Mitchell Maki, Ph.D has been named Interim President at Go For Broke National Education Center (GFBNEC) effective immediately. With more than 20 years of experience in higher education and leadership, Mitch will focus on the organization’s continued growth. Dr. Vince Beresford will remain onboard in a consulting capacity through the fall.
“I am so excited to join Go For Broke National Education Center,” said Mitchell Maki, Ph.D. “As a Board Member, I have been deeply committed to the organization’s mission. During this transition period, I look forward to working closely with the staff in the coming months as we identify a permanent President.”
In addition to serving on the Board of GFBNEC, Mitchell Maki is on the Board of Governors and on the Scholarly Advisory Council of the Japanese American National Museum. He is an expert on the Japanese American Mitchell Maki, Ph.D. redress movement and the lead author of the award-winning book Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress, a detailed case study of the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. He is currently a full Professor in the Department of Social Work at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
“We are so pleased to have Mitch as our Interim President,” states Bill Seki, Board Chair at GFBNEC. “His experience and understanding of the Japanese American experience from WWII to contemporary times is unprecedented. I am confident that his leadership will guide Go For Broke to our next chapter.”
In the coming months, Go For Broke National Education Center will conduct a national search for a President. Mitchell Maki, with the Board, will lead the selection process.
GFBNEC has a mission to educate and inspire character, and equality, through the virtue and valor of our World War II American veterans of Japanese ancestry. Pearl Harbor changed the lives of all Americans, but one group of citizens was affected beyond compare. Japanese Americans were literally stripped of their rights as citizens, and sent to incarceration camps. Defining Courage provides an opportunity for visitors to experience the results of fear mongering and discrimination and reminds us that as Americans, we are all citizens. Through the stories of the Japanese American soldiers of World War II, visitors learn how to act with similar courage in their own lives. Upcoming programs include: a documentary film series, lectures, guided exhibition tours and the annual Evening of Aloha Gala.
Go For Broke National Education Center is located in the Little Tokyo district of Downtown Los Angeles, at 355 E. 1st. St., Los Angeles CA 90012. For additional information, visit http://www.goforbroke.org.
About Go For Broke National Education Center (GFBNEC)
Since its formation in 1989, Go For Broke National Education Center has been committed to educating the public about the responsibilities, challenges, and rights of American citizenship by using the life stories of the Japanese American soldiers of World War II. In order to share these stories, they began video recording the oral histories of Japanese American veterans, and today they have the largest collection of its kind in the country. The interviews have been incorporated into a complete curriculum with lesson plans and web-based project learning to share their story with youth across the country.
In 1999, GFBNEC dedicated the Go For Broke Monument in the Little Tokyo District of Los Angeles. On the monument are the insignias of the 100th Infantry Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team, Military Intelligence Service (MIS), 522nd Field Artillery Battalion, 232nd Combat Engineer Company, and the 1399 Engineer Construction Battalion. For more information, visit www.goforbroke.org/.
