Our Team

Interim Co-Executive Director & Director of Community Initiatives & Grantmaking

Tavae Samuelu (she/her/hers) is the daughter of a pastor from Leulumoega and a nurse from Saleimoa. Rooted in fa’a Samoa, she is a storyteller who empowers people to own their narratives, articulate their healing, and resource our movements.

Tavae was born and raised on Tongva Territory, in what is presently known as Long Beach. She left home to attend UC Berkeley where she majored in Ethnic Studies. After college, Tavae took a job as the District 5 Field Organizer for Jean Quan’s Oakland Mayoral Campaign which allowed her to grow her movement building skills and learn how to impact local institutions. When the campaign concluded, Tavae took her organizing abilities to various Bay Area nonprofits and eventually made her political home at the RYSE Youth Center. She credits her time on unceded Ohlone land for her political consciousness.

In 2017, Tavae returned home to Long Beach to serve as the Executive Director of Empowering Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC), where she advocated passionately for Pacific Islanders locally in LA, statewide in CA, and nationally. During her five-year tenure, she saw the importance of sustainable leadership and the ways that anchored care can bolster an organization during and after crises.

Tavae recently joined the Asian Pacific Fund as the Director of Community Initiatives & Grantmaking. In addition to that, she serves as a board member for Pacific Islanders In Communications. During the pandemic, she learned that her most important title is Aunty Vae.

Interim Co-Executive Director & Director of Development

Gurpreet provides thoughtful leadership to create a strategic development plan that mobilizes resources to support the Bay Area’s most vulnerable Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

She does this by growing and nurturing the Asian Pacific Fund’s base of individual, corporate and foundation donors and works closely with the Fund’s executive director, board of directors, advisory council, and other key stakeholders.

Gurpreet brings over 12 years of experience in non-profit fundraising and is passionate about working to create meaningful change. She holds a BA in Psychology from the University of California, Riverside, and a Master of Nonprofit Administration from the University of San Francisco.  She is a first-generation South Asian American and resides in the East Bay.

Development Coordinator

Emily’s role as Development Coordinator focuses on being the resident “expert” on various software programs used for the Fund’s development efforts and meeting the administrative needs of her team.

Hailing from New York City, Emily brings a unique perspective and skillset to Asian Pacific Fund with over three years of experience in DEIJ and education spaces. After graduating a year early in 2019 from New York University, Emily started her career in DEIJ at a white-shoe law firm as Diversity & Inclusion Assistant during the peak of the COVID pandemic and anti-Asian hate. Then, she switched gears to teaching fourth grade as one of the founding grade teachers at a charter school based in upper Manhattan. Throughout her career, she has readily adapted to various roles and responsibilities within her teams while assuming a growth-oriented, “roll-up-your-sleeves” mindset. Her passion for helping people and serving communities in the name of equity, empathy, and justice fuel her professional journey.

Emily currently resides in San Jose with her extended family and two dogs – Coco and Milo! Outside of work, you can find her at her community gym, Warcat Strength, training in the sport of powerlifting, in front of her gaming PC playing competitive video games with her best friends on Discord, or exploring all of the delicious hidden gems the Bay Area has to offer!

Manager of Community Initiatives & Grantmaking

Jean Phạm (they/them/theirs) is the Manager of Community Initiatives and Grantmaking, a role in which they are passionate about driving resources for underserved communities. They bring over eight years of experience in grassroots organizing, grants administration, and providing direct services to Bay Area constituents.

Jean was raised in the heart of Little Saigon in Westminster, California, where the sun never stops shining. They identify as non-binary, queer, and are a part of the Vietnamese diaspora. As a child of militarized refugees, Jean feels strongly about forming bonds with their ancestral lineage. Jean believes that we all have a vital role to play in the pursuit of social equity and justice.

Prior to joining APF, Jean worked with young survivors of domestic violence at API Legal Outreach as the Youth Project Program Manager. In this capacity, Jean mentored hundreds of young adults in advocacy and awareness efforts around gender-based violence, racial equity, and social change. Jean comes into this new role with many ties to the local Bay Area community as an activist, having emerged from the Seeding Change fellowship. Jean also organizes within the QTViệt Café Collective as a core leader, leading efforts to reclaim cultural practices while promoting LGBTQ+ acceptance via intergenerational connections.

Residing in the East Bay, Jean enjoys being in artmaking spaces. They co-facilitate monthly figure drawing sessions at the historic EastSide Arts Alliance and are an alumnus of the Atelier School of Classical Realism in Oakland, having specialized in oil painting and charcoal drawing.

Director of Finance and Operations

MaryAnn Martinez Treble serves as the Director of Finance and Operations of the Asian Pacific Fund. Her role focuses on managing accounting, human resources, and information technology.

MaryAnn brings over 15 years of accounting, operations, and business management experience and holds a Bachelor of Science in Managerial Economics from the University of California, Davis, as well as an Associate Degree in Culinary Arts from the California Culinary Academy.

Previously, MaryAnn worked for Blue Shield of California Foundation (BSCF), a statewide philanthropy with a dual mission of increasing health equity and ending domestic violence. While at BSCF, she most recently served as the Finance, Operations, and Grants Transformation Manager, where she led organization wide projects focused on improving processes and systems, ranging from accounts payable automation and grant process refinement, to strengthening workplace culture. Prior to that, she served as the Accounting and Operations Manager at BSCF, and has also held various accounting and operations roles throughout her career including running corporate catering units where she was able to apply her culinary, management, operations, and accounting skills.

A native of the Bay Area, MaryAnn currently resides on the Peninsula with her family. In her free time, you will find MaryAnn baking, gardening, or playing with her two pugs.

Accounting and Operations Associate

Kelly Wu (she/her) is the Accounting and Operations Associate at the Asian Pacific Fund. In this role, she provides finance, accounting, operations, and administrative support.

Kelly has devoted 20 years of her career supporting museums, contemporary art galleries, and non-profits in development, finance, and administration. As a professional photographer, she’s helped art non-profits with event and exhibition documentation. Her work has been published on major news outlets and websites.