Our Staff
USA Office

EMW President John Anner has been with the East Meets West Foundation since February 2003. John sees his job as building EMW into a global leader in effective, catalytic solutions to development issues such as the lack of clean water and high infant mortality.

Prior to EMW, John was the founder and executive director of the Independent Press Association, a membership organization that provided technical assistance and business services to hundreds of independent and ethnic periodicals. The IPA was a highly entrepreneurial non-profit that generated most of its budget from earned income. Under John's leadership, the IPA either purchased or launched five businesses in five years. He started the organization with a $5,000 grant in 1996, and grew it to an operating budget of $3.5 million in 2002. He was also the President of BigTop Newsstand Services, an international magazine distribution company acquired by the IPA in 2000.

John has also served as Publications Director at the Center for Third World Organizing from 1989 to 1997 where he founded, edited and published Third Force, a cross-cultural national magazine about community and labor politics in communities of color. Prior to that, he was Editor-in-Chief at Nicaraguan Perspectives magazine from 1986-1989.

John was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mauritania, West Africa during 1983-1985. He also worked in Central America. He received a B.A. with Special Honors in Political Science from Tufts University in 1982, and an M.S. in International Agricultural Development from the University of California at Davis in 1989.

John lives in Albany, California with his wife and three daughters. He is a bicycle road racer and member of the Berkeley Bicycle Club.

Read John's Annual Letters on the state of East Meets West.
Read Development Diaries, John's blog on international development

FINANCE AND ADMIN

 Ann Ngoc Tuyet Truong
Chief Financial Officer

Ann is a CPA with over 20 years experience of practicing accounting and five years of teaching accounting. Prior to joining East Meets West in June 2008, Ann served as controller for Olivia Cruise, LLC; ABS Laser Printer Pros, Inc; and JustDeals.com, Inc. She taught accounting at San Francisco State University and City College of San Francisco and also co-founded an office supplies company and an internet retail company. Ann says she is extremely passionate about EMW's mission because she was once among the disadvantaged people EMW serves and she, "truly appreciates the EMW dental service, education, and clean water programs because I grew up in an environment where these essentials were lacking." She was born during war time in Tra On, Vinh Long, Vietnam. At the age of 13, Ann arrived in the United States as a Vietnamese boat refugee and has had a life-long dream of returning and building playgrounds for children in Vietnam. Her association with and work at EMW brings Ann closer to fulfilling her dream to give back to her homeland.

Ann holds an MBA degree in management from Golden Gate University and a Bachelor 's degree  in accounting from San Francisco State University.

Veronica Tubera
Senior Accountant

Veronica joined the EMW staff in March 2008.  Prior to EMW, she has had experience working as a staff accountant in such industries as software and manufacturing.  Most recently she was working as a staff accountant in the retail industry in Las Vegas, NV. Veronica has a BA from the University of CA, Davis where she studied Political Science and minored in Asian American Studies.  After graduating , she worked in a non-profit law firm that provided legal services for seniors.

Avery Hochhalter
Junior Accountant and Administrative Assistant

Avery joined EMW in April 2010. She splits her time between two departments, assisting the finance team with accounting tasks and providing administrative support to the development team. Before finding her place at East Meets West, Avery worked as a bookkeeper for a public relations firm and as an administrative support person for a pharmaceutical company.

Avery attended University of the Pacific in her hometown of Stockton, CA, receiving her undergraduate degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Accounting. After graduation she realized her long-held dream of moving to the San Francisco Bay Area and now lives in Emeryville, CA. She is inspired by EMW's work and is pleased that she can put her passion for accounting and her desire to help people to use to help create a better quality of life for the people of Vietnam.

COMMUNICATIONS

Rachelle Galloway
Communications Manager

Rachelle joined EMW as a staff member in 2006 to manage the print, online and media needs of EMW. She has worked with EMW since 2003 as a contract graphic designer. In her role as lead of the Communications team, Rachelle manages and produces all the print and online media for EMW including Reach Vietnam magazine, EMW's Annual Report, and EMW's website and e-marketing. She produced and co-directed EMW's 2009 documentary film highlighting EMW's 20 years of work in Vietnam and collaborates with photographers, writers and other creative professionals who do work for EMW in Southeast Asia.

Prior to joining EMW, Rachelle was a graphic designer with a focus on design for mission-driven organizations in the Bay Area, including BayNature and Tikkun magazine, the Independent Press Association. Rachelle has served as the a publications coordinator at the Independent Press Association in San Francisco and was a staff designer at the Public Relations office of California State University, Sacramento. Rachelle also worked as an Account Manager in Atlanta with an events management company where she was on a team that brought the first live webcast of the World AIDS Conference in Switzerland to the internet in 1998.

Rachelle has a B.A. in International Relations and Political Science from Arkansas State University and a B.A. in Graphic Design from California State University, Sacramento.

Communications and Development Officer

Sylvia has been with East Meets West since November 2007. Prior to joining the EMW staff, she spent eight years at the International Rescue Committee domestic resettlement office in Oakland, first as a refugee caseworker, and later as immigration specialist and site manager. She helped resettle refugees from all parts of the globe, including the former Yugoslavia, Burma, Nepal, Liberia, Columbia, the Congo, and Vietnam. Previously, she worked as a freelance editor, specializing in textbooks and computer books. Having worked closely with many newly arrived Vietnamese refugees, helping them adjust to a very different life in the United States, Sylvia is excited to be working to support health and education programs in Vietnam itself.

Originally from New Jersey, Sylvia has lived in the Bay Area for over 20 years. She has a B.A. and M.A. in Slavic languages and literature from the University of California at Berkeley.

DEVELOPMENT

Laura Ward Collins
Development Officer

Laura works with EMW's medical and healthcare programs including Breath of Life, Operation Healthy Heart and the Support Network for People with Disabilities (SN-PWD). Laura is helping to build capacity for health care for children and people with disabilities in Vietnam, especially those in impoverished communities, with the ultimate goal to expand the programs to other developing nations in Southeast Asia.

After receiving a B.A. in English and Religion from The College of Wooster, Laura taught English in Poland. After receiving her M.A. from the University of Toronto and an International M.B.A. from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Laura went to work overseas for Modi Enterprises in India. There, she was part of a business development and market research team that opened the Modi Apollo International Institute in New Delhi. She has also served as the Marketing Advisor for the Egyptian Ministry of Health’s National Training Institute in Cairo, Egypt, a private-public partnership between Pfizer and Project HOPE.

John Nguyen
Development Administrator

John joined the EMW staff in March 2007. He works with the Development and Finance teams to manage and maintain donor and program-related data. John brings four years of experience in outreach, recruitment and database administration with the Court Appointed Special Advocates Program. He completed his undergraduate work in Sociology with an emphasis in International Development focused on Asia at UC Davis.

As a second generation Vietnamese-American born in the states, John has fostered an abiding interest in his heritage. His passion for the development of Vietnam is driven by the desire to understand his homeland's past and the hope to have some part in shaping its future. He is thrilled at the opportunity to work with East Meets West and assist disadvantaged children and families in Vietnam.

My-Anh Ha
Fundraising Intern

My-Anh Ha joined EMW’s Oakland office in June 2010 for a six-month internship assisting the development team with fundraising related work. My-Anh came from Viet Nam to the US on a Fulbright Fellowship, attending the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. She received her Master’s degree in International Development Policy in 2010. Previously, she earned a BA in International Politics from the Institute for International Relations in Ha Noi, Viet Nam.

Before graduate school, My-Anh worked in Viet Nam for a Finnish-supported Official Development Assistance Program, which provided water and sanitation for small towns in northern regions of Viet Nam. She also served as the Ha Noi representative for VietHope – a US-based nonprofit organization working in education development in Viet Nam.

My-Anh is extremely excited to have the opportunity to learn about EMW’s great work in Viet Nam as well as its innovative approach to solving development issues. She hopes to contribute to the organization’s efforts to improve the living standards of poor and impoverished people in Viet Nam.