Dr. Carol Liao is a second generation Taiwanese Canadian with a deep love for the Pacific Northwest. Her parents immigrated to Canada in the 1970s, and she and her siblings grew up in Chilliwack, Surrey, and Vancouver. She received her BA (Honours) from Queen’s University and her LLB from UBC, and then was a corporate lawyer for several years at Shearman & Sterling LLP (New York) before returning to Canada to obtain her LLM and PhD/SJD at UBC and the University of Toronto. Dr. Liao is an Associate Professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, and the UBC Sauder Distinguished Fellow of the Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics at the UBC Sauder School of Business. She is also Principal co-Investigator of the Canada Climate Law Initiative. Her research focuses on corporate law and sustainability, climate governance, gender and racial justice. She lives with her partner and three children in Kitsilano.

Dr. Henry Yu was born in Vancouver, and received his BA in Honours History from UBC and an MA and PhD in History from Princeton University. His parents migrated from China, joining a grandfather and great-grandfather who spent almost their entire lives in British Columbia. Descended through his mother’s family from migrants who left Zhongshan county in southern China and settled around the Pacific, Henry has a particular interest in the relations between trans-Pacific migrants and indigenous peoples. An Associate Professor of History, Dr. Yu’s research and teaching at UBC involves collaborations between the university and the communities whom it serves, including projects such as Chinese Canadian Stories: Uncommon Histories from a Common Past (2010-2012) and the Fraser Corridor Heritage Landscapes Project (2014-2016). For his community leadership, including Co-Chairing the Anniversaries of Change Steering Committee (2007-2008); Co-Chairing the City of Vancouver’s Dialogues between First Nations, Urban Aboriginal, and Immigrant Communities Project (2010-2012), and Co-Chairing the Province of British Columbia’s Legacy Initiatives Advisory Council (2015-2018), Dr. Yu received recognition through the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012) and the BC Multicultural Individual Award (2015).

Leticia Sánchez is an M.Ed. from Anahuac University, Mexico City, and a Certified Overseas Teacher of English from Cambridge University via the British Council and the Universidad Ibero-Americana in Mexico. She is certified in Community Capacity Building from Simon Fraser University, 2022. Leticia’s areas of expertise in education are instruction, leadership, curriculum development, counselling, and administration. For over 20 years, she coordinated the Language Departments at the Ibero-American and Cenca Institutes in the State of Mexico. From 2008 to 2018, she worked as a Visitor Services Manager, Director of Retail, and Head of Cultural Experience and Art Exhibitions at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden.

Leticia has collaborated with private galleries, educational institutions, and consulates to showcase individual artists and develop events supporting cultural heritage, competence, diversity, and inclusion. Her strong interest in the impact of art and heritage on the well-being and development of communities has led her to continue as an independent Gallery Administrator, Curator, and Art Programmer producer for community and heritage projects. Under that umbrella, her community projects bring public awareness to Vancouver's diverse Pan-Asian art, culture, and communities. “Embracing Multicultural Languages,” “Following the Silk Routes and Beyond in Vancouver'', 2016-2018, “Interconnected Spotlight of Asian-Canadian Artists,” Yummiest Asian Food, and VAHMS Connections; 2019 to present are some of her recent projects.

Lenny Surjati is an international executive, with over twenty-five years’ experience in sales, spanning a decade each in two distinct business sectors: international hotels and conferencing, and Information Technology. Born in Indonesia, she was educated in Australia before pursuing her professional life in Singapore and later Canada.

She spent the first decade of her career in the IT sector in Singapore, where she led domestic and South East Asia regional sales teams for such leading corporations as Singtel, StarHub, and IBM. This included developing business plans for marketing a full range of hardware, software and services for both enterprise and consumer clients.

After marrying a Canadian ambassador, she emigrated to Canada in 2017 and took a role as a Sales Director in the Marriott Hotels Group in Ottawa. Following a move to Vancouver in 2022, she was recruited as a Director of Sales in the Atlific Hotel Group, and is now based at an IHG hotel in Vancouver.

Mrs. Surjati holds a Bachelor’s degree in business and computing from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and a Masters in International Business (IBM Scholar) from the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. She speaks English, Bahasa Indonesia and basic Mandarin.