Teri Tan

Dr. Teri Tan is a spontaneous communicator with a penchant for creative problem solving. She is passionate about building and fostering programs that make meaningful positive impacts on communities—on a local and global scale. Currently she is a medical administrator and management specialist, consulting for a medical group, and is also Director of Health Equity at her family’s clinic. 

Born in Greece and raised in Australia, Teri started a family of her own in the United States, settling in Long Beach in the 1990s, where she established her community and philanthropic roots. She feels a deep connection to each of the places she has called home. 

Prior to her work in medical administration and her move to the United States, Teri was recruited by the Australian Minister of Immigration and the national Commissioner for Community Relations as the first and leading consultant in promoting languages and multiculturalism in education as well as in professional contexts across Australia. In this role, she was involved with arts festivals and other multicultural events. 

In California, Dr. Tan was a foundational member of the Cambodian Health Professionals Association of America (CHPAA), where she served as Head Mission Administrator for their first eight mission trips. 

Her administrative expertise combined with her multinational first-hand experience in multiculturalism, education, the arts, and philanthropy led her to found Sustainable Health Empowerment (SHE) charitable foundation in 2014, where she has led five more global health education trips to Cambodia, mentoring students from UCLA, CSULB, and other universities. SHE was the recipient of two DHHS grants (in 2023 and 2024), enabling Teri and her team to organize three successful Long Beach health fairs of unprecedented scope, focused especially (but not exclusively) on local AAPI communities. The scope of SHE’s programs continues to expand—providing resources to underserved clinics in rural Greece, health educational resources translated for use by doctors in Rwanda, and prosthetics for amputees in Cambodia. 

Teri is a lifelong learner. She has studied six languages (and is fluent in four) and was educated at universities in four countries. She holds a teaching degree, a Master’s Degree, a PhD, and, more recently, an Executive MBA from Loyola Marymount University. 

Teri enjoys traveling, world history, and being involved in the arts. From 2004–2007, she served as a board member of the Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra, and she attends local concerts and performances as often as her busy schedule permits. Most of all, she enjoys spending time with her two children—one physician and one composer-violinist—who both live nearby in Long Beach. Through her lifelong travels and friendships, she finds she feels at home everywhere in the world.