Dr. OiYan Poon is an educator, author, speaker, and race and education scholar. She is a Senior Research Fellow for Education Equity at the NAACP LDF Thurgood Marshall Institute and co-director of the College Admissions Futures Co-Laborative (CAF Co-Lab). Through the CAF Co-Lab, she is serving as a consultant to Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s office on higher education policy. Dr. Poon’s research has focused on the racial politics of Asian Americans, education access, affirmative action, and admissions systems and practices.

She is the author of Asian American Is Not a Color: Conversations on Race, Affirmative Action, and Family, which explores how Asian Americans are shaping the future of race relations through debates over education policies like affirmative action, using personal narrative and interviews of Asian Americans across the country.