Yin Kong, Director/Co-Founder

Yin Kong 邝海音 is a community-based designer and curator living and working in Manhattan's Chinatown. Think!Chinatown is the culmination of her work in urban design, museum, culinary & cultural instruction, and community engagement. Previously an Urban Curator of the Dashilar Project, she consulted a municipal agency of Beijing on urban revitalization strategies in the city's historic hutong core. She also spent time teaching at the Black Sesame Kitchen in Beijing and onboard Semester at Sea. She loves sharing Thomas Jefferson facts which she picked up at her time working at Monticello. Yin holds a Masters of Architecture, Urban Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London and a Bachelors of Arts, Urban Studies from Columbia University. Her work has been presented at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2016 and the Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture 2007 & 2009. In 2019 she was a fellow of both the New Museum's IdeasCity and Coro's Neighborhood Leadership programs. In 2020 she was a David Prize finalist.

Amy Chin, President of the Board

Amy Chin 陳雪媚 is a cultural leader who has advanced the role of arts and culture in communities large and small for over 30 years, through leadership and service in organizations like the Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation, the Cultural Arts Advisory Commission for the City of New York, the New York Chinese Cultural Center, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Also an experienced genealogist and researcher, Amy lectures and conducts workshops nationally and internationally. Amy’s grandfather came to New York in 1903 and lived on Pell Street. After a childhood in her father’s Chinese laundry in the Bronx and Sundays in Chinatown, Amy earned a degree in East Asian studies from Barnard College and speaks Toisanese, Cantonese and Mandarin.

Alice Liu, Community Outreach & Production Lead

Alice Liu is a native to NYC's Chinatown and grew up helping her parents, who emigrated from China, run their family business in the neighborhood. As a second generation small business owner, longtime resident, and active member of the community, Alice is deeply passionate about the intergenerational economic and cultural vitality of Chinatown. As Alice continues to learn more about community organizing and her heritage, she hopes to bring her skill sets back to the community and apply them to ensuring that Chinatown continues to be a space that is reflective of and accessible to immigrant families. In her spare time, she is usually making deliveries for her family's stores, drinking tea, or kicking it at her favorite local eateries.

Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan, Storytelling Team Lead

Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan 關凱瑤 is a writer, audio producer, and cultural organizer. She brings together her backgrounds in social work and media to engage with communities to tell their own stories. During her time at StoryCorps, she built a community engagement program with AAPI communities through storytelling workshops, recordings, and listening events. She also is the Community Producer for the podcast Self Evident and consults with the Hunter College Asian American Studies Program to train students to lay the foundation for an Asian American Studies Oral History Archive. When she’s not thinking about storytelling, you can typically find her dancing or listening to family collections of records all night long.

Hai-Li Kong, Video Production Lead

Hai-Li Kong 邝海黎 is an editor, producer, and videographer who works mainly in the documentary space. She is also involved in new media and film programming for Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF). Her own personal films explore her family’s immigration story, which touches on China, Singapore, Canada, and the US. When taking a break from the computer screen, Hai-Li also enjoys getting her hands dirty at the pottery wheel.

Anna Ye, Special Events & Culinary Programs Manager

Anna Ye is a tea educator, small business owner and cultural organizer. Anna merges her background in fine dining hospitality and passion for cultivating spaces that weave together food, culture, and community engagement through her work at T!C. Anna is spearheading the many aspects of our very own Kitchen Studio ranging from program development and ideation, relationship building with collaborators, to leading tea workshops. She also leads on vendor relations, production and logistics, and community safety efforts for the Chinatown Night Market. 

Full-time, Anna runs a specialty Vietnamese tea company centered around uplifting the overall profile of Vietnamese teas and tea heritage in the U.S. She was recently featured on Imbibe 75: Person to Watch in 2024. If she's not talking your ear off about all things tea, she's probably sharing stories of her hiking adventures or latest kitchen experiments.

Jasper Yang, Financial Advising Volunteer

Jasper Yang is a student of public economics and a researcher in financial policy. He is passionate about converting academic research into real-life impacts. Since the start of the COVID pandemic, Jasper has been working with about 400 Asian small business owners to help them understand relief policies, while conveying their concerns to state and local agencies. In his spare time, he loves transcribing his favorite anime and game music onto the piano, re-watching William Shen episodes on Kangsi Coming, and exploring new bubble tea places.