Meet the Board

MUSE Society is governed by a Board of Directors made up of academics, local community leaders and experts.

Board of Directors

John Atkin, President (former Chair, Dr. Sun-Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden Board of Directors)

John is a civic historian and author who conducts many walking tours around the city and province. His tours offer interesting and offbeat insight to the city’s architecture, history, and neighbourhoods. John’s publications include: Heritage Walks Around Vancouver, Strathcona: Vancouver’s First Neighbourhood, Vancouver Walks, Skytrain Explorer, and Changing City. He co-founded and served as Vice-President and President of Heritage Vancouver Society. He is currently the President of the Dr. Sun-Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden. John has been a CCHSBC board member since 2012, and has served as Co-Chair, President and Co-Vice-President.

Winnie Kwan, Treasurer and Secretary (former MUSE Society manager)

Winnie holds a BSc in Global Resource Systems from the University of British Columbia, with a Minor in Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies. Winnie currently works at the Chinese Canadian Museum as the Visitor Services and Community Engagement Coordinator. In this role, she oversees a variety of community-facing functions at the Chinese Canadian Museum, including providing onsite service to visitors in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin, managing volunteers, and supporting the development of educational and public programming. She has previously worked in programming and community development at other non-profit organizations in Metro Vancouver, including most recently, the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden.

Kevin Huang, Board Member (Executive Director, Hua Foundation)

Recognizing the growing gap in engaging Chinese-Canadian youth on environmental, social, and political issues, Kevin co-founded hua foundation with the goal of increasing community participation through youth empowerment opportunities. Kevin oversees hua foundation’s external relationships with youth, policy makers, community organizations, and institutions. Ask him about hua foundation’s youth incubator projects, its research and development, and its community work.

Henry Yu, Board Member  (Director, UBC INSTRCC)

Professor Henry Yu was born in Vancouver, B.C., and grew up in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island. He received his BA in Honours History from UBC and an MA and PhD in History from Princeton University. After teaching at UCLA for a decade, Yu returned to UBC as an Associate Professor of History to help build programs focused on trans-Pacific Canada. Yu himself is both a second and fourth generation Canadian. His parents were first generation immigrants from China, joining a grandfather who had spent almost his entire life in Canada. His great-grandfather was also an early Chinese pioneer in British Columbia, part of a larger networks of migrants who left Zhongshan county in Guangdong province in South China and settled around the Pacific in places such as Australia, New Zealand, Hawai’i, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, the United States, and Canada. Prof. Yu’s book, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2001) won the Norris and Carol Hundley Prize as the Most Distinguished Book of 2001, and he is currently working on a book entitled How Tiger Woods Lost His Stripes: Finding Ourselves in History. Currently, he is the Director of the Initiative for Student Teaching and Research on Chinese Canadians (INSTRCC) and the Principal of St. John’s College at UBC, as well as a Board Member of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia (CCHSBC).

Claire Lloyd, Board Member  (Education and Programs Manager, Dr. Sun-Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden)

Claire has worked at the Dr Sun Yat Sen Chinese Garden for 15 years in various capacities: docent, volunteer, educator and now as Education and Programs Manager. She has a background in adult and workplace education and taught in many countries throughout the world before settling in Vancouver. She loves working with the various groups that pass through the Garden, and feels privileged to be able to share the history and vibrancy of Chinatown and its culture. Claire is thankful to be able to work in this place and particularly on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded lands of the Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish, and Musqueam nations.