Candidate for
Member of the State Assembly; District 16

Wilma Chan is President of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. She was first elected to the Board in 1994 and was re-elected in 1998 without opposition. District 3 includes the Chinatown, China Hill, San Antonio, Downtown, East Lake and Fruitvale neighborhoods in Oakland, the cities of San Leandro and Alameda.

She chairs the Board of Supervisors Health Committee and serves as a member of the Budget Committee and the Personnel, Administration and Legislative Committee. She serves on the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. Chan also serves as an officer on the Alameda County Retirement Board.

Ms. Chan is the Chair of the Children and Families Commission which will distribute $20 million in new funds for children's services, the first county in the state to do so.

As a County Supervisor, Ms. Chan has been a tireless advocate for children and youth. She has taken a leadership role in developing collaborative programs for children in Oakland, San Leandro and Alameda. She has also led trade delegations to Asia to encourage business development and trade with the East Bay.

Her accomplishments include:
-- Expanding school-based health clinics
-- Pushing the county to join the lawsuit against the tobacco industry and leading efforts to designate Alameda County's portion of the settlement -- a half-billion dollars -- for health care, including expanding access to low-cost health insurance.
-- Working with local officials to gain release of 220 acres of the Alameda Naval Air Station land for local needs.
-- Leading lobbying efforts to restore benefits to legal immigrants
-- Organizing the first children's services collaboratives in Alameda and San Leandro
-- Championing efforts to build a new Emergency Room and Critical Care Building for the Alameda County Medical Center, Highland Campus
-- Initiating a pilot welfare-to-work project in Oakland's San Antonio neighborhood
-- Securing funding for mental health services for children in Oakland.
-- Ms. Chan is the highest-ranking Asian-American woman elected official in California.

Ms. Chan has been honored by numerous organizations for her work including: California Hospital Council, Rotary International, County Meals-on-Wheels, High-Risk Infant Follow Up Network, Sons in Retirement, Alameda Breakfast Lions Club, Community Bank of the Bay, Native American Health Center, East Bay Asian Youth Center, National Asian Women's Health Association, among others.

Prior to her election to the Board of Supervisors, Ms. Chan was elected to the Oakland Board of Education in 1990. She served as Board President from June, 1991-January, 1993. She also worked as Program Coordinator for Effective Parenting Information for Children, a nationally recognized school-based prevention program.

Supervisor Chan is a native of Boston, Massachusetts. She earned a B.A. from Wellesley College and has a Masters Degree in Education Policy Analysis and Administration from Stanford University. She has been a Bay Area resident for 28 years. She lives in Alameda with her husband, a public school administrator, and is the mother of a grown daughter and a son in high school.