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Los Angeles County, CA November 8, 2005 Election
Smart Voter Full Biography for Benjamin "Ben" Ao

Candidate for
Governing Board Member; ABC Unified School District

This information is provided by the candidate

I was born and raised in eastern China. As a social outcast due to my family background, I endured a lot of hardship during my younger years. Through diligence and persistence, I beat all odds and completed post-graduate education. I became a research scientist and state employee in 1984.

In 1986, I was admitted into Ohio State University, which had one of the best theoretical linguistics and speech science programs in the world. While I was a graduate student there, I was a well-liked instructor of linguistic courses for university students. In 1991, I was elected President of the Chinese Society of Students and Scholars at OSU. I did a remarkable job improving the organization, communication and financial health of CSSS.

I completed my doctoral program in 1993, and started working for Bell Labs in the field of computational linguistics. In 1994, I moved to Torrance and continued to develop my professional career in the Southland. Today, I am a chief engineer working for Alpine Electronics Research of America in Torrance. My job is to teach computers understand and speak human speech.

I moved from Torrance to Cerritos in 1998 in pursuit of better education for my children.

My daughter Jenny graduated from Whitney High in 2001 and from UCLA in 2005. She plans to go to law school.

My son Jimmy is an 8th grade student at Whitney High. He is a talented student and he plans to go to the field of medicine.

I have been actively involved with school and community affairs. In 2002, I helped the Granada Park HOA take control of its own finances and rebuild its nearly depleted reserves without raising homeowners' membership dues. In 2003, I helped mediate a settlement for a dispute between Wittmann Elementary and fellow Wittmann parents over controversial issue involving teacher reassignment and the GATE program. Also in 2003, I helped bring a neighborhood concern over school attendance to the attention of the ABC administration and the ABC board.

I am currently running for the ABC school board in order to better serve the ABC community.

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Created from information supplied by the candidate: October 18, 2005 12:51
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