Our mission at Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC is to advance the civil and human rights for Asian Americans and to build and promote a fair and equitable society for all. Advancing Justice | AAJC is a national 501 (c)(3) nonprofit founded in 1991 in Washington, D.C.

The American Courage Awards is an annual event hosted by Advancing Justice | AAJC, honoring individuals, groups, and corporations in recognition of their extraordinary courage or commitment to the cause of Asian American and Pacific Islander civil rights.

Privacy Policy

TAVAE SAMUELU

Tavae Samuelu (she/her/hers) is the daughter of a pastor from Leulumoega and a nurse from Saleimoa. Rooted in fa’a Samoa, she is a storyteller who empowers people to own their narratives, articulate their healing, and resource our movements.

Tavae was born and raised on Tongva Territory, in what is presently known as Long Beach. She left home to attend UC Berkeley where she majored in Ethnic Studies. After college, Tavae took a job as the District 5 Field Organizer for Jean Quan’s Oakland Mayoral Campaign which allowed her to grow her movement building skills and learn how to impact local institutions. When the campaign concluded, Tavae took her organizing abilities to various Bay Area nonprofits and eventually made her political home at the RYSE Youth Center. She credits her time on unceded Ohlone land for her political consciousness.

In 2017, Tavae returned home to Long Beach to serve as the Executive Director of Empowering Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC), where she advocated passionately for Pacific Islanders locally in LA, statewide in CA, and nationally. During her five year tenure, she saw the importance of sustainable leadership and the ways that anchored care can bolster an organization during and after crises.

Tavae recently joined the Asian Pacific Fund as the Director of Community Initiatives & Grantmaking. In addition to that, she serves as a board member for Pacific Islanders In Communications. During the pandemic, she learned that her most important title is Aunty Vae.

TARA PRAKASH

Tara Prakash is the first Youth Poet Laureate of Maryland and the 2024 Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate. She studies at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC. Her work has been recognized in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards (where she won a National Gold Medal and a National Silver Medal), National YoungArts, the New York Times, Blue Marble Review, and Bow Seat's Ocean Awareness Contest. Her poem was chosen as a finalist out of over 630 entries in Hollins University’s Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest. She also earned the First Class Distinction Award by the National Council of Teachers of English.

Her work has appeared in Best American High School Writing, The Lumiere Review, and The Daphne Review, among others. She has attended the Adroit Summer Mentorship Program for Creative Nonfiction, the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, the Kenyon Young Writers Workshop, and the Kelly Writers House Summer Workshop.

As the founder of nonprofit Write to Right, which teaches writing to underserved communities, and the founder of an international social justice journal, Between the Lines, Tara loves writing poetry, flash fiction pieces, and creative nonfiction essays. In her free time, she can be found camping with her Scouts troop, hiking with her golden retriever, or playing ping-pong with her brother and grandmother. You can learn more about her at taraprakashwrites.com.

ASIAN AMERICAN SCIENTISTS & SCHOLARS

Accepted by Gang Chen, Anming Hu, Franklin Tao, Xiaoxing Xi

American Courage Award Honoree 2024

The U.S. government has a history of treating Asian Americans and immigrants as perpetual foreigners and national security threats. For decades, the federal government has unfairly targeted and profiled Asian American and Asian immigrant scientists. A few years ago, a group of professors, scientists, and researchers including Anming Hu, Franklin Tao, Xiaoxing Xi, and Gang Chen, called out the U.S. Government for its “China Initiative.”

The now defunct “China Initiative” is a shameful example of how the government coordinated efforts to target Chinese American scientists and researchers based on their ancestry rather than true suspected criminal activity.

Though charges were dropped quickly, Xiaoxing Xi was among the first to be targeted in 2015 before official acknowledgement of the “China Initiative” program. While holding his family at gunpoint, the FBI arrested Xi in his home — accusing him of sharing confidential technology with China when he was discussing technology that had been public for years.

Anming Hu was the first academic to face trial under the China Initiative even though he had followed all procedures and disclosures required for a faculty member with work connections to China. After his arrest and trial, he was acquitted in September 2021 with the judge saying, “no rational jury could find him guilty.”

Gang Chen was arrested in 2021, accused of being a spy and failing to disclose ties to Chinese institutions, but the prosecutor’s office admitted that it did not have sufficient evidence for a case and dismissed all charges.

Franklin Tao was investigated by the FBI for espionage based on anonymous tips and arrested in 2019 on unrelated charges. Each charge has since been dismissed for lack of evidence.

Chen, Hu, Tao, and Xi were profiled and unfairly treated when they were caught in the Department of Justice’s broad net of prosecutions and sudden criminalization. Each of them continues to try to rebuild their careers and rebound from the lasting trauma they and their families have suffered from the government. For their extraordinary bravery and perseverance during the darkest times of their lives, we honor them with the American Courage Award.

	GANG CHEN – Dr. Gang Chen is the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering at MIT. He served as Department Head of the Mechanical Engineering Department (2013–2018) and as Director of the Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (2009–2019), an Energy Frontier Research Center of the US Department of Energy. He obtained his PhD degree from the Mechanical Engineering Department at UC Berkeley. He joined MIT in 2001 after faculty roles at Duke and UCLA. His research spans nanoscience, clean energy, and clean water technologies, earning him numerous accolades, including membership in the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Wrongfully prosecuted under the DOJ’s China Initiative in 2021, MIT and the scientific community rallied in his support. The charges were dropped in 2022, and MIT warmly welcomed him back. In 2023, he was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences.
	ANMING HU – Born in China, Dr. Hu earned his first Ph.D. in physics from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1997 and later obtained the second Ph.D. in laser physics from the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 2008. He became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 2009. In November 2013, he joined the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as an assistant professor and was promoted to tenured associate professor in 2019. His research interests include laser processing, nanomanufacturing, and 3D microprinting for applications in electronics, energy, and the environment. On February 27, 2020, he was indicted and arrested under the China Initiative by the U.S. Department of Justice. All charges were dismissed, and he was acquitted by a U.S. federal district judge on September 9, 2021. He was reinstated to his tenured associate professorship at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, on February 1, 2022.
	FRANKLIN TAO – Franklin Tao received his PhD from Princeton University and completed postdoctoral research at University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2017) and Royal Society of Chemistry (2013). His research focuses on catalysis (synthesis, mechanistic studies, in-situ/operando characterization) for chemical transformation, energy renewability, and environmental sustainability. He received Eugene P. Wigner Fellowship from Oak Ridge National Lab (2010), finalist prize of Gerhard Ertl Young investigator award from Germany Physics Society (2010), Paul Holloway award from American Vacuum Society (2012), NSF-career award from National Science Foundation (2014), Miller research award (2014), Bellow scholar award (2018), and University Scholarly Achievement Award from University of Kansas (2019). He was on the advisory editorial boards of journals including Chemical Society Reviews and Catalysis Science and Technology, and he was an editor for the journal, Applied Surface Science.
	XIAOXING XI – Xiaoxing Xi is Laura H. Carnell Professor of Physics at Temple University. Prior to 2009, he was Professor of Physics and Materials Science and Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. He received his PhD degree in physics from Peking University and Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 1987. After several years of research at Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center, Germany, Bell Communication Research/Rutgers University, and University of Maryland, he joined the Physics faculty at Penn State in 1995. His research focuses on the materials physics of oxide and boride thin films. He is author of over 350 refereed journal articles and 3 U.S. patents. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of American Physical Society. He was recipient of the APS 2020 Andrei Sakharov Prize and the Unity & Resilience Award from APAPA for his unwavering advocacy for Asian American scientists.

MAY TIWAMANGKALA
Advocacy Director of AZ AANHPI for Equity

May moved to Arizona after high school to attend ASU to study Philosophy, but their college career ended when they were incarcerated for two years. During their time, May focused their energy on self development by completing programs and bettering their education through reading books donated to May by an ASU professor.

May spent much of their time tutoring women to achieve their GED which they felt was extremely rewarding. After May’s release, May focused on being a voice for marginalized communities because they met so many disenfranchised women who helped them during their hard times. They dedicated their time to work with a local reporter to cover their experience in Arizona’s inmate wildland firefighting program, and connected reporters to formerly incarcerated women who were exploited in prison labor– the story later was published nationally on multiple news outlets. May finally found their calling when they started working for Puente Human Rights Movement, an organization that pioneered the fight against SB 1070. After learning organizing tactics from the indigenous and latinx communities, May started working for AZ AANHPI for Equity, the only AANHPI organization in Arizona that focuses on advocacy and civic engagement with progressive values. When data showed that violence and harm increased towards the AAPI community,

May led in organizing a vigil for the AAPI victims in Atlanta because their community needed to heal and not feel alone. Shortly after, May was compelled to organize a Unity March because they believe change won’t happen unless we have cross-racial collaboration in the fight for justice and racial equity. May is currently the Advocacy Director of AZ AANHPI for Equity leading the fight for voting rights, reproductive justice, LGBTQ+ rights, climate justice, and reimagining public safety by ending the cycles of harm caused by the carceral system.

SARAH ZHANG

Sarah Zhang (she/they) is a senior at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill studying information science, political science, and computer science. Originally from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Sarah has long been passionate about educational equity and access. As a Chinese-American daughter of immigrants growing up in a predominantly white suburb, Sarah understands the importance of inclusion and has long worked to develop diverse curricula and help shape school board policies focused on uplifting historically resilient communities.

Sarah's belief in the power of education to shape lives led her to create the Affirmative Action Coalition at UNC-CH, whilst dismantling stereotypes around Asian Americans and race-conscious admissions. They have helped organize multiple outreach efforts across campus and worked with university leaders to navigate a post-affirmative action world, emphasizing the importance of diversity in educational spaces. Currently, Sarah is focused on building TransparUNCy with the coalition, a new project focused on the UNC public school system, particularly after a recent decision to eliminate DEI from UNC's 16+ public universities.

Outside of the Coalition, Sarah is proud to have served Pennsylvanians and North Carolinians as a former intern within the House of Representatives and as a field organizer across local and national campaigns. She additionally leads Girls Who Code at UNC-CH, focused on educating local middle and high school girls on how to program to break barriers in a male-dominated space. The principles of empathy, solidarity, and creating community have guided Sarah's work, and she feels immensely grateful to public schools and her former teachers for shaping her into the advocate that she is.

George-Axelle Broussillon Matschinga
Vice President, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Bridge Builder Award Honoree 2024

SEPHORA is a leading global prestige omni-retailer with a mission to expand the way the world sees beauty by creating a welcoming shopping experience for all and inspiring fearlessness throughout the beauty community.

The retailer operates more than 3,000 stores in 35 markets worldwide, with an expanding base of more than 600 stores across the Americas, and a world-class e-commerce site. For years, Sephora has been an industry-leading champion of diversity, inclusivity, and empowerment in the US, guided by its longstanding company values.

GEORGE-AXELLE BROUSSILLON MATSCHINGA is the Vice President of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Sephora. In her role, George-Axelle leads Sephora US efforts including the design, strategic direction, implementation, and business alignment of Sephora’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives.

Since joining Sephora in 2020, George-Axelle has focused on developing an even more effective ecosystem where Sephora attracts, recruits, develops and advances the best diverse talent and fosters inclusion within the company’s internal workforce, clients, and communities. George-Axelle has also built out Sephora’s overall D&I strategy and governance structure, including a leadership Steering Committee for Diversity and Inclusion. Additionally, she oversees the engagement of Sephora’s Equity Advisors and Partners, a group of accomplished leaders at the intersection of race, culture and civil rights organizations advising on how to promote racial equity. George-Axelle also plays an integral role in leading Sephora Employee Resource Groups, and regularly hosts listening sessions and D&I trainings across LVMH.

A French native and one of the first Diversity practitioners in France, George-Axelle brings 18 years of corporate expertise to Sephora. She started her career at L’Oréal and contributed to the design of the Group’s inaugural global Diversity policy and strategies and to their implementation in Europe and in the US. An innovative thought leader, she contributed to the design of two global gender equality certifications: EDGE and GE-ES. She also initiated and co-wrote the first Encyclopedia of Diversity Management in France. She most recently was instrumental in conducting Sephora’s first national research study on racial bias in retail and is shaping the implementation of its results, advising on implications for the retail industry at large. In 2022, she initiated and spearheaded the design and launch of the Mitigate Racial Bias in Retail Charter, in collaboration with non-profit Open to All engaging now over 50 major retailers to foster inclusive experiences for shoppers of color. Formerly, she was the Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at leading home solar energy provider Sunrun. Her efforts to make solar inclusive were recognized by a 2019 WRISE Award for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and a Diversity Leader Award.  In 2020, she joined the Retail Industry Leaders Association D&I Leaders Council and the National Retail Federation DE&I Working Group. In 2021, her leadership and work at Sephora were recognized by a Top 100 Diversity Officers Award and DEI Champion Award by the National Diversity Council, and a Diversity Leader Award. George-Axelle is a graduate from Harvard University, ESCP Europe Business School and Sorbonne University.

MICHELLE LI

Michelle Li is an award-winning, veteran journalist who co-launched the Very Asian Foundation in January 2022 alongside friend and fellow journalist Gia Vang.

Her response to a racist voicemail became a global movement of unity and caught the attention of The Ellen Show. Ellen’s monetary gift of $15,000 helped start the seed money to create a non-profit focused on shining a light on Asian life through advocacy and celebration. Not only did the Very Asian Foundation raise tens of thousands of dollars for AANHPI nonprofits in its first 100 days, but it also launched a national awareness youth literature campaign called The May Book Project, and started the Very Asian Creators microgrant program for people who needed startup funds to pivot in their careers.

A Korean adoptee, Michelle spent many years supporting adoptees through heritage camps and volunteer tours to Korea. She also launched a program to support Missouri children in foster care. This work led to a congressional award in 2010. Michelle’s reporting has been honored with a national Peabody Award, four national Murrows, and multiple regional Emmys– often for covering topics related to race or gender inequities. Her work on the Asian American experience in St. Louis during the pandemic was also named a duPont finalist in 2023. Michelle has appeared on CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, and The Washington Post. She released a children’s book with Gloo Books called A Very Asian Guide to Korean Food . Michelle currently resides in St. Louis with her family. She is @michellelitv on most platforms.