Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. McCOLLUM. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor my constituent Ms. KaYing Yang for being appointed to the President's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders by President Joseph R. Biden. On February 14, 2022, Ms. Yang was sworn in as one of 25 commissioners, bringing a variety of personal and professional experience and expertise to the President's commission.

The daughter of May Yia Yang, a farm girl, and Chia Chu Yang, who was a Lieutenant Colonel in the CIA's Special Guerilla Unit (SGU) during the Secret War in Laos, Ms. Yang was among the first Hmong women to graduate from college in the United States in the mid-1980s. She earned her B.A. in Sociology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. For more than two decades, Ms. Yang has been a passionate advocate for social justice who has built and led campaigns to address community issues locally, nationally and globally including her very important work to support gender equity, education opportunity, and advocacy for refugee families.

When she was just 25 years old, Ms. Yang became the executive director of the Women's Association of Hmong and Lao (WAHL), one of the first two women's organizations founded by Hmong-American women in Minnesota. Later she served as executive director of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC), the oldest national advocacy organization for refugees who resettled in the United States from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam after 1975. During this time Ms. Yang worked with various international development groups in Laos including the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to resettle 15,000 Hmong refugees to the United States and other countries, and later aided Karen refugees with resettlement on the Thai-Burma border.

In 2008, she began working for the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to advance policies to improve the investment climate for private sector investment in Laos. While in Laos, she founded the first Hmong women's organization to ensure development resources reached minority women and people who moved from remote areas to urban areas.

After her return to Minnesota, Ms. Yang worked for the Coalition of Asian American Leaders (CAAL), and led a broad cross-racial coalition to pass the All Kids Count Act in Minnesota in 2016, a bill which requires that students' ethnicity be included in data collected to enable policy makers to direct resources to the most impacted communities. She was also instrumental to passing legislation in 2017 that created a nonprofit grant program for small nonprofits led by leaders of color that serve historically underserved communities.

Ms. Yang and her fellow commissioners advise the President on ways the public, private, and non-profit sectors can work together to advance equity and opportunity for every AANHPI community. The Commission also advises on policies to address anti-Asian hate, xenophobia and violence--timely work given the recent rise in violence against our Asian-American neighbors. Further, they will find ways to build capacity in AANHPI communities through federal grantmaking and policies to address barriers facing AANHPI women, LGBTQ+ people, and people with limited English proficiency and disabilities.

Madam Speaker, please join me in recognizing the phenomenal work Ms. KaYing Yang and congratulating her on this appointment to the President's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. Since finding refuge with her family in America at the age of 7, Ms. Yang has exhibited outstanding devotion to improving the lives of members of the Hmong and Asian-American communities.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source