Soo-Young Chin portrait

Soo-Young Chin, Ph.D.

Co-Founder, Senior Partner

Soo’s core strength is research design, knowing how to match methods to inquiry by pulling from a variety of practices. Her work focuses on improving systems, experiences and products through understanding of the lives of real people.

Soo serves as an expert witness on civil and criminal cases complicated by culture (e.g., religious beliefs, business practices, social norms). Prior to co-founding Ethnoworks in 2010, she served as Lead Partner of Practical Ethnographics at Ascension’s internal innovation group. She is drawn to nonprofit organizations for their missions, and served as Director of Development at the KHEIR Center, an LA-based community clinic, for four years.

Soo is a published author, and was on faculty at the University of Southern California and San Jose State University. She conducted her fieldwork in San Francisco and Seoul for her doctorate in cultural gerontology from UCSF.

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
— Clarence Darrow

Education

Post-Doctoral Fellowship: Culture and Mental Health, University of Chicago

Doctorate: Human Development & Aging, University of California, San Francisco

Master’s: Language and Literacy, University of California Berkeley

Undergraduate: Comparative Religions and Sociology, Tufts University

Professional Affiliations

American Anthropological Association
Society for Cultural Anthropology
Society for Visual Anthropology
American Society on Aging
Gerontological Society of America