Gala

Celebrating our 12th Annual Gala in-person at Tribeca 360, NYC! We want to thank our honorees, Linda Lee, Sesame Street, and Esther Choi for being so vulnerable and sharing their Korean American story with us. You all deserve to be called trailblazers for your impact and contributions to our community!

It’s been two years since our last in-person gala and want to give a special thank you to all who came to support us and celebrate our community. We thank our honorees, TOKiMONSTA, Eugene Lee Yang, and Juju Chang for being so vulnerable and sharing their Korean American story with us.

We’re shipping the food and drinks to you! Hang out with Daniel Dae Kim, Jihae, and David Kim while enjoying a specially curated meal from Cote, a Michelin Star Korean steakhouse and artisanal, handcrafted makgeolli from Brooklyn brewery, Hana Makgeolli.

We thank and celebrate our honorees – Andy Kim, Kristen Kish, and Kyung B. Yoon – who shared their wonderful stories. A big thank you to our fantastic NYC Story Slam 2019 winners, Jen Kim and Claire Choi, our musical performer Year of the Ox, and our fabulous host Vivian Lee. We hope many of you can join us next year for our special 10th Anniversary! 

We thank our honorees, Tereza Lee, Joon H. Kim and Diana Son, who shared their wonderful stories. We give our heartfelt thanks to the Story Slam performers, Anthony Luckett and David Choi, who moved us to laugh and cry.

Special thanks to our honorees Martha Crawford, Jeannie Park, and Brian Tee for sharing their truly inspiring personal stories and to the incredible beatboxer and live-looper, Sung Lee, who amazed the audience.

We celebrated Trailblazer Honorees: Randall Park, Hooni Kim, and Aiyoung Choi and also featured rappers Awkwafina and John & Rick Lee. Due to a scheduling conflict, Randall Park was not able to receive his award in person. The story he shared via video will not be published in order to respect the actor’s wishes for it to remain private.

For our 2015 Annual Gala we honored the Korean American Trailblazers Sandra Oh, Jonathan “Dumbfoundead” Park, Thomas Park Clement and our Diamond Supporter honoree, Marja Vongerichten. The event took place at the lovely Tribeca Rooftop and hosted by talented and lovely Vivian Lee. Dan Phai was our auctioneer who was kind enough to fly out from Los Angeles to help us out!

The spirits were high at our 2014 Annual Benefit.  Each year we feature interesting Korean Americans who share their stories live, without script.  It is as much about the art of storytelling as it is about the content of their stories. This year, Dr. Agnes Rhee Ahn and Lt. Dan Choi hit the ball out of the park. Their storytelling captivated us and their stories challenged and inspired us to act to be the agents of change in our world. As you can see from these photos, it was a fun and inspiring evening.