Naomi Tacuyan Underwood
Executive Director of Asian American Journalist Association
Naomi Tacuyan Underwood is the Executive Director of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA), a national membership nonprofit advancing diversity in newsrooms, and ensuring fair and accurate coverage of communities of color.
Naomi has nearly two decades of experience in nonprofit management, coalition and stakeholder engagement, legislative advocacy, and impact-oriented program development and management. Her career has been built on empowering communities and building capacity for successful and effective civic engagement partnerships and coalitions.
Through this work of empowering AAPIs and capacity building and strategic positioning of AAPI organizations and their efforts, Naomi has helped increase the visibility and the civic potential of the AAPI community.
Prior to AAJA, she served as Director of Programs at The Faith & Politics Institute, where she crafted programs to foster bipartisanship on Capitol Hill. Previously, she served as legislative staff for Congresswoman Madeleine Z. Bordallo, where her portfolio included territorial issues, natural resources and the environment, and AAPI issues. Naomi’s prior experiences include political and constituency outreach at the Democratic National Committee, where she developed and implemented comprehensive national outreach and voter contact plans for national elections, as well as having served as Deputy Director for APIAVote overseeing training, capacity building, outreach and voter contact, and media efforts for the 2008 presidential election.
Naomi is a Filipina immigrant who grew up on the island territory of Guam. She received her Master of Public Policy from UCLA, and her undergraduate degree in Journalism and A/P/A Studies from NYU.