Meet Min

I am running to be part of the San Francisco Board of Education because I want to do for public schools, what public schools did for me. I feel incredibly lucky and fortunate that I had a great experience in public schools early in my life. It allowed me the opportunity to apply and be accepted into some of the best universities in the country and to subsequently earn two bachelors, two masters and a doctorate degree. I have also worked for many Fortune 100 companies and led several organizations as CEO. None of this would have been possible without the encouragement and support of public-school teachers. It is this critical foundation in those early years that allowed me to excel in my career and life. I feel so lucky that I had these positive experiences, but I do not want our children here in San Francisco to depend on luck. A good education is a right. Our children should have what I had, supportive schools and teachers, which can expose them to all the possibilities and give them the confidence to grow into their best selves. I know what a good public-school experience should be, and we can bring that to our school system here in San Francisco.

This is why I am running for the school board. I am not a politician. I am a regular parent, citizen, and taxpayer in San Francisco. I have over 35 years of experience in solving problems collaboratively and I know how to get things done. This is what I do every day at work. I am not running to build a political career; I am a CEO and lead a successful healthcare company here in San Francisco. I am doing this because I believe that we can be effective together and that the SFUSD Board needs someone like me. Because I am not from the educational system, I can bring an outside voice, best practices from the business world like fiscal responsibility and operational excellence as well as different perspectives to challenge the norm and find unique solutions to our problems.

Moreover, I will bring a fundamentally different approach. In business, we start with the customers in mind, and it is no different here for SFUSD. We should listen and understand the needs of all our schools (all 125 of them) and work backwards to develop the school system that meets those needs, not the other way around. Knowing the needs and the gaps will help us develop the kind of school system that incorporates the communities’ needs. The SFUSD Board of Education needs diverse voices and diverse thoughts to grow our schools, not close them, and bring students and families back to San Francisco’s public schools. The SFUSD Board needs to push for a stronger curriculum that arms our children so they can compete in the global economy, by bringing back core subjects of math, science, languages, the arts as early as possible in elementary and middle schools. A good education should not be a privilege, it should be a right. I hope you will join me to make ‘good education a right’ for all our children.