Tamlyn Tomita is an award winning film and stage actress and community activist. A resident of Los Angeles of Okinawa/Japanese/Filipino descent, she lends her support to several community events and organizations, and keeps her life simple, focusing on love, work, and family and is a proud and loyal UCLA Bruin. 

Keeping herself busy in an industry that has been slow to receive actors of an ethnic demographic, Tamlyn is selective in the roles she chooses, steering away from images that perpetuate stereotypes. She is always on the search for ways to create or balance images and stories about Asian Americans and other under-represented communities and women, and seeks to explore with others, in and outside the film and television industry, issues she is concerned about. She proudly supports filmmakers and artists, especially Asian Americans, in the pursuit of giving the world a gallery of portraits from a ‘golden’ perspective.

Making her screen debut in “The Karate Kid, Part II” alongside Ralph Macchio and Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, which is enjoying its renaissance with Netflix’s “Cobra Kai”, Tamlyn has since appeared in numerous feature films, television and theatre projects. She is also known for her roles in “The Joy Luck Club”; “Picture Bride” and “Come See the Paradise”. Her list of film credits include “The Day After Tomorrow”; “Tekken”; “Robot Stories”; “Four Rooms”, “Living Out Loud”; “Only the Brave” and “Gaijin 2 – Ama me Como Sou”.

Additional projects include: Lynn Chen’s “I Will Make You Mine”, X. Dean Lim’s  “First World Problems”; “The Living Worst”; Quentin Lee’s “Gay Hollywood Dad”, “Operation:Marriage” and “The Unbidden”, Miguel Ortega and Tran Ma’s “The Ningyo”; “Real Artists”; “The Oak Tree and Onigiri”; “Daddy”; “Seppuku”; “White Room:02B3”; “Awesome Asian Bad Guys”; “Two Sisters”; “Starlight Inn”; “Nomadas”; “The Mikado Project”; “The Charles Kim Show”; “True Love and Mimosa Tea”; “My Life…Disoriented”; Philip Kan Gotanda’s “Life Tastes Good”; “Day of Independence”; “Hundred Percent”; “Four Fingers of the Dragon”; “Soundman”; “Requiem” and “Notes on a Scale”

Television credits include: Netflix’s “Avatar: The Last Airbender”, “Ultraman: Rising”, “Blue Eye Samurai” and “Dead Boy Detectives” and Apple TV’s “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters”. She also can be seen “Star Trek:Picard”,“The Good Doctor”,“The Man in the High Castle”,“Teen Wolf”,“ True Blood”,“Berlin Station” and “Glee”. Other credits include: “Lustration VR Series: Season 1”, “DuckTales”, “Whose Child”, “How to Get Away with Murder”; “Chasing Life”; “Law and Order: Los Angeles”, “JAG”, “NCIS: Los Angeles”; “Heroes”; “Criminal Minds”, “The Mentalist”; “Monk”; “Bones”;“Eureka” ;“Commander in Chief”; “Stargate: SG-1”; “Stargate: Atlantis”; “Walking Shadow – Spenser For Hire”, “General Hospital”; “Days of Our Lives”; “Crossing Jordan”; “Will and Grace”; “Chicago Hope”, “Sisters”, “Quantum Leap”; “Babylon 5”; “Vanishing Son”, and “Living Single”; “The Burning Zone” and “Santa Barbara” and also appeared in “Storytime”; “Hiroshima Maiden”; “To Heal a Nation” and “Hiroshima: Out of the Ashes”.

Stage credits include: Chay Yew’s  “A Distant Shore” (Kirk Douglas Theatre); “Question 27, Question 28” (East West Players/ Japanese American National Museum); “The Square” (Mark Taper Forum’s Taper, Too); “Summer Moon” (A Contemporary Theatre and South Coast Repertory); Philip Kan Gotanda’s  “Day Standing on its Head” (Manhattan Theatre Club); “Nagasaki Dust” (Philadelphia Theatre Company); “Don Juan: A Meditation” (Mark Taper Forum’s Taper, Too) and “Winter Crane” (Fountain Theatre) for which she received a Drama-Logue Award.

Nancy Wang Yuen is a sociologist, anti-racist media scholar, and ethnic studies professor at Crafton Hills College. She is the author of “Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism” and “The Prevalence and Portrayal of Asian and Pacific Islanders Across 1,300 Popular Films” in collaboration with the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. In 2005, she led the first Asian American and Pacific Islander in television study in collaboration with the Asian American Advancing Justice. She is a commentator on the PBS docuseries Asian Americans, the PBS Arbound documentary on Giant Robot, the HBO Max documentary Yellowface, and the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on Michael Chang. She has spoken and consulted for Amazon, Disney, Dreamworks, Lionsgate and Netflix. She is a guest writer at CNN, Elle, LA Times, NBC, Newsweek, Today, and Vanity Fair. Nancy has just completed a 2nd edition of Reel Inequality–look for it to come out within a year from Rutgers University Press. She is also working on a memoir about her life through the films and TV shows she grew up watching, and a historical romance novel inspired by a real-life Chinese American suffragist. 

Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and Tony-nominated theatrical producer. A leading voice for the human rights of immigrants, he founded the non-profit immigrant storytelling organization Define American, twice named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company, and explores all facets of immigration as host of its YouTube show and podcast Define American with Jose Antonio Vargas. He is also a co-founder of 1587 Sneakers, the world’s first Asian American sneaker brand.

His best-selling memoir, Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, was published by HarperCollins in 2018. An updated edition with new material for living in Trump’s America was released in June 2025. His second book, White Is Not a Country [working title], will examine America’s foundational Black and White racial binary, and where everyone else fits within and outside that binary.

In 2019, he co-produced Heidi Schreck’s acclaimed Broadway play What the Constitution Means to Me, which was nominated for a Tony Award for “Best Play” and is streamable on Amazon Prime Video. His second Broadway production, a staging of David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s musical Here Lies Love, played at the Broadway Theatre in 2023.

In 2011, the New York Times Magazine published a groundbreaking essay he wrote in which he revealed and chronicled his life in America as an undocumented immigrant. A year later, he appeared on the cover of TIME worldwide with fellow undocumented immigrants as part of a follow-up cover story he wrote. He then produced and directed Documented, a documentary feature film on his undocumented experience. Released theatrically, broadcast on CNN, and streamed on Netflix, it received a 2015 NAACP Image Award nomination for “Outstanding Documentary.” Also in 2015, MTV aired White People, an Emmy-nominated television special he produced and directed on what it means to be young and white in a demographically-changing America.

Accolades he has received include the Freedom to Write Award from PEN Center USA, and honorary degrees from Emerson College, Colby College, and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Passionate about promoting equity in education for all students, he serves on the advisory board of TheDream.US, a scholarship fund for undocumented immigrant students, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the California State University, the largest four-year public university system in the United States.

A product of the San Francisco Bay Area, he is a proud graduate of San Francisco State University (2004), where he was named Alumnus of the Year in 2012, and Mountain View High School (2000). An elementary school named after him opened in his hometown of Mountain View, California in August 2019