About Tina

Official Bio

Tina Fukuchi is a social work entrepreneur, whose passion is to bring awareness and change to social issues. Her experience ranges from counseling clients with heroin addiction at Aegis Medical Systems to helping children and their families cope with chronic illnesses at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center. She graduated from Loyola Marymount University with a Bachelor’s degree in biology and later went on to pursue a Master’s degree in social work at the University of Southern California.

Personal story

I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California in a middle class neighborhood. Although we were not affluent, my parents made sure that I was able to have a fulfilling childhood and I did. My dad is a chef (I am always spoiled when it comes to food) and my mom is an accountant (somehow math is not my thing). Since I was three, I started going to Japanese school and simultaneously took Japanese cultural dancing (Nihon Buyo) for 15 years. In addition to dancing, I also took Japanese cultural singing lessons (nagauta), played the Japanese 3 string instrument (shamisen) and also took voice training lessons. Perhaps my passion for performing lead me into a profession of directly helping others. While my schedule was hectic at times, I enjoyed all of my activities and balanced my life also by doing art, playing basketball and golf.

In high school, I started thinking of wanting to become a doctor. I volunteered at UCLA Children’s hospital under the child life specialist and was able to get a bird’s-eye of the health care field.

When I entered Loyola Marymount University, I majored in biology on the pre-med track. During that time, I was privileged to work as a volunteer Emergency Medical Technician for two years where mostly my heroic duties were about saving the students who drank a little too much that night. Although I had seriously considered medical school up to this point, I started to think that it was not for me. I then decided to attend University of Southern California for the Masters of Social Work program.