Leadership Team

Noelle D. Blanco (she/her/they) is a first generation Portuguese, Filipino, Chinese American, queer individual originally from the San Francisco Bay Area. She serves as the National Program Director (Interim) for NAAAP Pride while also dual-serving as the Chief Communications Officer for the NAAAP San Jose Chapter. She also consults for the NAAAP Leadership Academy (NLA) team and the NAAAP Leadership Convention Marketing teams. Noelle brings over a decade of experience in nonprofit and for-profit marketing and partnership development. As a professional marketing and communications professional in various industries she always focuses on an organizations' purpose, while connecting the dots between objective and outcomes.

As a proud Anteater Alumni, Noelle holds a Bachelors of Arts in Theatre with an emphasis in Costume Design from the University of California-Irvine. She enjoys hiking, writing poetry, swimming, and spending time with her fur-baby Nugget, the Corgi-Chihuahua rescue dog. Noelle naturally enjoys keeping the energy flowing during networking opportunities and hopes to be at the forefront of many important conversations and represent her community in a meaningful way.

David is the Senior Director of Programs for NAAAP, The National Association of Asian American Professionals. He is also a Production Designer at Hallmark Cards and has been with the company for 22 years, where he has held various positions at the Kansas City-based greeting card company, including Production Artist, Process Artist, and Multimedia Designer. David is involved with several Employee Resource Groups at Hallmark and was the 2015 and 2018 Chair of AARCH, Asian American Resource Community at Hallmark. David is also a member of Hallmark's Cultural Sensitivity Consultants, a team brought together to thoroughly consider diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging across the business and build a culture of inclusion for employees and consumers. Before Hallmark, he was Operations Manager for Vanguard Airlines Reservations Center and served in the U.S. Army during Desert Storm. In addition to his duties at NAAAP National, David serves as Director of Marketing and Communications for NAAAP Kansas City and was the Program Director for the 2019 Leadership Convention in Kansas City, MO. David is also a founding member and past National Director of NAAAP Pride, a national program for the Asian American LGBTQ community, and is co-host of the Pride Talk podcast. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he has lived in various countries, including Spain and Germany. David loves to travel and is obsessed with live theatre. He recently returned to school to study his first passion for fashion design and presented his debut collection at Kansas City Fashion Week's 2022 Spring/Summer Runway Show.

Keith Nishida (He/Him) believes in advocacy through visibility. In his current role as NAAAP Pride’s national program director and former NAAAP ERG Leaders marketing lead, he’s worked to build programming around cultural awareness and understanding of intersectionality and queer Asian identity in the workplace.

He is a multi-passionate educator and team-builder, with a professional mission to help upskill/uplift people to have fulfilling careers through digital and leadership skills training. He brings 10 years of experience in research, program development and teaching (with subject matter expertise in everything from socio-economic influence of pop culture to diversity/inclusion issues in the digital landscape).

Since starting his bilingual marketing consultancy in 2007, he's brought his multicultural perspectives to inter/national projects with global brands like Toyota Motors, Disney Consumer Products/Tokyo Disney, and Teva shoes, but equally enjoy helping SME companies articulate their digital marketing strategies (including a client who serves the autistic and community and people with disabilities). Keith is committed to bringing a diversity and inclusion lens to his roles as a courses & workshop instructor at General Assembly (an Adecco company), an APIA Scholars mentor, and a traditional Japanese festival performance group member of Rafu Mutsumi Kai for the last 25 years. He is a proud Nikkei-nisei who calls California and Hawaii his homes.

John Ong is a multimedia story-teller. He is a video director at Hallmark’s photography and video studio where he produces and directs videos for Hallmark’s marketing and social media content development needs. He started his broadcasting and film career in the late 90s.
 
John is a committed diversity and inclusion advocate. He has served as chair for Hallmark’s Asian American employee resource group. He also devotes his time volunteering as the Director of Marketing & Public Relations for NAAAP Kansas City.
 
John was born and raised in Malaysia to a Chinese immigrant family. He holds a degree in Broadcasting and Film and has made Kansas City his home. John is also a podcast pioneer with multiple shows under his belt since 2004, including a successful language preservation podcast. 

Dr. S. Kimberly Liu is a multicultural and multi-lingual physician, who specializes in mental health, women's health, and chronic and terminal illnesses using a holistic approach.  She is an avid advocate of Oriental medicine who actively works toward including integrative medicine in our health care system, volunteers her time and expertise in Latin American countries, involved in multiple nonprofit organizations that promote arts & crafts in local communities; outreach and educational programs in LGBTQ communities; literacy programs for children of low income families; and bringing the East and the West together by promoting cultural awareness and competency.