Teacher, 1990-1993, and Director of the Office of Community & Resources Development, 1997-2002
Miltinnie Yih was first hired by Jim Handrich in 1990 to teach English in the High School and then became a Dean until 1993. She left to start The Kaplan Educational Center in Hong Kong but was hired again by Jim to return to HKIS in 1996. She was later recruited by Chuck Dull in 1997 to start the school’s Office of Community & Resources Development and was the director of that office until 2002.
Someone who remembers Miltinnie fondly is Mark Sheldon, who was an active parent and volunteer when his son Garth was a student at HKIS in the late 1990s. Mark was also the Director of HKIS’s Office of Institutional Advancement (as the current Advancement Office was then called) from 2006 to 2009.
He recalled, “Miltinnie was the founding director of the Office of Community & Resources Development – that’s what the current Advancement Office was originally known as. At that time, there was no fundraising or Annual Fund or Annual Ball. Most of the things we now think of as community-building, development, volunteering, and fundraising were all founded by Miltinnie. So she worked hard to develop community relations and philanthropy as a part of the School’s posture and culture, and she was very effective at communicating with parents. She was also one of the first people in the school to raise the issue of how the school board effectively serves students with mental disabilities.”
Miltinnie and her family returned to the US in 2002. She and her husband had an active outreach to Chinese scholars at elite universities in the Boston area. They just moved to San Bruno, CA in May 2017 to continue the work. Miltinnie wrote the memoir, “A Pearl Necklace” under the pen name MiXue published in China, Taiwan, and the US and visits China and HK regularly to give talks.