Johng Ho Song
Executive Director, Koreatown Youth and Community Center
"Everyone deserves to live a good life. That's what we believe at KYCC. Whether it's planting a tree to beautify our neighborhoods, educating our youngest children at our trilingual preschool, providing fresh produce for families or growing a small business into a thriving enterprise, we believe that doing good for others is the path to a
meaningful life."
Biography
Johng Ho Song is the executive director of Koreatown Youth and Community Center (KYCC), a nonprofit organization that serves the recently immigrated and economically disadvantaged children and families of the multi-ethnic Koreatown community in Los Angeles. KYCC is the leading multi-service provider in Koreatown, offering support with affordable housing, pre-K-12 education, community economic development, and mental health counseling. Under Mr. Song’s leadership, KYCC’s programs have expanded to nine different sites across Los Angeles, and its annual operating budget has grown to more than $10 million.
Mr. Song was born in Seoul, Korea, and immigrated to the United States when he was 11. He attended UCLA, where he graduated with a degree in psychology. He began his career at KYCC as a counselor in 1989, and he has been the organization’s executive director since 1998. Among numerous community-supporting roles, Mr. Song is a fellow at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, senior fellow at the UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research, California Commissioner on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs, Los Angeles County Commissioner on Alcohol and Other Drugs, and was board president of A3PCON (Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council) from 2013-2015. Most recently, Mr. Song received the Durfee Foundation Sabbatical Award in 2009 and the Durfee Foundation’s Stanton Fellowship in 2016, for which he is conceiving and developing a community plan for Koreatown