Welcome

Hello, and welcome to my website. My name is Yang Xiong. The purpose of this website is to provide information on my personal and professional backgrounds and interests.

I was born in Laos, a small landlocked country sandwiched between Thailand on the left and Vietnam on the right in Southeast Asia. In 1980, because my father had died in the Thailand refugee camp Ban Vinai, I came to the United States with my mother and five siblings as a political refugee of the CIA’s “Secret War.”

Because my mother never had an opportunity to gain an education but had a background in subsistence farming, she could only work in the hot California Central Valley fields and utilize the welfare system to help make ends meet for my family. As a young child, I knew that getting an education was important.  I graduated as valedictorian for the boys from Tenaya Middle School in the eighth grade.  After graduating from Merced High School, I attended the University of California at Berkeley and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, worked for a couple of years as a youth counselor and community organizer for a non-profit organization, and then continued my education on a full-ride scholarship as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, currently called Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) at Carnegie Mellon University for my Master of Science in Public Policy & Management. Recently, I had the opportunity to continue my educational pursuits and leadership training at the Sierra Health Foundation and completed my Health Leadership Program in May 2019.

I have continuously maintained employment since I started working. In the process, I developed a multifaceted set of professional skills that have enabled me to climb up the management and leadership ladder steadily. I was fortunate to have served from November 2015 to October 2019 as the executive director of the Southeast Asian Assistance Center (currently called Sacramento Cultural & Linguistic Center), a very diverse, culturally and linguistically responsive refugee and immigrant services agency based in Sacramento, CA. Now, I’m serving as an Administrative Services Officer in the Department of Health Services Primary Health division at Sacramento County.

Although I enjoy what I am currently doing, I am always open to opportunities to further utilize my educational background, end-user solid IT skills, management and leadership skills, and other interpersonal and professional skills to have a broader impact on society. I am particularly interested in partnering with employers who value their clients and employees by working with them to reach their highest potential. I am passionate about making a positive impact on people’s lives, contributing to and ensuring that the vision, missions, and goals of the organization that employs me are focused upon and realized.

I am confident my many years of providing advocacy and a variety of human and social services ranging from being a line staff to an executive director, will benefit any organization. My professional experiences include the following:

  • Eight years of supervisory experience, of which four years were as the Executive Director of a non-profit organization over a culturally and linguistically diverse permanent staff of 13 – 15 employees and just about 30 “on-call” independent contractors;
  • Fostered positive, motivating, and culturally competent work environments;
  • Engaged, worked with, and reported to a Board of Directors of up to 7 members;
  • Participated as a member of Sacramento County’s Cultural Competence Committee;
  • Wrote grant proposals independently and collaboratively with other organizations;
  • Handled all HR-related matters from benefits, policies, and procedures analysis to program and performance evaluations;
  • IT with a strong emphasis on end-user support, user rapport building, web design, social media, and marketing;
  • Budget analysis, finance and monthly income/expense analysis, and presentation;
  • Organizing and advocacy among communities of color;
  • Youth counseling and mentoring; and
  • Over 11 years of development, implementation, and revision of Individual Program Plans (IPP) for people with developmental disabilities.

I look forward to the potential opportunity to visit with you to further share the experiences that I might bring to your team of professionals at your organization. You can reach me via any of these ways: (916) 647-7815 or yang@WorkWithYang.com.

I appreciate your consideration.

Yang Xiong