Hua Wang has cracked the code on civic engagement. With humor, enthusiasm and relentless encouragement, he shows us what it is to be a leader in a diverse community.
Better Together
[Hua is] “a true connector – bringing people together to explore the uniqueness of our identities as well as the commonality of human experience” KOREN STEMBRIDGE, CARY LIBRARY DIRECTOR
At the time of writing, Wang’s packed schedule for the week ahead reflects his community leadership at every level from local to national. As Chair of the National Board of Directors of United Chinese Americans (UCA) he will host a two-day national emergency meeting of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) leaders in Washington, D.C., to strategize in advance of the incoming Trump administration.
A board meeting of the Lexington Historical Society, and the CAAL Lunar New Year Gala on Saturday, January 18, will see him back in town. The next day he heads to New York City to host a UCA retreat for Chinese American leaders in New York and New Jersey, before dashing home to take part in Lexington’s Martin Luther King Day celebration on January 20. In his spare moments he will prepare for the start of the semester at Boston University where he is Associate Head of the Division of Systems Engineering.
High Impact
Wang has recently garnered accolades attesting to his impact in and beyond Lexington. In 2023, alongside Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, he was honored as one of Boston’s 50 Most Influential Asian American & Pacific Islanders. On December 12, 2024, he was named one of “20 for 20” Distinguished Alumni Honorees to mark the Commonwealth Seminar’s 20th Anniversary. At the same event, three organizations in which he is a key figure, CAAL, the New England Chinese American Alliance (NECAA), and the Coalition for Anti-Racism & Equity (CARE) won Game Changer awards for civic engagement. The Massachusetts AAPI Commission will present him with a 2025 Leadership for Inclusion and Diversity Award at its annual Spring dinner.
On December 14, 2024, Dr. Julie Hackett, LPS Superintendent of Schools, presented Wang with the President’s Volunteer Service Award for Lifetime Service, at an event that also recognized the over 12,000 hours given by CAAL members to community service over the year. “I was honored to present Hua the award,” said Hackett, who has seen him in action in many arenas since taking up her post in July 2018.
“It would honestly take me more than a lifetime just to list his accomplishments,” said Hackett, recalling his organizing the distribution of PPE throughout the pandemic, coordinating vigils for community groups in need of support, and anti-Asian Hate rallies and concerts in Lexington and on Boston Common. She credited Wang’s advocacy with helping LPS diversity and inclusion efforts, for example changing the school calendar to recognize “cultural celebrations that matter to our community,” including Lunar New Year, Diwali and Eid.
“Hua is deeply committed to making the world ‘better together,’” said Select Board member Joe Pato. “His civic passion extends beyond mobilizing the Chinese community – both in Lexington and regionally,” said Pato, praising Wang’s efforts to inspire volunteerism and make connections among all residents. Quite simply, “he is a Lexington treasure,” said Pato.
An Immigrant’s Tale
“Hua Wang loves to unite people. In fact, I don’t think he knows how not to unite people,” said host Regie Gibson, introducing Wang to the audience at Voices on the Green (VOG), Lexington’s live storytelling and music series, held at First Parish Church on November 22, 2024. Wang was among seven presenters invited to tell personal stories illustrating the theme: “Better Together.”
The story Hua Wang told that evening was a highlights reel spanning the thirty-seven years since September 1987, when at age 21, with $50 in his pocket, he took his first-ever flight from Shanghai to the U.S. In case his proposed career as a scientist did not work out, before leaving China he apprenticed himself as a chef in a restaurant owned by family friends, “knowing I can always work in a Chinese restaurant in America, right?” he said, with a broad smile.
His biggest discovery about America, he said, and the one that has shaped his life outside his professional career as a scientist, was the opportunity for community involvement through the myriad organizations fueled by members’ commitment and volunteer effort. “In China,” he explained, “society is organized around the family and the government – there’s nothing in between.”
Soon after arriving in Concord, Mass. in 2002 with his wife, Wai, a former math professor, Wang had his first taste of effective community action as a member of a task force that raised money to fund a new Chinese book collection for the Concord Library. “I even used my chef skills to cook fried rice for a community fund-raising event, and I tell you, fried rice never tasted so good!” he said, to laughter.
With their two young children, Catherine and Eugene, the Wangs moved to Lexington in 2007. (Catherine, an LHS graduate, is now in medical school and Eugene is a senior at LHS.) Wang joined CAAL, which has worked for almost forty years to serve both the town’s growing Chinese American population and the broader Lexington community.
Now the co-president of CAAL, he acknowledged “the trail-blazers and role models who came before me,” several of whom were in the audience. CAAL’s veteran super-volunteer Sophia Ho called out: “Hua, do you remember what I have always said: Concord’s loss is Lexington’s gain!”
[Hua is] “a true connector – bringing people together to explore the uniqueness of our identities as well as the commonality of human experience”
KOREN STEMBRIDGE, CARY LIBRARY DIRECTOR
Wang sketched some high points of his wide-ranging work with CAAL and other groups that he joined or founded. The “CAAL for Cary” fundraising campaign that he spearheaded raised more than $75,000 from the Chinese community for the Transformative Spaces Project at Cary Library, that created the popular Teen Space and expanded the World Language collection. “Our community responded magnificently,” he said, contributing more than three times the amount initially requested by the Cary Library Foundation, which he went on to serve as a board member from 2016 – 2022.
As he joined more community groups, Wang started to see “the importance and impact of connection and collaboration among them,” he said. The COVID-19 pandemic showed the impact of joining local efforts to regional and national action, as CAAL worked with a coalition of regional groups to provide over half a million dollars’ worth of PPE. That experience led Wang to found the New England Chinese American Alliance (NECAA) in 2020, which has become a major platform for connecting Chinese-American communities across the region.
Following the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic, “we gathered on Boston Common multiple times at Stop Asian Hate rallies, with then mayoral candidate Michelle Wu standing with us,” Wang recalled. Believing that “facing our history makes us stronger,” in 2021 he joined the Coalition for Anti-Racism & Equity (CARE) to push for legislation to promote racially-inclusive education in grades K-12 statewide, alongside representatives from Native American and African-American groups.
As Chair of the National Board of Directors of United Chinese Americans (UCA), Wang looked back with pride at the prominent role taken by Chinese Americans in the June 2024 ceremonies in Washington D.C. marking the 60th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “When I stood in front of the MLK memorial with hundreds of others, I felt I had finally understood what it meant to be together in community,” he concluded, to rousing applause.
When I stood in front of the MLK memorial with hundreds of others, I felt I had finally understood what it meant to be together in community.” HUA WANG
In a recent conversation at Lexington Community Center, Wang took time in a typically busy week to round out the abridged story he told at VOG. After the interview with Lexington Times, he rushed to a meeting with the chief of staff for Massachusetts Senator Jason Lewis, vice chair of the Senate Joint Committee on Education, to strategize about the best way to advance the bill put forward by CARE to promote racially inclusive education. Later, he attended the annual meeting of NECAA, and only in the early morning hours did he turn to the demands of his day-job at Boston University. “Such is my life, but truly fulfilling LOL!” he wrote in an email.
“My [professional] research is on system science, so-called system engineering, so it’s all about connectivity,” he said, drawing a parallel with his community work. His current and former presence on boards with a town-wide remit beyond the Chinese-American community, including the Lexington Historical Society (LHS), the Cary Library Foundation and the Community Endowment of Lexington, has built bridges among those organizations and promoted win-win collaborations.
In a recent message to Lexington Historical Society members, Executive Director Anne Lee wrote of the reciprocal relationship between LHS and CAAL: “Over the years we have co-sponsored events, publicized activities to the Chinese American community (and vice versa) and benefited from CAAL volunteers helping with projects ranging from programs to basement cleanup.”
Under the leadership of Wang and co-president Melanie Lin, CAAL has broadened its impact as a community organization and encouraged and supported Chinese Americans to volunteer in town activities, serve on committees, and run for elected positions.
Wang traced this development back to 2011, when Lin was struck by the small number of Chinese Americans among a couple of hundred attendees at a community event. Others in the community echoed her concern at their lack of visibility and representation, and Sophia Ho brought together a group that became CAAL’s Community Task Force (CTF), chaired by Wang from 2012-2014.
The push for civic engagement built on CAAL’s long tradition of holding candidate forums before local elections and its popular Lunar New Year celebrations. CTF’s work dovetailed with that of the town’s subcommittee on demographic change (SDC), part of the 2020 Vision initiative. SDC’s major objective was to identify barriers to greater participation of Lexington’s Asian residents on the town’s boards and committees and to suggest steps to tackle them.
Although Wang was not an SDC member, he was among the community leaders formally interviewed by SDC and acknowledged in the final report, and he recalled that subcommittee chair Dan Krupka also tapped his expertise informally over the course of “many coffee conversations.”
One of Wang’s challenges has been to inspire others in his community to embrace the spirit of volunteerism and charitable giving that are deeply embedded in American civic life, and yet unfamiliar to many from other cultural backgrounds.
Engagement starts with education and empowerment, Wang believes, so CAAL started to offer mini citizen academy sessions, two-hour briefings by Select Board members and School Committee members, explaining how the town works. Community members were astonished to learn that members of the Select Board, the School Committee, the Planning Board and the Housing Authority are all volunteers, and the concepts of parent involvement in schools through PTOs and PTAs and citizen participation in government through Town Meeting were completely novel to many.