Washington, DC — The Asian American Action Fund (AAA-Fund) has endorsed Sam Yoon, candidate for Mayor of the City of Boston.

"Sam will shake up city hall and bring a new style of progressive leadership to Boston," said Gautam Dutta, executive director of the AAA-Fund. "He has the right combination of policy expertise and hard-nosed experience to lead the city into a new era."

Yoon is currently an at-large member of the Boston City Council. He won his seat in 2005 with what the Boston Globe described as "surprising ease . . . by persuading Bostonians of all stripes and ages to vote for him." In doing so, he became the first Asian American elected to public office in Boston.

Prior to his election to the City Council, Yoon was a community activist, with a particular focus on issues of affordable urban housing. He served as Development Director for Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC), an organization focused on creating affordable housing in Boston's Chinatown. In addition, Yoon has worked with Boston Aging Concerns, an organization focused on housing for families where grandparents are the primary care givers, and The Community Builders, the nation's largest non-profit developer of affordable housing. He has also worked for Abt Associates, a public policy research firm.

Yoon is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. In between his undergraduate and graduate education, he worked as a teacher in an inner-city school district.

"Sam has been fighting for change on the front lines for more than a decade," said Endorsements Chair Caroline Fan "We can't wait to see him bring his combination of grassroots-fueled energy and intellectual heft to tackling the problems of Boston."

Yoon was originally born in Seoul, Korea, but moved to the United State as an infant. He is currently a board member of Viet-Aid, which serves the Vietnamese community in Dorchester. He is also a founding member and core steering committee member of The New Majority, a coalition of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians seeking to advance a common agenda for communities of color in Boston.

AAA-Fund is a Democratic political action committee whose goal is to increase the voice of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) on every level of local, state and federal government in America. To achieve this goal, we address the chronic under-representation of AAPIs as campaign volunteers, campaign contributors, and candidates for political office. The AAA-Fund has endorsed candidates across the country.