Vivian Louie is Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College, City University of New York, where she was Director of the Asian American Studies Center and Program from 2018–2024. She is the author of two books, Compelled to Excel: Immigration, Education and Opportunity Among Chinese Americans and Keeping the Immigrant Bargain: The Costs and Rewards of Success in America, and co-editor of another, Writing Immigration: Scholars and Journalists in Dialogue and 30+ research articles and reports. She was Lead Scholar on Hidden Voices: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in United States History, New York City’s first curriculum on AAPI history and contemporary experiences, launched by the Department of Education in 2023.
She previously was a program officer at the William T. Grant Foundation, and associate professor of education and lecturer in sociology at Harvard. Her most recent publication is A Sociologist All This Time in Min Zhou’s Crossing Borders, Advancing Scholarship: Sociologists of Chinese Descent Traversing Diaspora, Ethnic, and Migration Studies. Louie’s work has been featured in the The New York Times, NPR, CBS, NBC, and other media outlets. Louie holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Sociology from Yale, an M.A. in Communication from Stanford, and an A.B. in History and Literature from Harvard. She has served on the boards of Youth Communication, the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center and on the NYS Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
Vivian is a Speaker for the Race and Space: How Laws Create and Impact Asian Spaces program.