East West Players elect new board members

NEW OFFICERS AND MEMBERS JOIN
THE EAST WEST PIAYERS BOARD OF DIRECTORS

East West Players, the nation's first and foremost Asian Pacific American theatre, continues the transition in being a leader in the Los Angeles theatre scene. After the theatre's successful move to the David Henry Hwang Theatre at the Union Center for the Arts in Little Tokyo in March 1998, the East West Players Board of Directors continues to oversee operations at this new level.

In July 1999, Ms. Fukuhara-Arthurs was re-elected as Chair of the Board of Directors of East West Mayers, Rod Nakamoto was elected as President of the Board of Directors of East West Players, Daniel M. Mayeda as VicePresident and Legal Counsel, and Al Choy as Chief Financial Officer.

Lynn Fukuhara -Arthurs is the owner and President of L.F.A. Insurance Services, Inc., an insurance brokerage and consulting firm, which she started in 1983. She is active with the National and Los Angeles Associations of Health Underwriters and the Japanese American Historical Society.

Rod Nakamoto is a financial consultant who provides investment management services to individuals and corporate retirement plan trustees. An alumni of the University of Southern California, he is also the Chair of the Asian Business League and is on the Board of the Asian Pacific Community Fund.

Daniel M. Mayeda is a partner for the law firm Leopold, Petrich & Smith, and he specializes in entertainment and media industry litigation (copyright, trademark, libel, etc.). He is on the Advisory Board of the Cultural Environment Movement, is past president of the Asian Pacific Alumni of UCLA, and was founding legal counsel of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA).

A1 Choy, a stalwart supporter and former Marketing Director of East West Players, is currently head of the Capital Initiatives Department at KCET.
He spearheads a $20 million capital fundraising campaign that will convert KCET to the new, federally-mandated digital broadcast standard.

New Board Members of East West Players include: Wendy Fujihara Anderson, President of WOW! Productions, Events & Public Relations; Heeli Kim, Director of West Coast Field Publicity and Promotions for New Line Cinema; George Kiriyama, former school board member of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and current Administrative Coordinator of the CBET (Community Based English Tutoring) program; Rolando Lira, Manager at KCBS-TV, and David Mauss, Regional Director of Business Development for Tenet HealthCare Corporation's Western Division.

This is an important moment in East West Players history as the Board of Directors have been in,strumental in making the move to the David Henry Hwang Theater at the Union Center for the Arts. Continuity of the past several years as well as new strategies must be implemented to keep East West Players visible and strong after its historic move is complete.

In recent years, the Board of Directors has helped to establish the Anniversary Awards Dinner as both a financial and promotional success. The New Theatre Campaign Committee, cochaired by Beulah Quo and George Takei, raised over $1.6 million to renovate and retrofit the David Henry Hwang Theater. The Board has been significantly visible at many community events and fundraisers of other organizations in creating a network of opportunities for everyone involved.