Speakers

Channy Laux is a survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia.  She was thirteen-years-old when the Khmer Rouge took over the country in 1975.  From 1975 to 1979, Channy endured starvation, horrendous working conditions, sickness and repeated separations from her family.  

Neil Litchman is the President of KnowaVet,org, he is a disabled combat veteran. 

Know a vet.org is the public name of Friends of the Vet Center Inc, a California Non-Profit Corporation. It provides free service to veterans and their families including information and assistance to aid veterans in learning of more than 60 issues they have earned help for and how to access that help through government and community resources for their best possible life after deployment.

KnowAVet.org is an all-volunteer organization of mostly combat veterans. No one gets paid, so all donations go to helping veterans. Their goal is to help veterans be aware of the overwhelming amount of help available to them. 

Maria Chavez is the executive director of BioCurious. Biocurious is an organization completely run by volunteers. We believe that everyone should be able to participate in science.  Our community projects are open to anyone of any age (who is a teen and up) regardless of skill, education, or experience.  No membership is required – just drop in!  The projects are driven entirely by whoever wants to show up and participate, and run by the two project leads for each project. This is a great opportunity to come to check out BioCurious, and jump into some of the projects going on.

Kelly Hudson is the managing director of Montalvo Arts Center. Montalvo Arts Center is proud to announce an astonishing new exhibition by artist Bruce Munro. Featuring 10 light-based works ranging in scale from immersive to intimate, Bruce Munro at Montalvo: Stories in Light will utilize multi-hued waves, clusters, cascades, flocks, and seas of illumination, transforming Montalvo’s historic Villa and its extensive public areas into a breathtaking spectacle of light. The exhibition will be the first time Munro’s work has been publicly on display on the West Coast, and it will represent the largest number of his works ever on view at a single venue. It is made possible in part through the generous support of The Valley Foundation.

Bruce Munro at Montalvo blends the highly personal with the poignantly universal, aiming to transcend time and space by inspiring moments of awareness and inviting viewers to contemplate a world larger and more mysterious than their own existence. Works on view are inspired by Munro’s experiences reading C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia as a child, drawing on imagery that stayed with him over the years. They also reflect on personal recollections and society’s collective memories.

The Gratitude Network Fellowship it’s a 12-month leadership development program for social Fellows serving children and youth. The Fellowship is designed to help the social entrepreneur scale their organization to the next level and therefore positively impact even more children.

Born and raised in China, Mr. Nan Su came to the U.S. in 1989. He has been serving as a news commentator for SOH International Chinese Radio Network and NTD International TV Network since 2003, commenting on a wide range of national and international news events. In the past decade, Mr. Su has made many speeches at public events on topics related to China. He has also been publishing poems, short stories, and prose in Chinese since 2000.

In addition to his media work, Mr. Su is an advocate for human rights in China. He was one of the coordinators of Human Rights Torch Relay in 2008 prior to Beijing Olympics. Starting from Athens, the Human Rights Torch Relay spanned from July 2007 to July 2008, with stops at more than 100 cities around the world in order to raise international awareness of China’s human rights situation.  Mr. Su was instrumental in making San Jose as the first stop of the torch relay in North America.

Besides his involvement in the public, Mr. Su holds a Master degree in Engineering and has been a professional engineer for over 20 years. Mr. Su has been married for 27 years, and currently lives with his wife and two daughters in San Jose, California.

WomenSV serves women and children in our area whose lives have been impacted by domestic violence. WomenSV is committed to helping women of means find the means to break free from abuse and go on to build healthier lives for themselves, their children, and ultimately our community.

Colleen and her husband Tom completed “America’s most famous hike”, the 210 mile John Muir Trail, in August 2018. Over 17 days, they saw a piece of California that very few people get to see. The trail climbs 11 mountain passes, summits the tallest peak in the contiguous US and winds through three national parks and one national monument. Colleen Conrado Ferguson is the COO or Conrado Builders. She's born and raised in Saratoga, graduated from Saint Francis High School and earned her BFA in Communication Design and Art History from Washington University in St. Louis. In her down time, you can find her cooking, skiing, through-hiking, or organizing and attending events for her alma mater. She serves as a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Regional Cabinet for Washington University in St. Louis.