Winners of the 2009 American Success Awards:

LILY BENGFORT

For three years, Lily Bengfort’s parents worked on student visas in the U.S. while Lily and her five siblings lived with various relatives in their native Guyana. Lily was 12 years old by the time the family reunited, emigrated and settled near Harlem, NY in 1972. When her father died three years later, her mother supplemented her income by selling fabrics at home – becoming the inspiration for young Lily’s entrepreneurial spirit. Since then, Lily Bengfort has earned a Bachelors degree in English from Ohio and an MBA from Loyola College of Maryland and has completed the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer program at UMBC while raising three children with her husband, Randy. Lily Bengfort’s mantra, “think big, move fast and implement smart”, speaks volumes about her style. Her start-ups have ranged from a pest control business in the 1980s to CenGen, a high-tech venture she launched in 2000 that specializes in wireless and mobile communications technologies and their applications in defense, intelligent transportation systems and first responder communication programs.  Mrs. Bengfort serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council for the Merrick School of Business at the University of Baltimore and has received a Maryland Achievement Award and Smart ECO Magazine’s Bravo Business Achievement Award presented to the Top 25 Smart Women in Maryland. She is also a dedicated mentor and philanthropist in the community.

yIFEI GAN

In 1989, Mr. Yifei Gan was a guest lecturer in the U.S. when the Chinese government’s violent response to protests in Tiananmen Square convinced him to stay. As Mr. Gan says, “An artist must have freedom of spirit.” At age 19, after surviving two years of hard labor in one of  Mao’s re-education camps and with only a middle school education, he began his teaching career at an elementary school. In 1979, a new era of modernization under Deng Xiaoping followed Mao’s death, enabling young Yifei to test into the Southwest China Normal University. In the 1980s, Mr. Gan become a professor and director of international programs there, establishing exchange programs with the U.S. while earning a master’s degree in fine arts. Following the Tiananmen Square incident, he remained in the U.S. as an Associate Professor at Howard Community College where his teaching skills, his gift for instilling in students a passion for art and learning, and his extraordinary artistic talent led to a full professorship in record time. A leader in internationalizing the curriculum, for which HCC has won many awards, Mr. Gan established relationships with China’s top arts institution and led a group of HCC students to Beijing for the Summer 2008 Olympics. A noted exhibitor, lecturer, illustrator, author and TV host in the U.S. and China, his commissioned portrait of Patrick and Jill McCuan graces HCC’s McCuan Hall.  As a board member and committee chair for the Howard County Arts Council and the Howard County Chinese School, Mr. Gans has built lasting bonds between these institutions and HCC.

reverend young s. song

When Rev. Young S. Song arrived in the U.S. to attend Talbot School of Theology at Biola University in California, he had only enough money for tuition, an apartment and a used car (stolen from him that very night). Penniless but determined, he borrowed a rusty bike to ride to school – one of many challenges he has surmounted over the years. In 1988, he moved to Howard County and has been a strong and stable spiritual leader to the Korean community ever since – authoring several books, working to bridge relationships between the Korean and African-American communities and serving as founding pastor at Church of Philippi since 1993. Within 16 years, the church’s membership has grown from 30 to over 1,000 today, making it one of the largest Korean-American churches in Maryland.  Under Rev. Song’s leadership, the church has instituted key programs such as an annual Korean Heritage Cultural Vacation Bible School that teaches families about the heritage of children they have adopted from Korea, and weekly Korean language classes that help K-12 graders to preserve their heritage language.  Rev. Song serves as a Board member of Korean-American Students in the United States (KOSTA), an organization that develops future Korean-American leaders.  He is also Chairman of the Board for Global Missionary Fellowship North America which mobilizes, trains, and sends global leaders throughout the world (including inner-city areas in the U.S.) to spur faith-based community development.