Newsroom Archive

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today the establishment of the National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations and has named Wei Li as a member of the committee.

The National Advisory Committee will advise the Census Bureau on a wide range of variables that affect the cost, accuracy and implementation of the Census Bureau's programs and surveys, including the once-a-decade census. The committee, which is comprised of 32 members from multiple disciplines, will advise the Census Bureau on topics such as housing, children, youth, poverty, privacy, race and ethnicity, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other populations.

“We expect that the expertise of this committee will help us meet emerging challenges the Census Bureau faces in producing statistics about our diverse nation,” said Thomas Mesenbourg, the Census Bureau's acting director. “By helping us better understand a variety of issues that affect statistical measurement, this committee will help ensure that the Census Bureau continues to provide relevant and timely statistics used by federal, state and local governments as well as business and industry in an increasingly technologically oriented society.”

The National Advisory Committee members, who serve at the discretion of the Census Bureau director, are chosen to serve based on expertise and knowledge of the cultural patterns, issues and/or statistical needs of hard-to-count populations.

Wei Li is a professor of Asian Pacific American studies and geography in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University, with appointments in the School of Social Transformation and the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. Her research specialties are international migration and integration, highly skilled migration and transnational connections, immigrant settlement and minority finance, focusing on the Pacific Rim. She was also chair of the Census Bureau's Race and Ethnic Advisory Committees on the Asian Population (2010-2012), one of the inaugural members of the National Asia Research Associates with the National Bureau of Asian Research and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2010-2011), and the Fulbright Research Chair in Queen's University, Canada (2006-2007). She is the recipient of the 2012 Distinguished Scholar of Ethnic Geography Award by the Association of American Geographers' Ethnic Geography Specialty Group, and the 2009 Book Award in Social Sciences by the Association for Asian American Studies for her book on suburban immigrant communities. She also currently serves as a member of the International Steering Committee for the International Metropolis Project and the North American Director for the International Society of Studying Chinese Overseas, and a member of the Asian American Community Justice Council for the Attorney General, State of Arizona. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in geography in Beijing and her doctorate in geography at the University of Southern California.