By Isabel De Leon and Noreen Jazul
The United States embassy in Manila has denied reports that Mina Chang, US State Department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, will be the next US Ambassador to the Philippines.
Mina Chang
(Linking the World / MANILA BULLETIN)
In a message, the US embassy said: “We’ve seen this claim. It is not true.”
It added that in September 2018, the White House announced President Donald Trump’s intent to nominate Mina Chang to be Assistant Administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) for the Bureau of Asia.
The nomination was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 2019.
“There have been no additional White House announcements regarding her nomination to the USAID position,” the Embassy said.
Prior to her stint in the conflict bureau, Chang served as Chief Executive Officer of the international humanitarian aid organization, Linking the World. She began her work with the organization in 2012.
"Chang has personally been involved in the disaster response to the earthquake and cholera outbreaks in Haiti, the tsunami in Asia and in New Orleans following the hurricane. She has worked in some of the world’s most dangerous and desperate slum communities such as Kibera in Kenya and Citi Soliel in Haiti," Woman that Soar wrote about Chang.
In her time as Civil-Military UN-CMCoord Advisor, Chang contributed to the creation of the current Common Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination Standards.
Other positions Chang held were as Expert Panel for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Humanitarian Response for the United Nations and UN Cross Cultural Ambassador for United States UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Harvard John F. Kennedy Senior Executive in National and International Security, and International Security Fellow at New America.
The 32-year-old humanitarian also has published works in Forbes, CNN, Fortune, Foreign Policy Journal about "issues of policy, humanitarian aid, development, the application of emerging technologies and data science capabilities by the sector and its role in the context of national security and global stability."
Chang, in an interview with Linking the World, said growing up with Salvation Army officer parents gave her "insight into the significance of global education, and the dearth of it."
Aside from humanitarian work, Chang was also fond of music. She was a pop singer and recorded two albums.
The singer turned activist was a graduate of Harvard Business School and attended the United States Army War College National Security Seminar.
Chang currently lives in the United States with her daughter and a Belgian Malinois who they adopted from the US Forward Operating Base Fenty in Afghanistan.