Just months after we published our first news stories in August 2015, we tried something new: we listed and published brief biographies of the state’s 28 Most Influential Black Leaders. People really liked it, shared it on social media, told us who else should have been on that list. Many asked me if we’d do another list the next year; I said yes, we probably would.
We did more than that. That next year, we published another list of the state’s most influential Black leaders, as well as a list of the state’s most influential Latino leaders. Almost immediately, we started hearing an important and very reasonable question: What about the state’s Asian American and Indigenous leaders?
We wanted to do those lists, but we wanted to do them right. It took us some time to build the authentic relationships within those communities, and to gain their trust. I’m glad and proud that we took that time and did that work; it resulted in us publishing those lists for the first time in 2020.
This week we are proud to present the seventh annual edition of Wisconsin’s Most Influential Asian American leaders.
Every year, with every list, I’ve intended to highlight the beauty of the diversity across our state. I want kids here in Wisconsin to see role models of people who are succeeding, to know that it’s possible for people of color to achieve great things here.
This week, we shine a statewide spotlight on the dedicated leaders of Wisconsin’s Asian and Asian American communities. The people we highlight this week are elected leaders, business leaders and community leaders, doing difficult, important work, often in the face of discrimination.
We are also aware that this list, like every other, is not comprehensive. It’s obvious just from the number of nominations that there are far more than 22 influential Asian and Asian American leaders doing good work in Wisconsin. We hope you will let us know about people in your community who we can include on future lists. For now, though, we just want to introduce you to a few of the people doing the work, often behind the scenes and without the accolades, across Wisconsin.
You might know a few of these names, but there’s a good chance that most of them will be new to you. I urge you to get to know them. Reach out to those living and working in your communities. Learn from them, network, and create partnerships. And spread the word — let others in your network know that we have people of all ethnicities living and working across Wisconsin to make sure everyone here can thrive.
Henry Sanders
CEO, 365 Media Foundation
Publisher, Madison365
This is the first of a five-part series.
Sharyl Kato
Sharyl Kato is the founder and executive director of The Rainbow Project, a Madison-based child and family counseling and community resource clinic, and a clinical adjunct professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. A third-generation Japanese American, Kato’s mother, maternal grandmother, and aunt were incarcerated for three years during World War II, while her grandfather, a community leader, was held separately from his family at a different facility. She grew up on the south side of Chicago and came to Madison for graduate school, where she has remained. A licensed professional counselor, she has worked as a child, adult, and family therapist for more than 40 years, with expertise in prevention, early intervention, crisis response, and the treatment of childhood and family trauma, including abuse, neglect, and exposure to domestic and community violence. She founded The Rainbow Project 45 years ago and is most known for its work restoring children and families who have experienced trauma, having served more than 40,000 children and families through a trauma-informed, culturally responsive model of care. Kato served as co-chair of the Wisconsin Organization of Asian Americans alongside Jan Miyasaki and was a member of the Pacific Asian Women’s Alliance. She served two terms as president of the Wisconsin Women of Color Network and, beginning in 2000, two terms as president of Wisconsin Women in Focus, a group that raises college scholarships for graduating high school students. Her honors include the YWCA Women of Distinction Award, the Wisconsin Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Heritage Award, and the International League of Women Trailblazer Award.
Brenda Yang
Brenda Yang is a member of the Dane County Board of Supervisors and serves as the Administrative Policy Advisor for the State of Wisconsin’s Higher Educational Aids Board in a senior leadership position that combines policy development, program administration, fiscal oversight, and operational management. The role serves as a key advisor to the Executive Secretary and helps ensure the agency’s student financial aid programs comply with state laws, administrative rules, and agency policies. Previously, she worked as the Assistant Director with the SuccessWorks program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Letters & Science, where she helped students transition into careers. She is a first-generation Hmong immigrant who grew up in Northern California and has lived in Dane County for the past 26 years. In her spare time, she provides advocacy and support to Southeast Asian community members facing immigration detention and deportation by connecting them to state and local representatives and help navigating complex legal and administrative systems to get them the proper support. In her past work, she served on the board for the YWCA of Madison and The Hmong Institute in helping to promote equity, access, and empowerment for communities and families in Dane County. She is also a huge advocate for language access and worked for the City of Madison as a language access and cultural awareness consultant to help Southeast Asian Families gain access to translation services and culturally relevant support. During the pandemic, she partnered with the City of Madison to create informational videos on need-to-knows about COVID-19 for the Hmong Community. She is an alum of Edgewood College.
MaiVue Xiong
MaiVue Xiong is the executive director of the Pablo Foundation, an Eau Claire-based grantmaking nonprofit focused on housing, health, education, and community sustainability in the greater Chippewa Valley. She has led the foundation since January 2020, overseeing grant programs that have supported local nonprofits, libraries, schools, and pandemic-relief efforts. She also serves in an of counsel role at the law firm Bakke Norman, where she advises businesses and financial institutions on transactional, corporate governance, and compliance matters. A member of the “1.5 generation” of Hmong Americans whose parents resettled in Eau Claire and became small-business owners after the Secret War, Xiong grew up in the city before earning her law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School. She returned to Eau Claire in 2010 to practice law and became the first Hmong woman attorney in the city. Her community involvement has included serving as a judge for Downtown Eau Claire Inc.’s Jumpstart Downtown business competition and as a faculty judge and presenter for the UW Law School’s lawyering skills course.
Eden Inoway-Ronnie
Eden Inoway-Ronnie is chief of staff and senior special assistant to the provost at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a position she has held since 2011. She manages the flow of work in the Office of the Provost and serves as a primary liaison to the offices of the chancellor and vice chancellors, as well as to deans, directors, and shared governance bodies. Her responsibilities include managing faculty and academic staff grievance and appeal procedures, coordinating the Deans Council and Provost’s Executive Group, and chairing or serving on campus-wide committees. She also administers several grant processes, including the Brittingham Fund and Evjue Foundation grants to UW–Madison, and has worked on institutional accreditation, student outcomes assessment, transfer initiatives, and diversity programs. Inoway-Ronnie has worked in the Office of the Provost for more than two decades, joining as a post-doctoral academic planner in 1997 and serving as special assistant to the provost from 2001 to 2011 before assuming her current role. Earlier in her career, she worked as a paralegal at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia. She earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology and anthropology from Carleton College and both her master’s and doctorate in educational policy from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She later served on Carleton College’s Board of Trustees and as an at-large member of its alumni board.
Dr. Glenn Fung
Dr. Glenn Fung is chief data and AI officer at Exact Sciences, the Madison-based cancer-screening and diagnostics company, where he leads artificial intelligence development and strategy. He has more than two decades of experience in machine learning, generative AI, and optimization across the healthcare, insurance, and retail sectors, and serves on the advisory board of the Wisconsin School of Business’s AI Hub for Business at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Before joining Exact Sciences in 2025, Fung held senior AI and data science roles at Elevance Health, Liberty Mutual Insurance, and American Family Insurance, where he spent nearly eight years as chief machine learning research and innovation scientist. Earlier in his career, he was a principal research scientist at Amazon and a principal key expert at Siemens Medical Solutions. He has authored more than 100 scientific papers and holds over 30 patents, and has served on advisory boards for UW–Madison’s Grainger Institute for Engineering and the Institute for Foundations of Data Science. Fung earned a master’s in applied mathematics and optimization from Universidad Simón Bolívar in Venezuela and both a master’s and a doctorate in computer science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Part 2 coming tomorrow!
