Five Questions With Our Board Chair

June 2019 Newsletter

5 Questions With Our Board Chair
Rose is renowned in the Bay Area as a former Miss Chinatown USA. Since receiving her title in 1981, she has continued serving the community in various charitable and leadership capacities. Rose has served on the Board of APA Family Support Services for 28 years. She was recently honored by SF Hep B Free for her decade-long effort to bring awareness about chronic hepatitis B in the API community.

In 1985 she founded the Miss Asian Global Pageant which provides opportunities for young women to develop their character, professional and leadership skills through community service. In 2015, the Pageant extended their program to create the Imagine Talks Conference for women empowerment, entrepreneurship, and social impact. She helped start other pageants in various Asian ethnic communities, such as Vietnamese, Filipino, and Thai, to name a few.

ROSE CHUNG

Among her other community service contributions, Rose coordinates the entertainment for San Francisco Mayor's Annual APA Heritage Celebration. She also serves on the Board of the Portsmouth Square Parking Plaza Corporation and as Vice-President of Jung Family Association. Rose emcees each year for the Chinatown Autumn Festival and the Coalition of Asian American Government Employees Annual Lunar Luncheon among her joyful activities.

Why did you join the Board?
APA is an organization that my mom needed. She became a widow with 5 daughters between the ages of 3-13. She did not speak English, so she had a lot of stress raising her family. Like many Chinatown parents of her generation, she was verbally abusive to motivate us to do better. Had there been an agency like APA, it would have helped her overall well-being to know there was support for her.

What do you appreciate about the services that APA provides?
I appreciate the dedicated staff that serves our clients. They are our compassionate heroes who provide excellent service and care to our clients.

What would you like to see APA accomplish for the future?
To see APA continue to collaborate with other social service agencies so that we can provide more wrap-around services to our clients.

Tell us about your family?
I have two surviving sisters. We are close and rarely have disagreements like our teenage years. One day, when my mom caught my sister and I physically fighting, she calmly told us we had to get along for life. With this rare gentle demeanor as she made her statement, it was her greatest lesson for us siblings.

What do you do in your leisure time?
I am founder of the Miss Asian Global Pageant which is going on its 34th year. Community service is a great passion of mine. I thrive on being able to make a positive impact on people's lives. Year-round there are other activities I volunteer for such as coordinating the cultural procession for the Mayor's APA Heritage Month Ceremony; emceeing for family association spring banquets, the Chinatown Autumn Moon Festival and the Coalition of Asian American Government Employees to name a few.