Konrad Aderer joined the WorkSHOP in 2000, and in eight short months was transformed from a 150-lb. actor to a 97-lb. filmmaker. In September 2002, through a new low in electoral manipulation, he became the President of the WorkSHOP. His first award-winning short, Harlem Fight Song, a martial arts encounter set to a Mingus composition, was shown in festivals across the country. His second project, the documentary Life or Liberty, deals with the governmentÕs profiling of Muslims following 9/11 and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The 12-minute version has been shown at festivals in the U.S. and Europe, winning a Cinevue Jury Award for Best Documentary. It is distributed by Third Word Newsreel. He is continuing to work on the project, expanding it to an hour-long documentary produced by Off Ramp Films. 

Filmmaker and community activist, NaRhee Ahn is committed to raising the awareness of Asian American womenÕs stories through media representation. A SON FOR SENSEI, a short film completed at Columbia UniversityÕs Graduate Film Division, is an award-winning work distributed by AtomShockwave. It is best described as a feminist martial arts comedy. NaRhee served as the President of the Asian American FilmmakerÕs Collaborative from March 2001 to September 2002. She is also on the steering committee of The Asian American International Film Festival and
on staff at The Asian American Arts Alliance.

 Born in the Philippines and raised in the US, Francisco Aliwalas attended the Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, NY) majoring in film and television. His senior thesis short, "Imagination Airlines," was distributed on USA Network and London's Childrens Channel. His feature film, "Disoriented," which he wrote, directed and starred in, has been presented in over one dozen film festivals, received the Jean Renoir Storytelling on Film Award at the Huntington Film Festival and is currently experiencing a limited theatrical run. 

 Founder and first president of the Workshop, Stephen Bai is a graduate of NYU's School of Film and Television. He spent his time after graduation learning the mother tongue in Seoul, hiking amidst the grizzlies in Alaska, and experiencing the full production gamut ranging from p.a. to producer and director on a number of feature films, documentaries, corporate and music videos for companies such as Film News Now, Third World Newsreel, the Asian American Theater Company, the Brooklyn Motion Picture Company, and Zero Sum Productions. He recently formed his own production company, 12 Pictures, and is currently working on a screenplay entitled "Grace," organizing a Korean American film festival for the fall, and writing, producing and directing his first feature film -- a philosophically ruminated, Asian American "anti-romantic comedy" set in New York, entitled "Twelve."

Ryo Hayashi was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. His first short film "High School Bandits," which he shot on a Super 8 camera with his pals in high school, was shown at the annual Shakujii Festival and won the Audience Choice Award. In 1995 Ryo came to the United States to pursue his film career where he has produced and directed six short films. He was responsible for the translation of the script "Shall We Dance" and interned at Kuzui Enterprises ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Orgasmo") as a bilingual story editor. In 1997 he was awarded a scholarship to attend the graduate film program at NYU. Ryo is currently at work on his film "Useless," a story of a Japanese businessman coming to terms with his retirement.

JEAN JOSON (Director/Producer), a first generation Filipina-American, hails from the San Francisco Bay Area. She began her career in the entertainment industry at San Francisco State University working as an assistant to August Coppola on the Purple Globe Awards. She moved to Los Angeles in 1988 and began a five year career in casting (Ms. Joson was nominated for a Casting Society of America Artios award for the ABC After School Special Boys Will Be Boys). Which eventually led to agenting at Ellis Talent Group and It Models where she discovered Adewale Agbaje, star of Barry Levinson's HBO show Oz and Lola Glaudini, star of indie film Groove among others. Upon moving to New York, Ms. Joson worked as a Production Manager on music videos and commercials as well as casting associate to renowned casting director Bonnie Timmermann on The Insider. She has produced three commercial spec spots for director Scott Lane. Ms. Joson graduated from Cal State Northridge with a degree in Film Production. Her films include two shorts, Reunion (2001 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, Screening Filipino 2000, Kita Mo? Film Festival) and Swan Dive (currently airing on www.Hypnotic.com). Her latest short film is dirty which she'd like to tour the festival circuit. She is also writing a screenplay on the life and career of the first Asian-American silent screen star Anna May Wong. Ms. Joson resides in New York City.
    Echo Entertainment, Jean Joson's website

Kevin Ke (pronounced 'Kerr') was born in Shanghai. After obtaining a Bachelor of Law degree from FuDan University, he got himself into big trouble by masterminding and producing an Asian version of the Statue of Liberty (Goddess of Democracy) in Tiananmen Square during the height of student uprising in 1989. 
    After ducking bullets during the Tiananmen Massacre, he left China and studied Government and Asian Studies at UC Berkeley (M.A.), political science at Univ. of Toronto (M.A.), documentary filmmaking at National Film Board of Canada, screenwriting & directing at USC School of Cinema & Television, and film production at the NYU Grad Program. His award-winning hour-long documentary on Asian American filmmakers at cultural crossroads "When East Meets EAST" (co-directed w/ Canadian Academy Award winner) has been screened around the world, including the Asian American International Festival. The film received a Best Art Doc nomination in Canada and was sold to Bravo. 
    Kevin's previous music/performance art documentary "Song and Cry" was sold to CNN International and was aired on March 1997. His labor of love project--the newsroom drama "The Official Account", which he called "Network"/"Broadcast News" on the eve of "The Killing Field" (Tiananmen Massacre) won the 1999 DGA Best Asian-American Student Filmmaker Award. It received extensive press coverage, including Fox News, CNNI, ABC and GQ Magazine. A project Kevin co-scripted about Holocaust survivors who crossed Siberia and found sanctuary in war-torn open city Shanghai is in development with Shanghai Film Studio. Kevin was recently invited to Pusan to develop this feature. He owes his luck to "the kindess of strangers."

 Actor turned filmmaker, John has produced, shot and edited over 30 film and video shorts as well as numerous television commercials, industrials and cable programs for such clients as The Korea Society, The Arthritis Insitute, Planned Parenthood and A&E.
 A graduate of NYU's prestigious film program, John started his own production company, JESK Productions, in July 2001. His camera work can be seen in director Ron Domingo's short film, Chocolate, which will be screened at the 26th Annual Asian American International Film Festival.
 John is currently working on his first feature to be shot on Super 16mm film which is slated to begin production in May of 2003. He will direct as well as act in a supporting role.

 Mayu is a native of Japan who left home at the age of sixteen to study in London. In 1995, she came to the United States to study for her MA in Literature at Columbia University. Currently, she is in the graduate film program at NYU. Her first film, Shadows, appeared in the Independent Feature Film Market and the New York International Film Festival in 1997. Her second film, Eclipse, appeared in the 1998 Taos Talking Picture Film Festival. Currently, she is finishing a feature-length screenplay entitled Philomela's Song and editing a documentary about a white single mother raising two Chinese girls entitled Seeds from a Silent Tree. She is also working on a short film with designed Liliana Ordas-Casabl for Morgrane Le Fay in Soho.

 Greg Pak is the award-winning writer and director of short films such as "Asian Pride Porn" and "Fighting Grandpa." He has won awards for his screenplays "Rio Chino" and "Stay Warm." He is now developing "Robot Stories," a feature film about love, death, family... and robots.
    Greg's film "Fighting Grandpa" has won twenty prizes, including a Student Academy Award, and has played in over fifty film festivals. Greg's comic short "Asian Pride Porn" is one of the most viewed films of all time at AtomFilms.com. His shorts "Mouse," "Po Mo Knock Knock," and "The Penny Marshall Project" have won awards and screened in dozens of film festivals around the world. 
    Greg edits AsianAmericanFilm.com and FilmHelp.com. He was the cinematographer of "The Personals," an Academy Award winning short documentary, and was recently featured on the cover of Time Magazine Asia for his work in digital filmmaking. 
    Greg Pak's website

 Of Chinese, German and Mexican heritage, Myra Sito Velasquez was born and raised in Tokyo. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she has worked as literary advisor to The American Place Theatre,  production co-ordinator for major Japanese TV networks  and is also a free lance script consultant.  Her feature length screenplays include "DIANA" and the action comedy "KUNG FU GRANNY". Most recently, Myra wrote/directed/produced the short film MOTHER’S BLOOD, winner of the Lawrence Kasdan Best Narrative Film Award at Ann Arbor Intl Film Festival, Grand Prize Best Film Chicks with Flicks 2002, Best Actress Award (Nina Zoie Lam). "MOTHER'S BLOOD" has screened at festivals across the country and abroad and continues to tour with Women In the Director's Chair National Tour New Asian Films Program.  In The Independent Film & Video Monthly, WIDC recently wrote, " ..It’s obvious that great work continues to be created and exhibited by a wide range of women directors, from Faye Dunaway to Miranda July to Myra 
Sito Velasquez."
Along with working towards  bringing "DIANA" to the screen, Myra is designing a new short film "THE NANKING TRIPTYCH" as well as collaborating on a feature length screenplay with award winning filmmaker Ruth Sergel and in pre-production for the short film version of KUNG FU GRANNY with fellow workshop member, John Kim, as co-producer.
     www.myravee.com

 Donna Ayako Tsufura is a filmmaker, playwright and inveterate traveler who has gotten lost in over 30 countries around the world. "Death and Peanuts," her short experimental film about grief and the psyche, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Other shorts include "A Tale From Fort Tryon Park" (broadcast on WNYC-TV) and "The Rose Thief" (in post production). Her play "Origami" was produced by Northwest Asian American Theatre in Seattle. Donna has been a staff member of the Sundance Institute's Filmmakers Lab, Playwrights Lab and Theater Lab. She is currently developing "MacKenzie's Cafe," a dramatic comedy feature about a young Asian American woman who goes after her dreams, and a short, "The Wedding Dance," the tale of a homophobic father's acceptance of his son. 
    Wise Fool Productions website