Mike Woo

Michael K. Woo, also known as Mike Woo, (born 1951) is dean of the College of Environmental Design at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He was a member of the Los Angeles City Council from 1985 to 1993.

Woo was born October 8, 1951, in Los Angeles County, California, the son of Wilbur and Beth Woo, native Chinese. Wilbur left the family's ancestral village of Hoy Ping, China, in 1940 to study at UCLA and had to stay in the United States during World War II, while Beth remained in China under Japanese occupation with two young daughters, Pat (later Wong) and Janice (later Chin). The family was reunited after the war, in 1946, and settled in a five-bedroom Monterey Park hillside home. Younger daughter Janice had contracted polio and needed seven operations before she could walk without help. The Woos had three more children born in the United States—Michael, Elaine, a journalist on the Los Angeles Times, and Pamela, who had Down's syndrome.

Wilbur and his father, David Kitman Woo, began a produce business in a spot at the Ninth Street Market vacated by a Japanese man who was interned during the Second World War. After arriving in the United States, Beth Woo became the bookkeeper for the family business. In the 1960s, Wilbur Woo and friends chartered Cathay Bank. the first bank in Chinatown. He studied banking and later became a vice-president of the organization.

Michael Woo's Chinese name is , which is rendered Hú Shàojī in the Pinyin orthography and Wu4 Siu6 Gei1 in the Jyutping romanization.

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