Meet the Team

Joe Nguyễn (he/him)

President & CEO

  • Elected in 2019, Senator Joe Nguyễn holds the esteemed position of being Washington State's inaugural Vietnamese American state senator. In his dual capacity as the President and CEO of the AAPI Victory Fund, Senator Nguyễn represents a landmark in AANHPI representation and advocacy. Throughout his term, he has steadfastly advocated for the interests of working families and has been instrumental in amplifying the voices of historically underrepresented groups within the political arena. Acknowledging the profound importance of AANHPI perspectives, Senator Nguyễn actively promotes initiatives that prioritize these viewpoints.

    Drawing from his rich Vietnamese American heritage, Senator Nguyễn is focused on addressing systemic disparities. His efforts span from advocating for enhanced public services to promoting progressive environmental justice and climate policies, always with an emphasis on challenges faced by AANHPI and BIPOC communities. His push for educational reforms, especially initiatives to make higher education more accessible and affordable, reflects his unwavering commitment to ensuring equal opportunities for all.

    Serving as the President and CEO of the AAPI Victory Fund is a profound honor for Senator Nguyễn and he is eager to build on the legacy of other AANHPI leaders in the nation, amplifying our collective voice and influence.

Linh Nguyễn (she/her)

Executive Vice President & COO

  • Linh has extensive political campaign experience, specializing in strategy, outreach, and mobilization to AAPI communities and young voters.

    She’s traveled the country working for political candidates up and down the ballot, including Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Cory Booker, Senator Jon Ossoff, Senator Raphael Warnock, and Beto O’Rourke’s campaign for Governor in Texas. She’s also managed successful local campaigns in Houston, sending elected women of color to Austin, Texas.

    Her organizing experience includes building AAPI relational organizing tools in southern states; operating a statewide WhatsApp misinformation campaign for South Asian voters in Georgia; activating young AAPI digital creators for national Get-Out-The-Vote content; running in-language voter protection hotlines for Asian communities; and designing English and in-language digital ads, from media planning to placement.

    Linh has also expanded her experience beyond campaigns while consulting in disaster relief & public health emergencies for vulnerable communities under Governor Newsom’s Office of Emergency Services. She’s also made the jump into social impact projects in entertainment, collaborating with entrepreneurs, artists, and celebrities.

    She’s currently the Executive VP and COO of AAPI Victory Fund, the first national super pac for AAPI voters and candidates. She spends her free time growing political grassroots power in Texas, where she, her partner, and her daughter call home.

Vaibhav Jain (he/him)

Chief of Staff

  • Vaibhav Jain is the Chief of Staff at the AAPI Victory Fund. He is responsible for developing and executing the organization’s strategy to mobilize and turnout 11 million Asian American and Pacific Islander voters in U.S. elections. Vaibhav leads constituent outreach, manages candidate endorsements, and is responsible for curating the Victory Fund’s digital and social media channels.

    A public health specialist, graphic designer and consummate organizer, Vaibhav began his career as a community health dentist in small villages across southern India. That experience inspired him to seek systemic change which advances equity and opportunity for marginalized populations. Over the past decade, Vaibhav has worked for universities, think tanks, advocacy, and intergovernmental organizations.

    In 2020, he served as Senior Advisor for AAPI Outreach and Engagement on Joe Biden’s winning presidential campaign. He then joined President-elect Biden’s transition team where he helped coordinate appointments to the U.S. Departments Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development and Veterans Affairs. Prior to his experiences in electoral politics, Vaibhav spent five years as a qualitative researcher at the American Institutes for Research. He was also a fellow at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Vaibhav has a master’s degree in public health from George Washington University in Washington, DC and a bachelor’s degree in dental surgery from Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences in Bangalore, India.

    Vaibhav is a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. He grew up in New Delhi and now lives in New York with his husband Parag Mehta. In October of 2020, they filed a petition with the Delhi High Court seeking recognition of their marriage. The case is pending and could help pave the way for marriage equality in the world’s largest democracy.

Kevin Liao (he/him)

Senior Communications Consultant

  • Kevin has led successful communications initiatives at the national, state, and local levels for high-profile public officials and causes. His political experience includes Senator Elizabeth Warren's presidential primary campaign in Iowa and California and President Joe Biden’s 2020 general election campaign in Nevada, where Kevin built a multilingual media and community engagement strategy that contributed to record turnout among Latino and Asian American voters. Kevin served as press secretary to U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in the first year of the Biden Administration, where his media strategies advanced the President’s climate initiatives. Kevin resides in Los Angeles, California.

Joyce Liu (she/her)

Senior Political Advisor

  • Joyce advises the AAPI Victory Fund on government affairs and strategic communications. Joyce has successfully led the lobbying and communications efforts on over a dozen bills and campaigns, including on issues of labor, health, Veterans, communities of color, LGBTQAI+, and federal nominations. Joyce holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Vanderbilt University.

Minhtam Tran (she/her)

Research and Policy Coordinator

  • Minhtam (she/her) is a second generation Vietnamese American with an interest in civic and community engagement, public health, and healthcare accessibility. She currently serves as the Research and Policy Coordinator for VF as well as supporting our youth programming. Minhtam is currently a medical student at UMass Chan School of Medicine and hopes to pursue primary care, with an interest in healthcare advocacy and policy. When she isn't in school or working, she enjoys being active, supporting a myriad of sports teams, and traveling. 

Elle Kurata (she/her)

Project Manager

  • Elle Kurata is a project manager at the AAPI Victory Fund. Her past work in the nonprofit space has included working as the Inouye fellow at JACL as well as a digital strategist for a nuclear disarmament nonprofit. She enjoys creative work having worked at the boutique production company, Enfranchisement Productions. She also works as a freelance producer in her free time.

Ellie Tsuchiya (she/her)

Youth Engagement Program Manager

  • Ellie Tsuchiya (she/her) is an experienced Creative Strategist, Program Manager, and Grant Writer currently living on Oahu. She has worked with a wide range of arts and social justice organizations and campaigns in Atlanta including 9to5 Georgia, Respect Georgia’s Workers Alliance, Georgia Coalition for Paid Leave, ABC's of AAPI's for Asian American Advocacy Fund, National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum GA, Saira Draper for HD90, and DanceATL. In 2022, she led RUN AAPI's Give A F*ck About Midterms Youth Engagement Campaign working with content creators and creatives to turn out young voters. 

Nick Rathod (he/him)

Senior General Consultant

  • Over the span of his twenty-year career Nick has built a reputation of building successful campaigns, businesses, governmental and non-governmental institutions and as a key advisor to the nation’s leaders.

    In Government, Nick served as Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director for Intergovernmental Affairs in the White House and was the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for the Obama-Biden Transition Team. In these roles, Nick served as a senior member of the White House staff and specifically was President Obama’s liaison to states and U.S. territories, handling political and policy engagement across the states, territories and tribal governments. Nick was especially critical in helping shape and get signed into law health care legislation, wall street reform and equal pay legislation.

Nyx Hauth (they/them)

Digital Engagement Manager

  • Nyx (they/them) has extensive experience in organizing, marketing, and communications. They have worked with grassroots organizations like Student Action and non-profits, such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Nyx graduated from Berklee College of Music. They perform on the electric lever harp with their band The Dead Friends Club (@tdfcmusic).

Board of Directors

Shekar Narasimhan (he/him)

Chairman and Founder

  • Shekar Narasimhan is Chairman and Founder of the AAPI Victory Fund, one of the first of its kind SuperPac’s focused exclusively on building the political power of the Asian American Pacific Islander community.

    In his business life, Shekar is the Managing Partner at Beekman Advisors which provides strategic advisory services to companies and investors involved in real estate, mortgage finance, affordable housing and related sectors. Shekar is a Co-Founder for the Remergent Communities Fund, an Opportunity Zone Fund, focusing on small towns and cities in the Southeast U.S. He also serves as Chairman of Papillon Capital, focused on sustainable infrastructure investing. Prior to Beekman Advisors, Shekar Narasimhan was a Managing Director of Prudential Mortgage Capital Company, one of the nation’s leading providers of commercial mortgage financing. Immediately prior to Shekar’s time at Prudential, he was Chairman & CEO of the WMF Group, a publicly traded, commercial mortgage financial services company. WMF was one of the largest such firms in the country before being acquired by Prudential in 2000.

    Shekar is currently serving on the boards of Broadstone Net Lease, Inc., Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. and the Democracy Alliance. He is on the Economic Advisory Council for the Center for American Progress and is a member of the Urban Institute’s Policy Leadership Council. He has served on many boards, including the Low Income Investment Fund, the Community Preservation and Development Corporation, the National Housing Conference and the National Multi Housing Council. He is a sought-after speaker on housing finance and affordable housing and is considered a leading expert on rental housing issues in the United States.

    Shekar was appointed by Governors McAuliffe and Northam of Virginia as a Commissioner for the Virginia Housing Development Authority and is currently serving as its Chairman. Previously, he also served as a Member of the Board for Housing and Community Development in Virginia, and as a Commissioner on President Obama’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. He was on the founding board of Indiaspora, a nonprofit organization founded by community leaders to unite Indian Americans and to transform their success into meaningful impact in India and on the global stage. He was also Co-Founder of Upakar Foundation, a higher education scholarship fund.

    Shekar has served several terms on the Mortgage Bankers Association of America (MBA) Board of Directors, was the first Chair of the MBA’s Commercial/Multifamily Board of Governors, and founded its Multifamily Steering Committee. He was elected as the first Chair of the Fannie Mae DUS Advisory Committee.

Aurora Austriaco (she/her)

Board Member

  • Aurora Austriaco is a litigation attorney concentrating in the areas of Commercial, Business and Real Estate Litigation at Valentine Austriaco and Bueschel, P.C. She also serves on numerous Corporate Boards, Not for Profit Boards and Commissions. Aurora was the past President of the Chicago Bar Association - one of the oldest and largest metropolitan bar in the country with over 22,000 members and the first Asian American to serve as its President.

Bel Leong-Hong (she/her)

Co-Founder

  • Bel Leong-Hong is the President and CEO of a small technology and management consulting company, which she started in 1999, after a very exciting 30-years career in public service.

    She held many “first” senior level positions, including being the “first” career female Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) to become the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence (C3I), and the first female AAPI civilian senior executive to become the Deputy Commander of the Joint Interoperability and Engineering Organization.

    She became politically active after leaving Government, campaigning for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, fundraising for the National party, for the Maryland Democratic Party, for AAPI political organizations, and for candidates She has been an At-Large member of the DNC since 2001, and in 2005 she became the Chair of the DNC AAPI Caucus, She is a member of the DNC Executive Council, the Women’s Caucus, and she and her fellow Caucus Chairs have formed the Quad Caucus Chairs Group.

    She is a National Co-Chair of the DNC Asian American Leadership Council, and a member of the National Finance Council. In her own state of MD, she is a Trustee of the MD State Democratic Party, and is a member of the MDP Executive Council, a member of the Business Council, the Leadership Council, and the Women Leadership Network of MD. She is also a member of the Asian American Advisory Council to the Attorney General of the State of Maryland, as well as the State of MD’s Attorney General’s Cybersecurity Commission.

Dr. Jeffrey Roh (he/him)

Board Member

  • Jeffrey Roh is the Chief Executive Officer of IntuitiveX, a life science consultancy and incubator created to help entrepreneurs and startups transform their ideas from concept to commercialization. He has helped build and mobilize the AAPI community in Washington State over many years.

Dr. Tung Nguyen (he/him)

Co-Founder

  • Dr. Tung Nguyen is Chair of AAPI Progressive Action and President of PIVOT-The Progressive Vietnamese American Organization, both 501c4 organizations dedicated to the AAPI progressive movement. He is also a pioneer in Asian American health research, a practicing primary care physician, and a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Nguyen served as a Commissioner on President Obama’s Advisory Commission on AAPIs from 2011 to 2014, and as the Chair of the Commission from 2014- 2017. He led the Commission in the first massive resignation from the Trump Administration after it implemented the Muslim ban in 2017. He is also a co-founder and serves on the board of AAPI Victory Fund. Dr. Nguyen received his B.A. in Philosophy from Harvard College and his M.D. from Stanford University School of Medicine.

Arshi Siddiqui (she/her)

Board Member

  • Arshi Siddiqui is a partner at Akin Gump where she helps clients in successfully navigating complex legislative and regulatory challenges faced by corporate and nonprofit clients. Drawing upon more than 20 years of public- and private-sector experience, her practice focuses on synthesizing policy and politics into viable legislative strategies on tax, technology, international trade, telecommunications and health care issues.

    Before joining Akin Gump in 2010, Arshi served as senior advisor and counsel to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. During her time in the Speaker’s office, Arshi worked on tax, international trade, innovation, health, financial and retirement issues. She worked closely with the relevant committees, House and Senate leadership, the administration and members of Congress to develop policy and formulate strategy on legislative priorities, many of which were ultimately signed into law.

    Earlier in her career, Arshi worked in various capacities to broaden her skill set, including working with the House Ways and Means Committee for Congressman Xavier Becerra (D-CA), Congresswoman Eva Clayton (D-NC), a presidential campaign as well as a bipartisan lobbying firm.

David H. Lee (he/him)

Board Member

  • David is the President and Co-founder of the Texas Signal. He focuses on strategic partnerships, business growth, and policy for the progressive media organization. Previously, he was the Texas Political Director for Mike Bloomberg’s Presidential campaign, the National Finance Coalitions Director for Beto O’Rourke’s Presidential campaign, and was a Policy Advisor for Beto O’Rourke during his 2018 Senate campaign. David graduated from Georgetown University, majoring in government and political theory, and received a masters degree in international political economy from Stanford University. David is on the boards of Vote Simple, Chicken and Egg Pictures, and To Educate All Children. David is a member of the Philanthropy Workshop, Patriotic Millionaires, and Donors of Color, and is founder of the super pac PAC That A$$.

Rohini Kosoglu (she/her)

Board Member

  • Rohini Kosoglu is a leading national expert on domestic policy and veteran of the White House, Congress, and presidential campaigns. She currently serves as a Policy Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) and Director of Public Policy and Political Affairs at the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign. She is also a Venture Partner at Fusion Fund, a venture firm that focuses on early-stage technology and health care investments. Kosoglu has been at the forefront of driving transformative change in social, technology, and economic policy over the last two decades. She also has the distinction of being the first South Asian American woman to hold the roles of both Domestic Policy Advisor to the Vice President and Chief of Staff in the United States Senate. She recently served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Domestic Policy Advisor to the Vice President.

Sima Ladjevardian (she/her)

Board Member

  • Sima Ladjevardian is a lawyer, a mother of two, a breast cancer survivor, small business owner, a community and political activist. After leaving political upheaval and revolution, Sima’s family arrived in the United States and, through her journey as an immigrant, she saw first-hand the power and promise this country can provide. She has since worked extensively to ensure that hardworking families have all the opportunities to strive and be healthy. She was one of the first Iranian-American major party nominees for Congress. She was named as Houston’s Most Influential Women 2020-2021.

    For the last 2 years, she was appointed as Regional Director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, serving as HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra’s representative responsible for guiding and coordinating HHS policy initiatives as they related to state, local, and tribal governments in Region 6 covering Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, as well as 68 federally recognized tribal nations.

    Ms. Ladjevardian was appointed as Chair of the National Women’sBusiness Council, a non-partisan federal advisory committee to the President, the U.S. Congress and the Administrator of the SBA. She is also serves as Trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Harris Health Health Systems. She has served on many boards in the past including the Center for Public Policy and Priorities and AAPI Victory Alliance.

    Ms. Ladjevardian holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Economicsfrom UCLA and a Juris Doctorate degree from Hastings College of Law. She is fluent in French, Farsi and Spanish.

National Leadership Council

Vinoda Basnayake

Johnnie Giles

Christine Harada

Dr. Zia Khan

Ambassador Gary F. Locke

Honorable Christopher P. Lu

Rocio Nuyda

Maulik Pancholy

Kal Penn

Sanjita Pradhan

Dr. Sabala Mandava Rao

Nick Rathod

Sonal R. Shah

Hari Sharma

Sumaiya Ahmed Sheikh

Honorable Tina M. Tchen

Ambassador Vinai K. Thummalapally

Dr. Mai Khanh Tran

Monika Kalra Varma

Ambassador Richard R. Verma

Nithi Vivatrat

Francey Lim Youngberg