Join us on for a very special evening with Top Chef alumni Chef Tu David Phu!
Small bites provided by Top Chef Alumni Tu David Phu | Meet and Greet with AAPI Women Lead and Special Guests
For nearly 10 years, AAPI Women Lead has been at the forefront of ending violence against Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander women, girls, and gender-expansive communities. We’ve done this through survivor-centered storytelling, community-driven research and education, culturally-rooted healing and wellness programs as well as community events.
In the past year, numerous sources of support have closed doors, sunsetted their portfolios or stopped funding our organization (and those like ours). We have had to rely on our community now more than ever.
This is more than an event—it’s to protect our organization and communities.
It is also a celebration. We’re gathering to celebrate this beautiful organization and everything we’ve built together.
We’re celebrating you, and the community that makes this all possible.
And we are protecting what we have all worked to build for nearly 10 years.
Chef Tu David Phu, a San Francisco Chronicle Rising Star Chef and chef-partner at GiGi’s, a Vietnamese-inspired wine bar in San Francisco, draws from his Oakland upbringing and his family’s artisanal fish sauce legacy from Phu Quoc, Vietnam.
His culinary path began in his mother’s Oakland garden and developed in prestigious kitchens like New York’s Daniel and San Francisco’s Acquerello, where he was surrounded by the team that earned two Michelin stars. This journey inspired his Vietnamese-Californian pop-up Ăn and his Rising Star Chef honor in 2017.
Beyond the kitchen, Chef Tu David Phu shares his family’s story through the Emmy-nominated PBS film Bloodline and his cookbook “The Memory of Taste,” co-authored with James Beard Award-winner Soleil Ho.
Dr. Connie Wun is a co-founder of AAPI Women Lead, a former sex worker and the daughter of Vietnamese war refugees. She has published in academic books, journals, and mainstream press, including Anti-Blackness, Critical Sociology, and Elle Magazine, and is a co-editor for the anthology, Abolition for the People, with Colin Kaepernick and Christopher Petrella. Among many honors, she is a CA API Legislative Caucus Excellence in Civil Rights and A100 Gold House awardee as well as a former National Science Foundation and Soros Justice Fellow.
Her work has been recognized nationally and featured in various media outlets, including NPR, Democracy Now, and MSNBC. She is a yoga instructor with a daily meditation practice and has trained in Muay Thai and kickboxing.
