Celebrating Those Who Shape Tomorrow
Three Honorees. Three Paths. The Quiet Strength Behind the K-Revolution
We are living in a remarkable moment. Korean culture is no longer just being accepted; it is being chased. K-dramas dominate Netflix queues, K-pop sells out global stadiums, and the K-something revolution in food and skincare is happening in real time.
It is genuinely cool to be Korean right now. If you are Korean American, you feel that specific pride of watching the traditions you grew up with suddenly become the thing the entire world wants a piece of.
But what makes this year’s Hana Gala honorees so special is that none of them waited for this moment to arrive. Long before it was cool, and long before the world caught up, they put their heads down and got to work. They quietly held their ground, mastering their crafts in their own lanes without fanfare. Today, the world they helped build has finally caught up to them.
Dr. Sewon Kang
Noxell Professor and Chairman of Dermatology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
If you have ever held a copy of Fitzpatrick's Dermatology, the gold-standard reference that every dermatology trainee knows by heart, you are holding a book whose 9th edition was shaped by Dr. Sewon Kang. That alone would be a career-defining achievement. For Dr. Kang, it is just one line in an extraordinary record of scientific leadership.
As the founder and co-Director of the Cutaneous Translational Research Program (CTReP) at Hopkins, Dr. Kang has made it his life's work to translate laboratory discoveries into real treatments for real patients. His focus areas, including skin pharmacology, photomedicine, melanoma, skin aging, and dermatology for ethnic skin, reflect both scientific rigor and a deep sensitivity to the diversity of human bodies and the people inside them.
His clinical work is just as grounded. Seeing patients exclusively at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr. Kang has dedicated his career to care that is as personal as it is precise. Recipients of the Dermatology Foundation's Career Development Award rarely go on to lead national societies, but Dr. Kang has served as President of both the Photomedicine Society and the American Acne and Rosacea Society, and holds or has held board positions at the Society for Investigative Dermatology, the Skin of Color Society, and the Dermatology Foundation, among others.
Pictured: The Ninth Edition of Fitzpatrick’s Dermatology. Led by Dr. Sewon Kang, this edition redefined the global standard for skin health and medical education.
Chris Suh
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Visa
There is a gap in American corporate life that is easy to miss until someone points it out: AAPI professionals are well-represented across many industries, but walk into a Fortune 500 C-suite and the picture changes dramatically. Chris Suh has spent his career not just succeeding within that system, but actively working to change it.
As EVP and CFO of Visa, the global digital payments leader, Suh brings more than three decades of leadership in technology and finance. His path wound through over 20 years at Microsoft, where he served as CFO of the Cloud and AI group during the industry's cloud hypergrowth era, and later as Head of Investor Relations as Microsoft reinvented itself as a cloud-first company. Before joining Visa, he was EVP and CFO at Electronic Arts, helping steer the storied gaming publisher behind iconic EA Sports franchises.
What sets Suh apart from so many executives of his stature is what he does with his visibility. At every company he has joined, he has made a point of mentoring, coaching, and sponsoring emerging AAPI leaders, not as an add-on to his work, but as a core part of how he understands leadership itself. He has mentored hundreds of early-career professionals, recognizing that representation in the C-suite only grows when established leaders invest in the next generation.
Kevin Woo
Actor, Singer-Songwriter and Producer
Kevin Woo's career has always been about bridging. As the main vocalist of the internationally acclaimed K-pop group U-KISS, he spent over a decade touring the world and building a global fanbase, at a time when the idea of a Korean American fully embedded in the Korean pop industry was still surprising to many on both sides of the Pacific.
His path from U-KISS to Broadway to Netflix animation is not just a résumé. It is a roadmap for how Korean American artists are reshaping cultural storytelling in real time. On stage, Woo starred in the Broadway musical KPOP, one of the first productions to bring K-pop's energy and aesthetics to the American theater world. On screen, he lent his voice to Netflix's animated feature KPop Demon Hunters as part of the Saja Boys, a role that brought him into the living rooms of a new generation of fans who might not have known U-KISS but instantly knew his voice.
Most recently, Woo starred in K-POPS!, the directorial debut of Grammy-winning artist Anderson .Paak, a film that signals just how far Korean pop culture has traveled into American creative consciousness, and how central Korean American artists are to that story.
For the KACF-SF community, Kevin Woo represents something important: that cultural exchange is not a one-way street, and that Korean American artists do not have to choose between their two homes.