Jackie Thu-Huong Wong
Advisory Committee Member
Jackie Thu-Huong Wong is the Executive Director of First 5 California, a state agency that is dedicated to improving the lives of California’s young children and their families through a comprehensive system of education, health services, childcare, and other programs supporting parents, caregivers, and children ages 0 to 5. A widely respected advocate for equity, justice, health and education for children, Jackie has worked with diverse communities for more than three decades to help California youth thrive to achieve their full potential.
Jackie’s Background
Born en route from Vietnam to freedom in the United States during the fall of Saigon, Jackie Thu-Huong Wong was raised in Stockton, California. A trained social worker, Jackie possesses deep experience in state policy and has a long record of effective advocacy on behalf of children and youth.
Jackie started her career as an administrator in the Oakland Unified School District’s Student, Family and Community Services Department where she helped to develop the district’s Foster Youth Program, Refugee Student Assistance Program, Homeless Student Program, Migrant Education Program, various Coordination of Services Programs and Crisis Response protocols. During this time, she launched a program to better meet the medical needs of at-risk Asian youth, and established Vanteay SREI, a non-profit to stop human trafficking.
Jackie went on to become Government Relations Director for the National Center for Youth Law where she worked on child welfare reform and anti-trafficking issues such as the #NoSuchThing as a child prostitute in CA.
Jackie’s policy expertise led her to state service, where she became the principal policy consultant on human services, developmental disabilities, long-term aging, and veterans and military affairs for California Senate President pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg, and later served as the Statewide Director for the Foster Youth Services Coordinating Program at the California Department of Education (CDE). In this role, she worked across departments and with state agencies, school districts, county offices of education and with education equity stakeholders to ensure that children in foster care were a key priority in education finance reform in the development of the Local Control Funding Formula and the reauthorization of the 2015 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as the Every Student Succeeds Act.
Because of her work in foster care education advocacy, Jackie was appointed by California Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye to the Keeping Kids in School (KKIS) Steering Committee, an initiative focused on keeping kids in school and out of the justice system.
Prior to joining First 5 California, Ms. Wong served as the Vice President of Policy and Advocacy for GRACE, an anti-poverty organization that leads the End Child Poverty in California Campaign (ECPCA). Under her leadership, in coalition with several anti-poverty advocates, ECPCA secured over $4 billion in new funding to address child poverty, with a significant investment in education programs, and established California’s Child Tax Credit.
In addition to her current role as executive director of First 5 California, Wong is a professor for San Francisco and Sacramento State’s School Nursing Credential program. She has served as a Trustee for the Washington Unified School Board in West Sacramento since 2016 and was elected by her fellow trustees to serve three terms as president of the Board. She previously served on the non-profit board of Milestones Child Development Center.
Jackie is a mom to two school-age children and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Social Welfare and Psychology from University of California, Berkeley, and a Master of Social Work from California State University, Sacramento.