AUMUA AMATA

(Amata Coleman Radewagen)

amata.aumua@gmail.com

AUMUA AMATA is the National Committeewoman for American Samoa, having been elected to that position first in 1986 and re-elected for a four-year term in 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004. An at-large member of the Chairman's Executive Council (1993-95), she currently ranks 6th in seniority on the 168-member Republican National Committee (RNC) and is the senior national committeewoman in the Western Region. She also has been a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from American Samoa.

When at home in American Samoa Amata volunteers at the Women's Auxiliary at LBJ Tropical Medical Center, is a member of the Business and Professional Women (BPW), and belongs to other local organizations including Goodwill of American Samoa, where she is a board member.

Amata has been a grassroots outreach trainer since 1992 when she was first selected to be on the International Republican Institute (IRI) delegation to Kazakhstan to help train Central Asian political leaders of the former Soviet Union in grassroots advocacy, constituency building and outreach, and she continues that work today. She undertook similar projects for IRI in Cambodia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in 1993 and 1994 and made her fourth journey as consultant to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) during Kazakhstan's first post-Soviet parliamentary elections. In 2006, IRI selected her to train women business and political leaders in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. In 2007 Amata conducted training for Baghdad's Iraqi women leaders in organizational, management and communication skills development. She also conducted in 2007 a workshop for the women of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. Her travels have taken her to 35 countries and dependencies and 49 of the 50 United States. Amata also served for several years as deputy secretary-general of the Alliance of Dependent Territories.

In 2006 at the request of Samoan troops, the U.S. Department of Defense invited Amata to travel to Germany to observe National Military Appreciation Month and Asian Pacific American Heritage Month with the military and civilian communities. She visited the wounded at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, addressed troops at the U.S. Army Garrison in Stuttgart and the European Command, spoke at elementary and high schools and at Garmisch-Partenkirchen Base in the Alps where she visited troops in from Afghanistan and Iraq.

U.S. House Staff

Amata served as a House Leadership staffer with Congress from January 1997-February 2005. As special projects director for the House GOP Conference (2003-2005) she set up a database to reach out to Asian Pacific Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics and other highly qualified aspirants for congressional staff positions. In 2001, she was one of only 52 people chosen by Hill Zoo, an independent, congressional, online newspaper, as "Staffer of the Week", from among over 20,000 Capitol Hill staffers. From 1999-2003 she served as director of scheduling, advance, long-term planning and logistics for House Conference Chairman J.C. Watts after having served in a similar capacity under U.S. Rep. Philip M. Crane (1997-1999), chairman of the tax-writing House subcommittee on Trade, where she also received legislative training. For Chairmen Crane, Watts and Pryce, Amata exercised special advisory responsibilities on territorial and insular issues.

In 2003 Amata became the first and only Pacific Islander ever chosen as "Outstanding Woman of the Year" by the National Association of Professional Asian American Women (NAPAW). Such women as Congresswoman Patsy T. Mink of Hawaii previously held the coveted distinction.

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 commision which advised the President on AAPI issues and issued a landmark report on the health care needs of America's AAPI communities, as well as those in the Pacific territories and Freely Associated States (FAS). Amata successfully included a chapter focused solely on Pacific territorial health care needs and issues in the Commission's report and recommendations to the President.

Early Background and Community Service

After spending her earliest years in Washington, D.C. with her parents while her father attended Georgetown University Law School, Amata's family returned to American Samoa, where she was raised and completed her primary education at St. Francis School and Fiailoa School then went off-island to further her education. Upon graduating from Sacred Hearts Academy in Honolulu, Amata earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Guam, with additional studies at Loyola-Marymount and George Mason Universities. During and after college, she worked for the U.S. Navy and Interior departments as well as the Peace Corps on Saipan before going to Washington, D.C. to serve as executive assistant to Paramount Chief A.U. Fuimaono, American Samoa's first elected delegate-at-large.

A community activist in American Samoa, Amata was named National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC) coordinator for the territory in 1993 and continues to serve in that capacity. From 1994 to 1997 Amata served as NBCC's Pacific Regional Coordinator until the other U.S. territories selected their own members locally. A 15-year cancer survivor herself, Amata has served as spokesperson for the Samoan Women's Health Project organized in 1993 to establish a cancer awareness and screening program in the territory and helped to introduce mammography to the territory.

In addition to her health and church work in American Samoa, Amata also has done voluntary governmental assignments over the years. In 2007 she was a member of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) delegation to the historic Eighth Pacific Island Conference of Leaders held in Washington, D.C. She was a member for American Samoa of the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council's Pelagics Advisory Panel and was a member of American Samoa delegations to the Third Pacific Island Conference of Leaders (1990) and to two South Pacific Conferences (1981, 1983); she also was on the Host Committee for the 1982 South Pacific Conference in Pago Pago. In addition, she was involved with the U.S. delegation to the Second Pacific Island Conference of Leaders in Rarotonga (1985) and helped organize the 1986 Pacific Futures Conference in Honolulu. She also was co-chairman for American Samoa of President Bush's Personnel Advisory Committee (1988-89). A member of the organizing committee for the dedication of Nauru's Pacific House in Washington, D.C. (1988), she was an adviser to the Republic of Nauru delegation to the 1989 Intelsat Global Traffic Meeting.

Amata served as senior government affairs advisor for ASPA (1995-96) and also was an advisor to the Senate Committee on Government Operations Chairman. A registered voter in Pago Village where she serves the Uifaatali Family as talking chief "Aumua," Amata has spent virtually part of every year at home since her service on the first American Samoa delegate-at-large's staff three decades ago and continues to divide her time between Pago and Washington, with the length of each stay at home in American Samoa substantially increased over the years.

Washington and International Background

A delegate to several foreign policy conferences conducted by the American Council of Young Political Leaders (ACYPL), Amata was a member of the 1986 ACYPL study tour of Australia and was elected a member of the ACYPL Alumni Council in 1987. A member of the advance team for the historic 1990 Honolulu summit between President George H.W. Bush and Pacific Island leaders, she also was adviser to the Pacific Basin Development Council president, who was a member of the president's summit delegation; she also was Washington advance liaison for the vice president's 1989 visit to Pago Pago. She has been a member of Women's Foreign Policy Group in Washington and the Independent Women's Forum. She also served at the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity under the Executive Office of the President and later as confidential assistant to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Other Experience and Affiliations

Serving out of Washington and in the Pacific as chief diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Pacific Report--a current affairs newsletter that concentrated on the Pacific-from 1984 to1997, Amata was a member of the founding board of the Washington Roundtable for the Asia-Pacific Press, belonged to the Pacific Islands News Association and the International Women's Media Foundation and was a member of the Fiji Press Club as well as being an occasional contributor to the op-ed pages of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and The Advertiser , The Samoa News and The American Samoa Tribune. A life member of the Capitol Hill Club, her other current affiliations include the Guam Society of America, the American Samoa Society of Washington, D.C and the Hawaii State Society.

AUMUA 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 South Pacific Commission's Register of Skilled Women in the Pacific. One of 13 children (ten sons and three daughters) of the late Governor HC Uifaatalii and Mrs. Peter T. , she is married with three grown children.