Community is an artform.

Founding Executive Director

Susie has championed strategic plans & partnerships for Asian-American non-profit organizations for over 17 years. She leverages key opportunities & empowers teams to successfully build thriving cultural communities. She has held leadership roles in the AAPI non-profit space as former Executive Director of the Asian American Women Artists Association, Manager of the Japantown Cultural District, in Development at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California and Operations at the Oakland Asian Community Center. As a community organizer and non-profit staff in Japantown for over a decade, Susie also raised her son in the schools, youth programs, and cultural surroundings of his heritage through the nurturing of the Japantown community.

Advisor, Creative Director

A native of Japan, Satoe Haile
has lived in the United States for almost 30 years. A pioneer in online design for companies such as Microsoft, Sony, and Adobe, Satoe now creates online environments for children at Google’s YouTube Kids. The mother of three children who have graduated from both Nihonmachi Little Friends and Rosa Parks Japanese Bilingual Bicultural Program, Satoe has been an enthusiastic supporter for the
preservation of authentic Japanese culture in San Francisco through her volunteerism, fundraising, and corporate evangelism. Satoe holds a 4th dan in Japanese archery and is a board member of Redwood Kyudojo, and to the delight of her family and neighbors has recently mastered the art of baking sourdough bread.

Advisor, Artist

a community organizer, film producer, mixed-media exhibition artist, and workshop facilitator, eryn works in the intersection of transformative justice, relational healing, food, and art. using fragments from print media and found ephemera, eryn composes cacophonous yet fractal visual symphonies - collage - that recontextualize the asian american body and experience in popular culture/memory, questioning narratives of power. simultaneously, eryn uses collage as play and alchemy, reimagining and archiving ancestral pasts and futures of the sucka free (san francisco) and beyond. a product of Japantown, born and raised, eryn’s first documentary ‘Benkyodo, The Last Manju Shop in Japantown’ debuted at CAAM Fest this year.

Advisor

Laura’s parents were both incarcerated during WWII. Laura is an avid Japantown volunteer, raising two grade-school children at SFUSD’s Japanese bilingual, bi-cultural school. An experienced brand, marketing, and visual merchandising professional, her previous work with Kate Spade and Coach lend a global perspective to KOHO’s developing retail concept.

Advisor, Philanthropy

Sparks (she/they) values and is committed to promoting equity based on her experience as a queer, multi-racial, next-generation, woman in philanthropy. She is Executive Director of Masto Foundation a US-based family foundation rooted in the Japanese-American community. Before taking on leadership at the foundation, Sparks worked as a Program Officer for 13 years and led initiatives to make the field of philanthropy more accessible for young people, BIPOC individuals, and members of the LGBTQ community. Sparks is a former Founding Co-Chair of the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District and currently serves on the Advisory Boards of Curve Foundation and Horizons Foundation , and the Board of Directors at the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Advisor, Design

A leading design director and book editorial designer, Michi of Toki Design resides in Japantown with her family and is raising her son in the cultural schools and programs within. A featured SFAC designer from 2003-2005, her clients include: Center for Creative Photography, Chronicle Books, The Friends of Photography, San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries, San Francisco Camerawork, SFMOMA, Sonoma Valley Art Museum, Steidl, and William Stout Publishers.

Advisor

Katie has been a community organizer and liaison for over 10 years. She’s held events and marketing roles within the Japantown community with the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival, Nichibei Foundation, Nakayoshi, and JCYC.