Several years ago, Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch sought out community activist Betty Yau to assist him in his campaign for Mayor of Quincy, a city with a large and growing Asian population. Koch says that Yau is an “asset to the City who works hard each day to assist the City’s Asian population on a number of issues” and that Yau’s “compassion and commitment to helping people” is “second to none.”
Today Yau serves the community through her participation in the City of Quincy’s Asian American Advisory Committee, a dedicated volunteer group of Chinese Americans and long-time Quincy residents who provide a bridge between the City and its Asian and Asian American residents.
Yau started her career working in the Quincy community in 1988 in the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office after receiving her degrees from the University of Massachusetts–Boston.
In 1992, she began working as the executive producer and host for Boston Chinese Radio through WJDA, a Cantonese radio show based in Quincy which covered Asian affairs. During her fourteen years working on the show, she was responsible for marketing, program planning, and management.
“I didn’t choose to work in radio as a career path; the opportunity came and I grabbed it,” she said.
Although she is no longer involved in radio, Yau found a new passion in community broadcasting. She is the executive producer of the TV show Eye on Quincy, a mainly Cantonese language program launched in 2009 which airs on the first and third Monday of every month through Quincy Access Television (QATV). The show aims to create an interactive and immediate communication platform and also to promote civic engagement and critical thinking on pressing social issues.
Yau said that her experience working with the radio show helped her in her role as executive producer of Eye on Quincy. She noted that the challenge of the TV show is how to “retain it” and “successfully introduce the concept to the City.”
Yau has worked on developing bilingual material, a service booklet with information about voting, a “good neighbor handbook” translated in Chinese and other materials that inform Quincy’s growing Asian community.
“Information is power. To empower is to share power. Providing the information is an empowerment process. We try to provide information,” she said.
After many people had approached her with questions on how to reach out to a growing Asian population, Yau launched Yau’s Marketing Services in 1994 where she now serves as principal consultant, a firm which according to www.bostonchinatown.org, has “helped companies tap into Boston’s Asian consumer base.”
Her website informs potential clients that “Asian are the fastest growing minority group in the United States” and that “Visual components can be used broadly as a means of overcoming language barriers.” Some of her clients have included Tufts Medical Center, Prudential Financial, Mass Electric/National Grid, and Quincy Asian Resources, Inc.
Yau said that today she is “still an activist but in a different way” and that the focus is working on “ESL classes, citizenship classes, and survival skills” and getting the word out by “producing a good media outlet.”
She said that she has seen great improvements in Quincy during the last couple decades, citing both voter registration and bilingual candidate forums as examples.
Yau said, “The language separates us; it takes a lifetime to learn English, but eventually we can have one community.”
She added, “If I had the opportunity to do everything over again, I would do the same thing. I would say ‘yes’ to the radio program and say ‘yes’ to providing basic services.”
Yau was awarded the Governor’s New American Appreciation Award in 1996 as well as the Human Rights Award by the NAACP in 1990.
Natalie Ornell is a Sampan correspondent.
