We’ll announce the 2013 Honorary Chair soon

Each year, the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival’s Board of Directors names an Honorary Chair to represent the festival and serves as an inspiration for the area’s Asian and Asian American communities. The nominees are submitted by community members and the Chair is chosen by the Board.

The Honorary Chair is a role model not only for her or his level of success and leadership, but also for a proven and lifelong commitment to serving the Asian Pacific American communities. The Honorary Chair is a Colorado resident who is a strong, outspoken advocate for APA organizations and events, and a proven champion or advocate of the Asian community.

The deadline has passed and the nominations have been submitted. The decision of the CDBF Board of Directors will be announced soon!

We are proud to name Aya Mariagnes Medrud of Boulder as the 2012 Honorary Chair.

Aya is a retired educator and a longtime leader in the Denver area’s Asian American and civil rights communities.

She was a founder of the Boulder Asian Pacific Alliance in 1991 (which sponsors the annual Boulder Asian Festival), and is active in the Mile High chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, the Asian Roundtable of Colorado, and various Boulder community organizations and commissions. She has also been involved in the National Parks Service’s efforts to preserve the site of the Minidoka Internment Camp where she was imprisoned as a teenager.

She has also spent many years working with American Indians, including the Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Medrud has served on the University of Colorado at Boulder President’s Advisory Board on Diversity, was a board member of the YWCA, and served on the American Indian Science and Engineering Society on the University of Colorado campus for eight years.

She has been recognized by the Boulder Chamber of Commerce as a Woman of the Community, and was named the Pacesetter Award winner in 2002 for Improving Quality of Life, as well as the Peacemaker Lifetime Achievement Award and the Min Yasui Community Volunteer Award in 2006.

Aya Medrud embodies the values and principles that reflect the highest excellence on the local Asian American Pacific Islander communities, and she serves as a stellar role model for the rest of us, including the next generation of community leaders.

We’re honored to have Aya Medrud as a role model!

Past Honorary Chairs

2011 Dr. Rudie Lie, founder of Asian Pacific Development Center (Indonesian American)
2010 Daniel Oh, entrepreneur and community leader (Korean American)
2009 Kerry Hada, Denver County Judge (Japanese American)
2008 Ved Nanda, professor (Indian American)
2007 Susanna Choi, physician and community leader (Korean American)
2006 George and Helen Yoshida, community volunteers (George is a retired social worker) (Japanese Hawaiian)
2005 Donna LaVigne, entrepreneur and Asian community leader (Filipino American)
2004 John Yee, veteran and educator (Chinese American)
2003 Jaime Yrastorza, doctor and humanitarian (Filipino American)
2002 Bill Hosokawa, journalist and longtime Denver Post editor (Japanese American)
2001 Stan Matsunaka, former Colorado State Senate President (Japanese American)

Do you know an outstanding community leader who is a role model for the local Asian and Asian American community? Submit your nomination here!