Global communications specialist Glenn Osaki and community artist Audrey Chan were recognized on April 20 amid festivities celebrating cultural fusion and philanthropy during the USC Pacific Asia Museum’s Spring Gala.
Osaki, who serves as senior advisor for international communications and marketing to University of Southern California president Dr. Carol Folt, was selected for the honor from among the university faculty and staff. He collaborates with his lo-cal team as well as nine international USC offices around the world.
Prior to joining the university, he served as Asia-Pacific president for MSL, the flagship strategic communications and engagement consultancy of Publicis Groupe. Under his leadership, MSL became the largest public relations agency network in Asia and the region’s most awarded.
He serves on the Board of Advisors for the USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations and the Indian School of Communications and Reputation (SCoRE) in Delhi. He is also a senior vice president with the Little Tokyo Business Association.
Chan is a Los Angeles-based artist, writer, and educator known for her ability to articulate political and cultural identities. Last June, she completed the public artwork for
Metro’s Regional Connector Station in Little Tokyo.
Born in Chicago, Chan received her bachelor of arts degree from Swarthmore College in 2004 and a master of fine arts from the California Institute of the Arts. In 2013, she received the Fellowship for Visual Artists from the California Community Foundation (CCF) and was also the grant recipient of the Artists’ Resource for Completion for her collaborative work with Elana Mann.
Chan was an artist-in-residence at the Nantes School of Fine Arts in France and performed an artistic investigation of the official portrait of President Nicolas Sarkozy, sparking a debate about the ownership of images and the delicate relationship be-tween politics and art in French law.
Chan is currently co-editor of the zine Would Be Saboteurs Take Heed, which centers the voices of Asian American and Pacific Islander artists and writers. As an educator, Chan was a visiting faculty member of the California Institute of the Arts and a gallery teacher at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Established in 1971, the museum is one of few U.S. institutions dedicated to the arts and culture of Asia and the Pacific Islands.
In 2013, the university partnered with the museum to form USC Pacific Asia Museum.
The museum’s historic building has served as a center for art, culture and learning in Pasadena since its construction in 1924 by pioneering collector and entrepreneur Grace Nicholson (1877-1948) as her residence, galleries, and treasure house/emporium.