by Roger Riffenburgh
As the San Francisco Unified School District faces a fiscal crisis, it would benefit greatly from her business experience, says school board candidate Min Chang. She has extensive experience in managing and transforming businesses as a CEO, a strategist, a financial analyst, and a proven leader. She says, “Experience matters especially now for the Board of Education. I am a CEO and know how to balance budgets, turnaround organizations and manage resources effectively. We need this now more than ever.”
Chang is the CEO of a non-profit company in San Francisco which provides in-home care for individuals and caregiver training throughout California. Prior to that, she was Chief Strategy Officer at On Lok, a senior health services provider in San Francisco.
She has had a series of interesting and challenging jobs for over 35 years. They include working for Otis Elevator based in Singapore and doing management consulting for Booz Allen Hamilton and Accenture in New York and Philadelphia. She led procurement for Honeywell and became a division president for the Asia Pacific Africa and Mid-East regions at Omnicom Group, working out of Shanghai. She served as CEO of Kin On Healthcare in Seattle and then as CEO of MicroSurgical Technology.
“Because I am not from the educational system, I can bring an outside voice, best practices from the business world like fiscal responsibility and operational excellence as well as different perspectives to challenge the norm and find unique solutions to our problems.”
Min Chang says, “I am running to be part of the San Francisco Board of Education because I want to do for public schools, what public schools did for me.” Her family came to the United States as immigrants when she was a child; she received encouragement and support from public school teachers and ultimately earned graduate degrees from top universities. She believes every child should have the kind of support that she had.
Min Chang was born in Taiwan and then lived in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), where her father was working in agriculture for the Taiwanese government, and the local language was French. After her family immigrated to the United States, she started second grade in a public school in Maryland. She is very proud to have attended public schools and appreciates the encouragement that she received from her teachers.
After her family moved to Pennsylvania, Chang attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned bachelor’s degrees in both economics and finance. She subsequently earned a Master of Science in Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. More recently she also earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in international affairs at Johns Hopkins University.
Min Chang speaks English, French, and Chinese. For fun she has been learning ballet at the SF Ballet. She and her husband live in Rincon Hill and are very proud of their two daughters, a journalist and a law student. You can learn more about Min Chang on her campaign website, VoteforMin.com . You can watch her campaign video here.