On an unusually warm February night over 130 attendees gathered together at the House of Joy to celebrate lunar new year! Joining us were students from the AACC as well as representatives from Yale 1stGen, Yale Alumni Association, Yale Alumni Nonprofit Alliance, Yale NYC, and Yale Club of NYC.
The menu was a family-style banquet dinner with 12 courses and each dish was thoughtfully selected to honor Lunar New Year customs, bringing symbolic flavors of luck, longevity, and abundance to the table - dishes such as sauteed lobster with ginger and scallion, a luxurious dish representing strength and success, and a whole steamed fish, a lunar new year must-have for abundance and prosperity.
Throughout the night we were able to spotlight three amazing alumni, congratulate them on their achievements, and thank them for their commitments to service.
All proceeds from the night go towards funding a summer fellowship in NYC, which supports a Yale student's internship at a nonprofit focused on AAPI issues. This year we are excited to be sponsoring an intern with the Asian American Federation, an organization that has been empowering New York's Asian American community since 1989. Special thanks to Jaime Sunwoo for her donation and Kunduck Moon, Lily Fan, and Ken Inadomi for sponsoring tables for the event.
More photos from the event are available here: 2025 Lunar New Year Photo Album
Follow and tag us @aaaya.nyc
Nancy Dong
Nancy Dong is a senior operating executive with over 25 years of experience growing young companies across a variety of industries from software development to professional services to direct marketing and life sciences. She is a start-up expert who has consistently set a clear vision, established comprehensive strategies, built high performing teams, and driven executional excellence throughout her career. She is recognized for her sound business judgment, exceptional emotional intelligence, and excellence at cultivating trust by nurturing long-term relationships, both internally and externally.
Nancy also advises non-profit boards, serving on governance and finance committees for organizations such as Westchester Biotech Project, Pelham Preservation and Sound Hope Church. She is also a mentor for the Element 46 Westchester County incubator. Past executive directorships include National Association of Asian American Professionals (NAAAP), Pelham Together, and The Friends of Pelham Library.
Nancy earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Yale University where she was a proud ’hounie (now Grace Hopper College). During her bright college years, Nancy was an active member of Asian American Students Association, (AASA), represented AASA at many Asian students’ volleyball tournaments and volunteered as an AASA tutor and Yale New Haven Hospital volunteer.
Dr. Yung Lie, President and CEO of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, joined us for the evening and gave a wonderful introduction for Nancy.
Patricia N. Takemoto
Trish Takemoto is a Legal Assistant at the firm of Friedman & Wittenstein in New York City. At Yale, she heeled for the Yale Daily News and was elected to the managing board as Photo Editor. As a volunteer at the Bao House, an early effort by AASA to bring the comforts of home, not to mention cultural diversity to Yale, she has fond memories of slurping ramen and and eating bao in the basement of Branford.
She is active in the New York City Chapter of AAAYA and served on its board as president. In 2014, she was a member of the Steering Committee who organized the inaugural Yale Asian Alumni Reunion. In addition to AAAYA, she is a co-founder with Peter Young ’74 of the “Yale Career Panels-A Candid View,” “Fireside Chats” and “Career Conversations” series.
Dr. William Pao
William Pao is a physician-scientist whose career has spanned academia, industry and biotech. William is currently CEO and a Co-Founder of Revelio Therapeutics, a biotech advancing novel tumor-specific biologics for the treatment of cancer.
Previously in industry, through executive leadership positions at Roche and Pfizer, he oversaw the discovery and development of a portfolio of new molecular entities, many of which have been approved, to treat a variety of diseases. As Chief Development Officer and Executive Vice President for Pfizer, he was a member of the Executive Leadership Team and led the Global Product Development organization, which was responsible for the clinical development and advancement of Pfizer’s pipeline of innovative medicines in inflammation and immunology, internal medicine, hospital, oncology, rare disease, and vaccines, as well as regulatory affairs in support of Pfizer’s R&D pipeline and portfolio of marketed medicines and vaccines. As Head of the Roche Pharma Research &Early Development (pRED) unit, based in Basel Switzerland, he was a member of Roche’s Enlarged Corporate Executive Committee and oversaw the discovery and early development of a portfolio of new molecular entities to treat diseases related to cancer, neuroscience, ophthalmology, rare diseases, immunology, infectious diseases, and rare blood disorders, across seven global sites. At pRED, he also served as the Global Head of the Oncology Discovery and Translational Area. Under William’s leadership, pRED contributed to the development of at least 10 approved molecules.
In academia, William was a practicing oncologist, lab researcher and clinical investigator at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and then Vanderbilt University, where he also served as the Director of the Division of Hematology/Oncology. He was recognized for his ground-breaking work in translational medicine, mechanistic and clinical studies of targeted cancer therapeutics, cancer genomics and personalized medicine, changing the standard of care in lung cancer. He is particularly recognized for his work characterizing mechanisms of sensitivity and resistance to EGFR inhibitors in lung cancer, and through his laboratory helped develop the combination of afatinib/cetuximab as well osimertinib to treat EGFR mutant lung cancer. He currently is an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt and Weill Cornell School of Medicine.
William obtained his MD and PhD degrees at Yale University, did his housestaff training in Internal Medicine at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Campus and completed his medical oncology fellowship training at MSKCC. He co-founded MyCancerGenome, an internationally-recognized online tool to enable a genetically-informed approach to cancer medicine and has a patent on the EGFR T790M mutation. In addition to serving as an Independent Board Member for Alentis Therapeutics and Obsidian Therapeutics, he serves on the Board of Visitors of the Vanderbilt School of Medicine Basic Sciences and the Board of Directors for the American Association for Cancer Research. He is author of the book, Breakthrough: The Quest for Life-Changing Medicines.
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