Ascend Seattle Chapter
2019 Lunar New Year
Navigating Power & Conflict
Keynote Speaker
Julia S. Gouw
Retired President and Chief Operating Officer of East West Bank
Julia S. Gouw is Retired President and Chief Operating Officer of East West Bank – one of the top 30 largest banks in the nation that serves as the financial bridge between U.S. and China. Prior to joining East West Bank in 1989, Gouw was a Senior Audit Manager with the accounting firm KPMG.
Gouw was ranked one of the “25 Most Powerful Women in Banking” five times by American Banker magazine and has received the Los Angeles Business Journal’s “Women Making a Difference” award two times in recognition of her achievements and philanthropic contributions.
Gouw is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. She was the founding chair of Executive Advisory Board of the UCLA Women’s Health to promote women’s health both in research and medical treatments. She also endowed the UCLA Chair of Mood Disorders Research especially in women in memory of Dr. Lori Altshuler.
Gouw was a board member of the Trusteeship, an International Women’s Forum affiliate organization that connects preeminent women in leadership positions across various professional fields.
Gouw currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Pacific Life Insurance and ECMC Group.
Gouw was appointed as a Commissioner of Ontario International Airport Authority (OIAA) in September 2016. The OIAA provides overall direction for the management, operations, development and marketing of Ontario International Airport in Southern California.
Born and raised in Indonesia, Gouw came to the United States in 1978 where she earned her B.S. degree in accounting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Speakers
Ronald Reeves
Head of Diversity & Inclusion for the United States, Canada, Latin America & Caribbean for AIG
Ronald Reeves is currently Head of Diversity & Inclusion for the United States, Canada, Latin America & Caribbean for AIG. He has been in his current role for three years and has worked for AIG for 19 years. He is responsible for partnering with AIG’s leaders, managers and employees to design, develop and implement a sustainable and measurable D & I strategy that focuses on talent, workplace and the marketplace.
AIG has been named to the 2018 Diversity Inc’s Top 50 List. AIG has also
been recognized as one of the Best Places To Work for LGBT Equality by the Human rights Campaign for seven consecutive years.
Ronald is a seasoned financial services industry training & leadership development professional. With over 20 years of insurance industry experience, he has extensive global leadership and management development experience. He has traveled to over 15 different countries in the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific facilitating leadership, management and professional development programs. He is a skilled presenter, facilitator, sales trainer, instructional designer, project manager, executive/sales/life coach & learning officer. Ronald has deep expertise in sales training/coaching, business/technical training as well as management, leadership and professional development. He holds numerous learning & development certifications such as Achieve Global, DDI, Wilson Learning, Results Coaching Systems, MBTI and Facet 5 to name a few.
Ronald also has experience writing state training grant proposals as well as administering million dollar grants. He is a former award winning Sales Agent & Sales Manager for Allstate Insurance Company. Ronald is passionate about diversity & inclusion, leadership/executive development as well as improving sales revenue/production. He received his B.A. in Journalism from San Jose State University. Ronald resides in Los Angeles.
Panel Speakers
Rudy B. Medina
Southern California Market President
Rudy Medina serves as the Southern California market president for U.S. Bank, the fifth largest commercial bank in the United States. Medina leads the market in company-wide efforts and activities while directing commercial banking in the greater Southern California area.
Medina has over 35 years of banking and financial services experience in California and joins U.S. Bank from Bank of America, where he served as chief operating officer, business banking division. Previous to this he held the role of market president and senior vice president, market executive, California Central Valley, directing all middle market banking and serving as the senior executive in the market.
Medina is active in the community and currently serves as a board member for the Pacific Coast Banking School and the California Bankers Association. Locally, Medina is on the boards of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Central City Association of Los Angeles, Town Hall-Los Angeles, United Way of Greater Los Angeles, Los Angeles Economic Development Council and Center for Leadership at the Mihaylo College of Business and Economics at California State University, Fullerton.
Medina earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of the Pacific and is a previous winner of the Kermit O’Hansen Award of Excellence from the Pacific Coast Banking School. Medina and his wife, Susan reside in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Vicki Ariyasu
Vice President, Disney Channel / Disney Junior Educational Resource Group for The Walt Disney Company
With her extensive academic and entertainment background, Vicki Ariyasu is making a difference for the millions of kids and families who watch Disney Junior and Disney Channel. She leads the Educational Resource Group, a team responsible for the integration of early childhood educational content, prosocial engagement, and inclusion across intellectual properties and brand extensions.
Vicki’s priority is the seamless integration of curricula and child development touchstones for creative development and production. She also works often with many other Disney teams including digital media, integrated planning, franchise, marketing, social responsibility, theme parks and resorts.
She established the Disney Junior Advisory Board, a council of prominent multidisciplinary academics, experts, and cultural consultants. She has managed partnerships with UNICEF, Girls Scouts, Google, XPRIZE, NASA, the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, White House Initiative for Educational Excellence for Hispanics, Hollywood Health & Society, many children’s museums and science discovery centers.
Vicki also leads Disney Channel’s commitment to diversity and inclusion with a vision and goal to overcome barriers to more inclusive workplaces, content, and inspiring leaders to innovative thinking.
Vicki has an Ed.M. in Technology, Innovation and Education from Harvard, and a B.A. in East Asian and Asian American Studies from UCLA.
Moderators
Livia Ching-Gerring
Ascend West Executive Director
Livia is responsible for the strategy and operations of the Pacific Northwest Region for Ascend, a not-for-profit focused on promoting Pan-Asian executives in corporate America. Her passion lies in supporting community vision and mission to move corporate and organizational practices towards a more inclusive working and leadership culture. Livia also includes and considers strategic relationship building a key asset in organizational and crisis management. Prior to Ascend, Livia was a Senior Associate at Ernst & Young, helping to build business in the PNW for the firm and led client-serving teams to major wins with Fortune 500 global companies. At the beginning of her career, Livia was an avid graphic novel junkie and worked as an Editor for both TokyoPop and Viz Media, licensors of manga, anime and comics from Japan for teen readers in America. Titles of her projects can still be found on Comicbook.com. She currently sits on the Board of Directors for the National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) - Accounting Career Awareness Program, San Francisco/Bay Area Chapter and is a current Co-President and Executive Council Member of Ellevate Network's San Francisco and Silicon Valley Chapters. Livia is a graduate of California College of the Arts (MFA in Writing) and the University of California, Los Angeles (BA in Sociology and Business Administration).
Terri Luong
Producer and Client Executive for Marsh
Terri Luong joined Marsh in July 2014 as a Producer and Client Executive. As a Producer, she is responsible for strategically building business relationships with existing and prospective clients, with the objective of delivering innovative risk solutions. In the role of Client Executive, Terri is the first point of contact on the account, and charged with thoroughly understanding the goals and objectives of her clients. Through leadership of the internal team, she ensures all deliverables are met.
As a Chinese-American, Terri leverages her background when engaging with the local business community through her involvement as Co-President of the Asian Business League of Southern California. Utilizing this platform, Terri has garnered clients from all sectors of business, including construction, real estate, banking, and supermarkets, by embracing the diverse communities of Los Angeles and Orange County.