APAAC Board Members
Aryani Ong
Co-Founder
Aryani Ong is Co-Founder of Asian American Federal Employees for Nondiscrimination (AAFEN). She has worked on a broad range of national and local issues to the Asian American community, with focuses on profiling in national security and hate crimes. A nonprofit professional and former lawyer, Aryani has worked with all the major national Asian American organizations, including The Asian American Foundation, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian American Justice Center and OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates. She testified as an invited expert before the U.N. Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and invited speaker for U.S. government conferences. Aryani has consulted for organizations such as the Urban Institute, the University of Maryland’s Asian American Studies Program and Harvard’s Civil Rights Project. She has served on several national and local boards, addressing issues that vary from philanthropy for underserved communities and civic empowerment to English instruction as a workforce development strategy for immigrants and K-12 schools climate. Aryani was named as among the top 100 women in her state.
Michael H. Young
Co-Founder & President
Michael Young is a former State Department Foreign Service Officer and Army Reserve Officer and is presently a real estate broker in the Bay Area. His previous assignments include consular and management tours in South Korea, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Pakistan and the Bureau of Counterterrorism in Washington, DC. Michael received his commission through the California Army National Guard and subsequently served with the 1/185th Mechanized Infantry in San Jose, CA and 2ID ROC in South Korea. He was honorably discharged as a Captain after a decade of service. Michael volunteered to serve in diplomatic hardship posts, in the army infantry, and spoke fluent Mandarin, a condition for his employment in the State Department. Yet bewilderingly, the State Department would not allow him, and any many other Chinese American diplomats, to represent the United States as a US diplomat in China. Despite repeated requests for transparency into the assignment preclusion process, Michael received no answers. He took his case to the public and helped established AAFEN to represent other Asian Americans in national security who also faced discrimination and unequal treatment in their respective federal agencies. To this day, Michael continues to advocate for equal treatment of all Americans in US national security.
Chris Wang
Vice President
Chris Wang is a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) intelligence analyst at the Los Angeles field office from 2011 to 2020. During his tenure, he worked on both counterintelligence and white-collar threats and earned a number of awards. He notably was a creator of a cross-programmatic source database system, led trainings and provided input to the FBI’s case management system, and authored intelligence products that led to new counterintelligence and white-collar investigations. Chris is currently working as a corporate investigator at Novo Nordisk and resides in Denmark with his wife and two kids.
“Susan”
Secretary
Susan was a felllow affiliated with an executive agency for two years. She separated from the agency due to complications with the extended security clearance process as a foreign-born American. Susan is currently a communications professional based in the East Coast.
