Dear KAPS members and friends,

I am pleased to announce the KAPS officer team for 2010-2011. Every member has contributed to our organization in a countless number of ways and easily deserves special recognition.

In order to best represent our team, please allow me to introduce each one of our officers.

Best,

Hana Marcus Kim
President, 2010-2011

Hana Kim is currently a User Interface Designer for the software consulting firm RedWhale Software, where he refines and redesigns client products to be more intuitive and easy to use.

Hana was born in the greater DC-Baltimore metropolitan area, and spent his entire life there before attending UC Berkeley as a Electrical Engineering and Computer Science major. After completing his undergraduate education in 2006, he moved to San Mateo, where he still resides.

As an officer in KAPS, Hana would like to help Korean American individuals develop strong connections that allow them to tap into the ever-growing Korean American community.

In his free time, Hana loves to play tennis, basketball, and rugby, and is a firm believer that laughter is the best medicine. Plus or minus clapping.

Andrew Dae-Hyun Ko is a Marketing Manager with Lincoln Financial Advisors, a high-end financial planning company. He graduated from UC-Berkeley (Go Bears!) as a Mechanical Engineering major, but decided he was more interested in pursuing a career in financial planning and marketing.

Andrew was born in upstate New York and lived in the East Coast until he was ten. He lived in Singapore, arguably the cleanest and most efficient country in the world, for two and a half years before graduating from Cupertino High School, home of the Pioneers.

While attending UC-Berkeley, Andrew spent two years learning the Korean language and immersing himself in Korean-American culture. He was an officer of the Korean American Student Organization (KASO), which led to his involvement in KAPS. As a KAPS officer, he has helped organize several events and has contributed to the growth of KAPS' Generation Y membership.

In his spare time, Andrew enjoys playing and watching sports and spending time with friends and family. He is an active member of his church and volunteers with multiple organizations.

Alice Moon is currently a graduate student at UC Berkeley.

Alice was born and raised in the greater Chicago-land area. She graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in psychology and mathematics. In 2007, she moved to the Bay Area as a researcher before starting graduate school.

Alice's recent interest in reconnecting with her heritage propelled her to become involved in KAPS. As a KAPS officer, Alice would like to help members expand their social and professional networks as well as to help promote and preserve KAPS for future members to enjoy.

In her free time, Alice enjoys spending time with friends, shopping, eating, travelling, and other random things, especially things that make Alice sound cool.

Min Lee is currently information systems professional at Amgen Inc, the world's largest biotechnology company, managing Amgen's external partner collaborations as they work to conduct clinical trials and bring therapeutic drugs to market. While he longs for the days when he actually developed computer programs, these days, he tends to baby-sit, send emails, and attend too many meetings.

Min graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Chemistry. However, Min decided to rebel and pursue his interests in information technology. His experiences has brought him to work in various roles/positions in the IT field from programming to managing development teams and IT project implementations. He has also worked in various company environments, from small startups to medium-sized firms to a Fortune 500 corporation.

Min moved to San Francisco in 2007 and found KAPS to be a great organization to connect with other Korean Americans. He hopes to contribute to KAPS by focusing on ways to help KAPS members grow professionally. Given his years, he feels that he's made lots of mistakes that other KAPS members could learn from and take advantage of ;)

In his spare time, Min tries to take advantage of San Francisco's great weather with outdoor activities such as bike riding and playing tennis. He also has interests in music, listening to his headphone collection and attending concerts at SF Symphony Hall as time allows.

Dennis Kwon is currently a Mechanical Engineer/Associate Producer working at small Mechanical Special Effect Television Production Company in San Francisco. At one time, he has also worked as an Aerospace Engineer for a satellite/spacecraft company.

Dennis graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in Mechanical Engineer as well as minors in both Mathematics and Economics. After working in NYC for a few years, Dennis moved to San Francisco to begin his career of sending “stuff” into space. After traveling around here and there for a bit, he then returned to San Francisco to begin a career in blowing “stuff” up in the name of science.

In 2009, Dennis became a member of KAPS and discovered a great group of professionals as well as a great group of friends. He hopes to contribute as KAPS Community Service Officer by sharing his experiences learned here and abroad.
Please, contact us, if you have any suggestions for a KAPS Community Service project.

Kristine Ko is a UC Davis graduate that was teaching English in Korea from Aug 2008-September 2009. Since coming back to the U.S., she has been searching for a job which has not been easy provided the current job market. Her interests are in finance and marketing, but she is also looking at other fields such as education.

Kristine’s experience living in Korea for a year is what motivated her to become active in KAPS. She had an amazing time there, learning about the culture, the people, and living abroad in such an awesome setting. She wants to continue to connect with people who share that same passion for learning and understanding their culture.

As a KAPS officer, Kristine hopes to organize many fun opportunities for members to interact and expand both their professional and social networks. It is her main goal to make sure everyone has a good time!

In her spare time, which is now all the time, Kristine enjoys meeting up with friends for movies, meals, tennis, and crafts. Dancing and singing are also two of her favorites! She also spends a lot of time taking care of Rusty, her four year-old jack russell terrier. Kristine is an over-all enthusiastic extremely person whose motto is “work hard, play harder,” actually scratch that, it’s just “play harder.”

Jason Lee is a Product and Marketing Manager at a social gaming start-up in San Francisco. He is a jack-of-all-trades and spends most of his waking life fulfilling too many roles to count. He graduated from UC Berkeley in 2009 with a degree in Economics, but has yet to find any use for what he learned in his post-grad life.

Jason was born in Korea and came to the Bay Area when he was 4. He grew up (mostly) in San Jose and graduated from Cupertino High School in 2005. In between, he spent one year in Korea that makes him seem more fob than he really is.

Having been in the care of his many sunbaes, Jason joined KAPs to give back to the gracious Korean-American community. His goal as an officer are twofold; to inject youth into the KAPs membership by reaching out to budding Korean-American professionals and to bridge the cultural gap between first and second generation Koreans in the Bay Area.

When not woefully overwhelmed at work, Jason enjoys sleeping, watching sports and spending time with his friends. On the weekends you’ll usually find Jason glued to the tube watching college and pro football.

Lina Lee is currently a MFA Advertising student at Academy of Art University. She graduated from University of California, Berkeley with a B.A. degree in Economics. After college, she pursued a career in accounting/finance but realize it wasn’t her passion to live that lifestyle. Within the year, she decided to take a risk and change career direction into the creative field. With her writing passion, she wants to become a successful copywriter and eventually a creative director in the advertising industry.

A Chinese American born in the heart of the Bay Area, Lina grew up in San Francisco, went to school in Oakland, Alameda and Berkeley. She somehow manages to become acquainted with the Korean community, learning their culture and language. With the assistant of kdramas, she picked up quite a few catchphrases and will spontaneous use them.

Proud to be the PR/marketing offier of KAPS, she will use her creative skills to give KAPS a brand image. She hopes to reach out to more Korean professionals in the Bay Area through greater outlets.

On her spare time, Lina loves to train for local running events, do photography, write, and talk to people.

Jason is currently working at a online market research firm called MarketTools as an account manager for the subscriptions based accounts. Because he does not like talking about work, he will end the work paragraph and begin the next paragraph after this sentence.

Jason was born in Korea. He spent the first half of his life in various locations in southern California, and he spent the other half mostly in the Silicon Valley, namely Cupertino. He graduated from Cupertino High School in 2002 and went on to UC Berkeley where he majored in Business Administration. He recently graduated in May 2006, and now currently resides in Richmond.

As an officer of KAPS, Jason's main focus is to increase the number of younger members by pushing for KAPS to be more active in the younger Korean American Community. He sees a great opportunity for younger and older Korean American professionals to interact and learn from each other in order to unite towards a stronger network of Korean American professionals.

In his spare time, Jason watches a lot of tv and movies. He also always up to party, play sports, go "no rae bang"ing. He likes Korean food, The Los Angeles Lakers and people who likes Korean food/the Lakers. He dislikes the New England Patriots, the Boston celtics, and people who take themselves too seriously.