I am Asian and the product of generations of joyous celebration of diversity. Multi-cultural communication, language and its enhancements, has long been center to my professional interests. And I feel strongly that I am at the best time of my life to undertake graduate studies, mature enough to be wise and young enough to have the drive and fresh determination. In addition to English, I am a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese and a number of other Chinese dialects, including Cantonese, Hokkien, and Foochow. I am especially interested in doing graduate work in the areas of autism and pediatric speech delay. I am a compassionate, family oriented woman with special love for children.

My central mission in life is to some day bring have the privilege of bringing greater awareness of the communicative needs of autistic Asian child to the attention of Asian parents and professional, along with the realization of more effective diagnostic measures, especially for those children from Asian countries that are still very much struggling towards development. My close friend, who is the only US certified Speech Pathologist in Singapore, has been my principal inspiration to concentrate my career path in this area. It is most difficult to find proper treatment for young children with disabilities in many if not most parts of Asia. Parenting skills and unlucky genes are usually found to blame and the children are generally raised in a virtual closet, hidden from the rest of society as a result of senseless cultural shame.

My profound belief in the power of Christianity to heal and to help us overcome social handicaps serves as a central source of energy for me, driving my determination and helping me to navigate the roads ahead. My greatest moments in life have come as a volunteer, including missionary work, distributing free Bible literature and teaching in Sunday school. I have also worked as a Business Development Manager and established a new branch of a company. I have extensive experience with children in multicultural contexts and this has helped me to become a good manager on their behalf. As a mother of 2 young children myself, I study as well as teach them through the development of multi-language learning activities. My studies heretofore have been in the physical sciences. My nephew one of the great lights of my life is autistic, and I have now spent years as a witness to his struggle to communicate. He has also helped to provide direction to my life as a scientist and social worker, making me especially passionate and driven in this area. XXXX has an excellent Communicative Disorder Department with its SLH clinic and I am looking forward to becoming part of your program and contributing to this academic community, and thereby learn how to do all that I can for the weakest members of our future generations.