VIST Conferred Honorary Doctor Degree to US Congresswoman

Congratulations to Honorable US Congresswoman Radewagen!

Dr. Martin Ma, President of the Institute, on behalf of VIST’s Board of Directors & Trustees, with Dr. Sartor (Provost) and Mr. Zhao (Co-Chair), conferred Honorary Doctor Degree of Philosophy to United States Congresswoman Amara Coleman Radewagen, to recognize/commend her outstanding public services, extraordinary contribution in promoting minority and small business, and exceptionally devote in higher education in the United States in last 30+ years.

AMATA COLEMAN RADEWAGEN (AUMUA AMATA), was elected as American Samoa’s third Member of Congress on November 4, 2014.  She is the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from American Samoa. She is the first Republican woman of Samoan descent in Congress.  She is also  her party’s highest ranking Asian Pacific elected federal officeholder in the nation.   She has been the most senior member of the Republican National Committee since 2012 and holds the orator (talking chief) title of Aumua from the village of Pago Pago in American Samoa, where she is a registered voter.  In winning 75.4% of the vote in her 2016 re-election, she attained the highest number of votes for any elective office in American Samoa history.

Amata was a member of the Executive Committee for the 2016-17 Presidential Transition.  She was also a member of the Executive Committee for the 2017 Republican National Committee Chairman’s Transition Committee.

Appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001 as a White House Commissioner for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI), where she chaired the Community Security Committee, Amata was the only Pacific Islander on the 15-member commission, which advised the President on AAPI issues and issued a landmark report on the health care needs of America’s AAPI communities.   Amata has been the featured speaker over the years at numerous Asian Pacific American Heritage observances, including those at numerous military bases in CONUS and Europe.

Amata’s biography appears in Who’s Who in Politics, Who’s Who in the South and Southwest and on the United States list of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community’s Register of Skilled Women in the Pacific.  She also was one of the 100 women profiled in The Women of American Samoa 1900-2000: A hundred years if development and achievements, a book prepared in conjunction with the centennial observances of American Samoa as a U.S. territory.

Amata has a bachelor’s degree from the Institute of Guam, with additional studies at Loyola-Marymount and George Mason Universities.  One of 13 children of the late Governor and Mrs. Peter Tali Coleman, she is married to Fred Radewagen.  Together they have three grown children and two grandchildren.