Positions Okazawa-Rey is professor emerita,
San Francisco State University. She also was core faculty in the Doctoral Program of the School of Human and Organization Development at the
Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California. an assistant professor at the
University of Maryland, Baltimore, Okazawa-Rey held the Jane Watson Irwin Chair at
Hamilton College from 1999 to 2001, then returned in 2014 to 2016 as the Elihu Root Chair in Women's Studies. Along with this, she was a visiting professor teaching social policy and U.S. Women of Color. During this time at Mills College, she proposed the Barbara Lee Distinguished Chair in Women's Leadership in honor of the former congresswoman and alumni
Barbara Lee. Furthermore, she co-convened "Women Redefining Security" conferences in Okinawa, Washington, D.C, and Seoul, Korea. In 1978, Okazawa-Rey co-authored “A Black Feminist Statement” with the collective. In 1990, she joined the Advisory board for the
Shanti Project in San Francisco along with the board of directors for the Afro-Asian Relations Council of Washington. In 1994, Okazawa-Rey received a
Fulbright Program in
South Korea, citing an interest in
interminority racism between Korean and African Americans. During her time in South Korea, she noted the U.S. military presence along with the generational impact of the
Japanese colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945. She has a long-standing relationship to international social justice work as she sits on the international board of NGOs:
PeaceWomen Across the Globe (based in Bern, Switzerland),
Du Re Bang (My Sister's Place, Uijongbu, South Korea), and
AWID (Association for Women's Rights in Development) after having worked for three years as the Feminist Research Consultant at the Women's Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling in Ramallah, Palestine. == Personal life ==