We are happy to introduce our two new board members:
Chung-Wha Hong
Chung-Wha is the Executive Director of Grassroots International. For over 25 years, Chung-Wha has worked on a range of social justice issues locally and internationally, through organising, policy advocacy, coalition building and philanthropy. Named by the New York Magazine as one of the most Influential People in Politics, Chung-Wha helped to build the political clout of New York State’s immigrant communities through a comprehensive civic engagement program, and helped to win numerous legal, social and economic rights and benefits for those communities. Chung-Wha’s past activism includes working on health care, worker rights and human rights issues at the New York Immigration Coalition, Campaign to Save Public Hospitals, National Korean American Service & Education Consortium, Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance AFL-CIO and the Korea Information Project.
She was the co-chair of the EDGE Conference 2017.
Vivian Paulissen
Vivian is the Knowledge Manager and Programme Manager at the European Cultural Foundation. Through connecting sources of knowledge and outcomes across departments and ECF stakeholders, she is shaping the foundation’s strategic development as an operational and grant-giving organization. She is responsible for setting up the organization’s diversity policy with regards to its programmes, networks, language and recruitment. Her work focuses around developing the foundation’s philanthropic approach beyond traditional grantgiving mechanisms (such as catalytic philanthropy, networked partnerships, civic-philanthropic collaboration, participatory grantmaking). She furthermore leads the digital media programmatic work of the foundation. (Before joining ECF, Vivian was a museum curator. After that she ran grants and partnership programmes in Africa, Asia and Latin America at the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development (NL) and was an advisor for policies in the areas of diversity, culture and development corporation for both independent cultural organisations as well as the Dutch public funding sector. Vivian holds a master’s degree in Latin America Studies and studied in Utrecht and Mexico City.)
She has been part of the EDGE Europe Steering Group since 2016 and was a member of the Conference Planning Committee of the EDGE Conference 2017.