergence process at the network’s first-ever director of integration. He was born and raised in Bombay.
Secretary Ling Woo Liu (2009-2011) is director of the Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education in San Francisco. Previously, she was a writer-reporter for Time magazine in Hong Kong. She also directed a documentary film, “Officer Tsukamoto,” about the unsolved murder of a Japanese-American police officer in 1970. She worked in television in San Francisco and Beijing for several years, and holds graduate degrees in Journalism and Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.
National Board Representative Tomoko A. Hosaka ( -2011) is a former reporter at The Associated Press in Tokyo, where she covers mainly business and the economy. She has also worked as an editor at Dow Jones Newswires in Tokyo and as a political reporter for The Oregonian in Portland, where she served as AAJA chapter treasurer for two years. She is a 1999 graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University (Go Cats!) and received an M.A. in international relations from Waseda University in Tokyo.
National Board Representative Blessing Waung (Hong Kong) is the Editor-in-Chief for the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, where she manages the chamber’s monthly business journal as well as four other publications. Previously, she has contributed to Forbes and Bloomberg in their Hong Kong and Shanghai bureaus. In a previous life, she explored Asia as the travel editor and social media manager at Time Out Shanghai. She graduated from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where she was a recipient of the university’s full-tuition merit-based Trustee Scholarship. She has been involved with AAJA since her senior year of high school. You can find her on Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Instagram.