Nicole Chiu-Wang

Nicole Chiu-Wang has experience as an attorney, is co-founder of a clothing brand and is currently a Product and Business Strategy Lead at Google. This year, Chiu-Wang is hoping to add one more item to this diverse list: Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) Board of Education Member.

Chiu-Wang’s experience in education began during her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Irvine. “[While attending Irvine] I was working with 10th graders [at Santa Ana High School] and saw that they weren’t reading at grade level,” she said. “We had gone into the high school to work on world history, but it culminated in working with the other students. Teacher’s assistants and graduate students created supplemental learning materials that were distributed to [more than] 3,500 teachers and students in Santa Ana.”

Through this and similar experiences, Chiu-Wang formed some of the foundational beliefs that guide her campaign today. “If we ever want to have equity, if we want to end systemic racism, it starts in school,” she said. According to her campaign website, Chiu-Wang believes that addressing problems such as socioeconomic and racial achievement gaps should start at early childhood education.

Unlike the other candidates, Chiu-Wang only moved here recently. However, she does not view this as a negative factor for her campaign. “The more people I’ve talked to in the community, the more I hear stories like mine, where they moved here for the schools,” she said. “And that’s an important perspective.”

Furthermore, Chiu-Wang is resisting being labeled and associated with established factions. “I don’t think you have to be either for closing the opportunity gap and serving the historically underserved or for supporting those students that are really already thriving and wanting to accelerate even more,” she said. “Those two things aren’t completely opposed and I don’t think we should think that way as a district.”