About
Soh Young Lee-Segredo, (Founder and President) is as an amazing person with many talents and a passionate soul. She is known as the ‘song bird’ among her friends and as her fans. She is an educator, humanitarian, community activist, MC, storyteller, singer, director and program coordinator. Her life journey began in S. Korea, via Paraguay, Brazil and then to the USA. She enrolled in New Town H.S. at the age 18. She holds BA from Queens College, MA from Bank Street College, Professional Diploma from Dowling College, and Bilingual/ESL Extension from St. John’s University. She is resident of Freeport and works in Hempstead Public Schools. From a very young age she was an MC in S. Korea mostly in school and church events. At Miss New York Korea 1981, and then throughout the years she has emceed for many events including 45th Anniversary of Korean American Association of Connecticut in 2009 and Korean Theatre Company production of Hongdoya Uljee Mara 2011. She was the first Korean recipient of Nassau County Dr. Martin Humanitarian Award in 2007 and the Town of Hempstead Pathfinder Award 2009. She received an award for her effort to bring communities through Cultural Diversity from the Suffolk County Asian American Advisory Board on 2010. She is life-time member of NAACP, Freeport/Roosevelt Branch ACT SO Committee Chairperson; she is Long Island ACT SO Vocal Coach which is local talent competition from which gold medalists attends National NAACP ACT SO Competition. She is a member of Hagedorn Foundation’s Common Ground, Nassau County Anti-bias Crime Task Force, and North Shore Hospital Feinstein Genetic Studies Community Advisory Board member. She was Nassau County Human Rights Commissioner and is appointed as Commission Chairman of Multi-Ethic from The Federation of Korean Association USA.
Her family (husband and two sons) traveled to Europe with the Multicultural Peace Mission Choir, founded post 9/11 which promotes diversity, cultural harmony and understanding. She debuted in Madison Square Garden at age 20 singing Korean and American National Anthems, Carnegie Weil Recital Hall as a winner of the International Artists Competition 2007, grand prize winner of Korean Idol NY 2007 and National Korean Fork Performance Competition 2007. ‘Home: Where the Heart is’ is her CD with many different genre and can be sampled and purchased through her website www.sohyoung.com. She was recently recognized at the First Village of Freeport Mayor Hardwick’s Women’s History Month’s as recipient of Phenomenal Woman on March 23, 2012 as well as NYC NAACP Phenomenal Woman Award on March 25, 2012 in Harlem, the first Korean recipient in 101 years.
Diann S. McCabe attended the New York Institute of Technology, majored in Fine Arts, and minored in Education. She graduated from Adelphi University, majoring in Fine Art and education. Her fellowship was in ceramics and she had one woman show at Adelphi alumni gallery.
Trained as a formal visual artist, Diann S. McCabe felt the need to share her artistic talent with children. Her experience in painting, drawing, photography, and stained glass led her to become a K-12 Art teacher in private and public schools. Along with teaching various art classes, Ms. S. McCabe also privately tutored high school students with college entrance portfolios and helped them enhance their own artistic abilities. Ms. S.
McCabe has exhibited her works in New York City galleries and does works on commission. Her biography is published in The Who's Who of American Colleges and Universities. ‘Humanities for Kindergarten’ is a book she co-authored with a music teacher, her first collaborative effort. Integrating art with other subjects is a new adventure, as well as, being the secretary/treasurer for The Multicultural Council of New York. She often devotes her time to design and creating stained glass.
Linda Leaf has enjoyed a career focused on volunteerism, humanism and caring. Through her secular education at The Wheatley School and her religious education and United Synagogue Youth Group activities at Temple Beth Sholom in Roslyn Heights, she was awarded a full year's scholarship to study at the prestigious Institute For Youth Leaders From Abroad in Jerusalem, Israel. This unique school featured a multi-national student body with faculty from The Hebrew University and other outstanding professionals supplemented course material.
Linda elected to study Art with members of Bezalel Academy, Israel’s National Art School.
Upon her return to the United States she enrolled at Hofstra University where she received full credit for her year’s study in Israel. At Hofstra she majored in Political Science and served as the President of the Political Affairs Club. She minored in Art History and as a result, she has always enjoyed a dual and parallel career in both Art and Politics where she has created, sold, exhibited and presented artwork and represented artists.
After Graduation from Hofstra in 1965 she applied and was hired to serve as the Director of Housing for the newly formed Nassau County Commission on Human Rights, (at the time one of only three county Human Rights Commissions in the country). As Director of OPEN ISLAND, Linda not only assisted people looking for housing on Long Island, but assisted in forming local, state and national Fair Housing Networks as well. In addition to creating, enforcing and implementing Fair Housing Laws in Nassau County, she was elected and served for 11 years as the Chair of the Long Island Community Housing Resource Board (LICHRB) which encompassed the LIBOR and Hud tri-county area of Nassau, Suffolk and Queens counties. Linda also trained hundreds of Salespeople and Brokers in Human Rights Law in Real Estate courses given throughout NYC and Long Island.
Linda's life has been focused in meaningful ways with real contributions on a national, regional, and local basis. She has been honored *(partial list) by the NAACP for Distinguished Service for The Cause of Freedom, by CSEA, Women's Committee Recognition Award for Women in Government, and the Roslyn School District's MLK Scholarship Committee. Her name has been added to The May W. Newburger Women's Roll of Honor for the Town of North Hempstead. Hofstra University singled out Linda’s outstanding career achievements and awarded her a coveted George M. Estabrook Distinguished Alumni Service Award. In January of 2015 Linda was awarded the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award at the 30th Anniversary Celebration Weekend and Luncheon at The Marriott Hotel, in Uniondale, NY. As a founding member of the organization and the Commemorative and fund raising Journal Chair for 26 years , Linda has helped to ensure that deserving High School senior essay winners from predominately multicultural and financially challenged school districts on Long Island get recognition by printing and circulating their winning entries and providing more than 1/2 a million dollars of scholarship money to continue their college education.
While Linda may have retired from her job in 2000, she has never stopped being a mentor, sponsor, life coach and an inspiration to all who value making life better for people. She suffered a life threatening illness in 2011 and her only comment was on being released, “Glad I didn’t die then; still have more things to do”.
Joseph Nord Has been a teacher for the last 15 years. I worked in the field of Special Education where I assisted students with disabilities. I worked have worked with a variety of students including students with autism, cerebral palsy, down syndrome and ADHD. This was an incredible experience and I learned a vast amount of knowledge learning to assist students in need.
Over the past two years, I transitioned my job into the field of English as a New Language. I
currently work as an ENL teacher where I tailor instruction to meet the needs of diverse learners in the classroom. It has been an incredible experience where I also learned many language techniques such as Total Physical Response which can assist in learning any new language.
I am passionate about education and bring a wide variety of expertise to this organization. I love to write and I love technology. I feel as though we can create a social media presence online to advance this organization's mission.
Past Member
Brian Song. I am currently a freshman at Purdue University. In my free time, I enjoy a multitude of activities. For example, I enjoy walking my dog outside, going on hikes in parks that I haven’t yet visited and exploring, playing video games, and watching wholesome yet thought provoking shows on Netflix, such as Breaking Bad. I also like to take care of the tomato plants in my backyard and partake in events in my community where I help around managing the environment.
In school, my favorite subjects are math and computer science. Speaking of computer science, this is one subject that I really like to bring outside of the classroom. I like to create cool mobile apps, which I make for fun in my free time, and I am also interested in the newer subfields such as machine learning, in which I have created several projects.
I love to learn about new things going on in the world that will certainly shape the future. These include geopolitical events, new technology, and also some rather silly ideas such as eating 50 gram squares of chicken. In the future, I would like to combine my interest in computer science with a field I think would better benefit from further automation, such as medicine.