Chantale Yokmin Wong is the current United States Director of the
Asian Development Bank, with the rank of ambassador. Wong is the first out lesbian and the first out LGBTQ person of color to receive the rank of an ambassador.
Early life
As a child, Wong's grandmother "smuggled" her from
Shanghai to
Hong Kong. She then went to boarding school on the island of
Macau. Wong attended middle school in
Okinawa, Japan, high school at
Academy of Our Lady of Guam
Academy of Our Lady of Guam (AOLG) is an all-girls private Catholic high school located at 233 Archbishop Felixberto C. Flores Street in Hagåtña, Guam, United States. AOLG, Guam's sole all-girls high school, has an average yearly enrollment of ...
in
Hagåtña, Guam where she lived with her aunt, uncle, and cousin. In 1980, she received a BS in civil engineering at the
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and, in 1982, an MS in environmental engineering at the
University of California, Berkeley. She received an MPA from
Harvard Kennedy School in 1988.
Government service
She served in a number of positions in the US government. Under
Barack Obama, she served as vice president for administration and finance, and CFO, at the
Millennium Challenge Corporation from 2011 to 2014. Previously, she was budget director at the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding th ...
in 2011–12, acting budget director at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and as the chief of staff to the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Under
Bill Clinton, Wong represented the United States on the board of directors of the Asian Development Bank.
In 1989, Wong co-founded the
Conference on Asian Pacific American Leadership.
Nomination to the Asian Development Bank
On July 2, 2021, Wong was nominated by President
Joe Biden to be the next director of the Asian Development Bank. The
Senate's Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on her nomination on October 26, 2021. On December 15, 2021, the committee voted to report her nomination favorably to the Senate floor. On February 8, 2022, the entire Senate moved to confirm Wong's nomination in a vote of 66–31. Wong was sworn in by
Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen
Janet Louise Yellen (born August 13, 1946) is an American economist serving as the 78th United States secretary of the treasury since January 26, 2021. She previously served as the 15th chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018. Yellen is t ...
on February 23, 2022.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Wong, Chantale
American people of Chinese descent
American lesbians
American women ambassadors
Ambassadors of the United States
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa alumni
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Harvard Kennedy School alumni
American women diplomats
American LGBT people of Asian descent
20th-century American LGBT people
21st-century American LGBT people