Gordon Chin

Gordon Chin is the founding Executive Director of San Francisco’s Chinatown Community Development Center (Chinatown CDC), serving in this position until his retirement in October, 2011. Established in 1977, Chinatown CDC is an award winning community development corporation with a comprehensive program of community organizing, neighborhood planning, affordable housing development, property management and resident services. The organization has developed or rehabilitated over 2,800 units of affordable housing over the past three and a half decades.

Born in San Francisco on February 11, 1948, Gordon attended Oakland public schools, Merritt Junior College, and received a Masters in Social Welfare in 1974 from San Francisco State University. He has been active in San Francisco’s Chinatown community for over four decades, and has served on many community and civic boards including the national boards of the Center for Community Change, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development (National CAPACD). He also served on the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission from 1987-1991 and the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Commission, serving from 1995 to 2003.

Gordon has received numerous awards. In 1999, he was selected as one of six inaugural fellows for the Fannie Mae Foundation’s James A. Johnson Community Fellows Award, and in 2005, he was one of 25 community development leaders honored at the Local Initiatives Support Corporation’s Silver Anniversary with a Mike Sviridoff Leadership Award.