WMTW: ‘Vision 2020’ projects aim to honor Black and Brown Mainers

Marpheen Chann is HHRC’s Southern Maine Educator. He is an openly gay, second-generation Cambodian American and a Portland, Maine-based thinker, writer and speaker on LGBTQ+ and immigrants’ rights, social justice and equality. He was born in California to a refugee family who later moved to Maine in the late-90s. At the age of 9, he was placed in foster care and later adopted at age 14 by an evangelical, white working class family in Western Maine. Marpheen is the president of the Cambodian Community Association and has served on the boards of the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center and Maine Association of New Americans. While in law school, he chaired the Maine Law LGBTQ+ Law and Policy group and spent 7 months in the Office of Minority and Women Inclusion at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Marpheen holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Southern Maine and a law degree from the University of Maine School of Law. Email: marpheen.channberry@maine.edu