Together, we build community, fight against racism and hate, and create a permanent and irrevocable sense of belonging for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
board members
Li Lu
Li Lu
Li Lu is the founder and Chairman of Himalaya Capital, a multi-billion-dollar investment firm that primarily focuses on long-term investment opportunities in Asia and the U.S.
Read Bio
Li Lu
Li Lu is the Founder and Chairman of Himalaya Capital, a multi-billion-dollar investment firm that primarily focuses on long-term investment opportunities in Asia and the U.S. Li Lu was born and raised in China. As a college student, he participated in the Tiananmen Square student movement in 1989. He was forced to leave the country and came to the U.S. later that year. From 1990 to 1996, Li Lu attended Columbia University and became one of the first students in the university’s history to graduate with three degrees simultaneously: B.A., J.D., and M.B.A. from Columbia College, Law School, and Business School.
He founded Himalaya Capital in late 1997 and has been running its principal fund ever since. Li Lu currently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University and a member of the Board of Trustees of California Institute of Technology. In January 2020, Li Lu co-founded the Guardians of the Angeles Charitable Foundation to combat the global COVID-19 crisis and now serves as Chairman of the Board of the Foundation. Li Lu is a member of the Committee of 100, the Council on Foreign Relations, and an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow.
He is featured in the Smithsonian Institute’s Family of Voices, part of the ongoing Many Voices, One Nation exhibition at the National Museum of American History. He is the author of Moving the Mountain: My Life in China (1990 in English) and Civilization, Modernization, Value Investing --- and China (2020 in Chinese). Li Lu was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020.
"I feel that one plus one equals unlimited potential, and that's what really makes America powerful. As a Chinese American, I know when we leverage the strengths of everyone we create belonging and a future fueled by innovation, growth and opportunity."
"I feel that one plus one equals unlimited potential, and that's what really makes America powerful. As a Chinese American, I know when we leverage the strengths of everyone we create belonging and a future fueled by innovation, growth and opportunity."
.png)
Norman Chen
Norman Chen
Norman Chen is the Chief Executive Officer of TAAF. Norman brings a thirty-year career in entrepreneurship, healthcare, community leadership, and philanthropy spanning the United States and Asia. Norman is passionate about building organizations in both the nonprofit and private sectors that positively impact society.
Read Bio
Norman Chen
Norman Chen is the Chief Executive Officer of TAAF and brings a thirty-year career in entrepreneurship, healthcare and community leadership in the United States and Asia. Norman is passionate about building organizations in both the nonprofit and private sectors that positively impact society.
Prior to his appointment at TAAF, Norman co-founded the nonprofit Leading Asian Americans to Unite for Change (LAAUNCH) and helped to create a landmark study, The STAATUS Index, of American attitudes towards Asian Americans.
As a healthcare entrepreneur, Norman was the founder and CEO of Asia Renal Care, a network of specialty medical centers in six countries, and co-founder of DeltaHealth Hospital, a world-class hospital in partnership with Columbia Heartsource. As a venture capitalist, Norman led successful life sciences investments at Fidelity Asia Ventures (now Eight Roads) and 6 Dimensions Capital.
Norman grew up on the East Coast and currently lives in the Bay Area. He has been a board or advisory council member at The Nature Conservancy (CA), Children’s Medical Foundation (HK), SF Marine Science Institute, and Positive Coaching Alliance. He holds a B.S. degree from MIT and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
“I am deeply honored and grateful to join the visionary founders and leaders of TAAF to help to create a better future for Asian American and Pacific Islanders, who are facing record levels of hate, discrimination and prejudice in our country. We look forward to working closely with other AAPI organizations, allies and partners to build the infrastructure that can promote a greater sense of belonging and prosperity across our communities."
Joseph Bae
Joseph Bae
Joseph Y. Bae is Co-Chief Executive Officer of Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts (KKR), a global investment firm with over $365 billion in assets under management.
Read Bio
Joseph Bae
Joseph Y. Bae is Co-Chief Executive Officer of Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts (KKR), a global investment firm with over $365 billion in assets under management.
In the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, Bae and the KKR leadership established a $50 million global relief fund to help people affected by COVID-19. The fund supports the immediate needs of frontline medical workers, ensures food security to vulnerable communities, provides benefits and financial coaching for affected employees among KKR portfolio companies and assists small businesses facing difficulties.
A proud Korean American, Mr. Bae grew up in Long Island, New York and now lives with his wife Janice and their four children. He holds a B.A., magna cum laude, from Harvard College. Mr. Bae serves on the boards of a number of non-profit educational and cultural institutions including as a trustee for Phillips Andover Academy, the Global Advisory Council at Harvard University and a board member of Lincoln Center.
"Asian Americans have a long and deep history in the United States and have made significant contributions to the country’s success over the past 150 years. I joined TAAF to help amplify the voice of the AAPI community and to ensure that all Asian Americans will have an opportunity to thrive now and in the future."
Jonathan Greenblatt
Jonathan Greenblatt
Jonathan Greenblatt is the CEO of ADL (Anti-Defamation League) and its sixth National Director. As chief executive of ADL, Jonathan leads all aspects of the world’s leading anti-hate organization.
Read Bio
Jonathan Greenblatt
Jonathan Greenblatt is the CEO of ADL (Anti-Defamation League) and its sixth National Director. As chief executive of ADL, Jonathan leads all aspects of the world’s leading anti-hate organization. Since becoming CEO in July 2015, Greenblatt has modernized ADL while refocusing it on the mission it has had since its founding in 1913: to fight the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.
Jonathan is an accomplished entrepreneur and innovative leader with deep experience in the private, public and nonprofit sectors. Before ADL, he served as Special Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Social Innovation. He co-founded Ethos Brands, the business that launched Ethos Water, the bottled water that helps children around the world access clean water. Ethos was acquired by Starbucks Coffee Company in 2005. Following the acquisition, Jonathan was named VP of Global Consumer Products at Starbucks and joined the board of the Starbucks Foundation. Jonathan also founded All for Good, served as CEO of GOOD Worldwide, and VP of Consumer Products at REALTOR.com
Jonathan has been recognized on multiple occasions for his leadership at ADL. He has been named by The NonProfit Times to its list of Top 50 Nonprofit Leaders from 2016-2020. Recode named Jonathan to its inaugural “Recode 100,” a list of the top 100 people in business and technology. He has been named among the Top 50 Most Influential Leaders in the global Jewish community by The Jerusalem Post and as one of the Top 50 Jews to follow on Twitter by the JTA.
Jonathan has served as an adjunct faculty member at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA and as a senior fellow at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Jonathan graduated cum laude with a BA from Tufts University and earned his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
"As a Jewish American, I feel a moral obligation to stand with AAPI communities. The Jewish people know what it’s like to be targeted with harassment, vandalism, and violence. Moreover, the hate that threatens individuals from AAPI communities ultimately threatens all marginalized communities. Solidarity is the only way to ensure our collective safety. We must all speak up, no matter who we are, especially now."
Sheila Lirio Marcelo
Sheila Lirio Marcelo
Sheila Lirio Marcelo is a Filipina American Founder, former Chairwoman and CEO of Care.com. Marcelo founded her company in 2006, and under her leadership, Care.com became the world's largest marketplace for providing care,
Read Bio
Sheila Lirio Marcelo
Sheila Lirio Marcelo is a Filipina American Founder, former Chairwoman and CEO of Care.com. Marcelo founded her company in 2006, and under her leadership, Care.com became the world's largest marketplace for providing care, serving more than 35 million people across 20 countries and growing more than 100% year-over-year from its founding in 2006, until the company went public in 2014. Committed to building a company that can be both profitable and mission-based, Sheila drove innovation across Care.com's platforms and services to enable families to find care, and for caregivers to receive meaningful work, while also leveraging the company's data and reach to drive systemic change across the care economy as a whole. In 2020, Care.com was acquired by holding company IAC.
Over the course of Care.com’s growth, Marcelo has also been honored with numerous accolades, including one of the "Top 10 Women Entrepreneurs" at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit and Fortune Magazine. She is a Henry Crown Fellow with the Aspen Institute, a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, was awarded a Marshall Memorial Fellowship, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Marcelo also co-founded Landit, the career-centric online platform that connects women and diverse groups with such resources as career coaching and personal branding tools. In January 2021, Marcelo joined venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA), where she's focused on helping other female founders get the funding they need.
Born and raised in the Philippines, Marcelo graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in economics from Mt. Holyoke College, which also conferred upon her an honorary Doctorate of Human Letters in 2015. Marcelo earned both her JD and MBA with honors from Harvard University, and in 2014, was the youngest recipient of the Harvard Business School Alumni Achievement Award.
"I’ve long believed that education is one of the most powerful tools in bridging cultures and bringing people together to create change. My role at TAAF will be in service of building that understanding through sharing stories and amplifying voices. The more we learn about one another, the more we can stand in solidarity with our community, allies and partners to create a more just and equitable future for all."
Joe Tsai
Joe Tsai
Joe Tsai is Governor of the NBA Brooklyn Nets and WNBA New York Liberty. He co-founded Alibaba Group, a global Internet technology company headquartered in China, in 1999, and serves as the company’s executive vice chairman.
Read Bio
Joe Tsai
Joe Tsai is Governor of the NBA Brooklyn Nets and WNBA New York Liberty. He co-founded Alibaba Group, a global Internet technology company headquartered in China, in 1999, and serves as the company’s executive vice chairman. Tsai was born in Taiwan, of parents who originally came from Shanghai with ancestral lineage to Zhejiang Province in China.
Tsai and his wife Clara have taken on active roles supporting social justice and COVID-19 related humanitarian relief. In addition to Tsai’s commitment to The Asian American Foundation, the couple pledged $50 million to advocate for social justice and economic mobility in the Black community through their sports ownership platform, including supporting players to amplify their voice for equality, and addressing income, education and health gaps in communities of color. In April 2020, at the outset of the pandemic, the couple donated personal protective equipment and ventilators to hospitals and underserved institutions in New York, New Jersey, California and the city of Detroit.
Active philanthropists in education and research, the Tsais established the Wu Tsai Neuroscience Institute at Stanford University, dedicated to understanding how the brain gives rise to mental life and behavior, both in health and in disease. The couple also founded the Wu Tsai Institute at Yale University to focus on understanding human cognition and exploring human potential by sparking interdisciplinary inquiry among the psychological, biological, and computational sciences. With Tsai’s support, Yale launched the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY) to inspire students from diverse backgrounds and disciplines to seek innovative ways to solve real-world problems from climate change to civic engagement. Tsai is a supporter of the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School, a center named after his father dedicated to helping advance legal reforms in China and increasing understanding of China in the United States.
A graduate of the Lawrenceville School (’82), Yale College (BA ’86) and Yale Law School (JD ’90), Tsai played varsity lacrosse for Yale and, in 2017, received the George H.W. Bush ‘48 Lifetime of Leadership Award, which honors Yale alumni athletes who have made significant leadership contributions in their worlds of governance, commerce, science and technology, education, public service, and the arts and media.
"History repeats itself. The hostile sentiment against Asian Americans reared its ugly head during the COVID-19 pandemic, but there had been repeated scapegoating of Asians in this country, such as discriminatory policies against Chinese immigrants in the 19th Century and internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. I’ve co-founded TAAF to combat such scapegoating, and to ensure that Americans of Asian descent attain a sense of belonging and gain access to equal opportunities in all aspects of society."
Jerry Yang
Jerry Yang
Jerry Yang co-founded Yahoo! in 1995 with fellow Stanford graduate student David Filo and served on its board and as a member of its executive team until 2012, including as CEO from 2007 to 2009.
Read Bio
Jerry Yang
Jerry Yang co-founded Yahoo! in 1995 with fellow Stanford graduate student David Filo and served on its board and as a member of its executive team until 2012, including as CEO from 2007 to 2009. In 2012, he founded AME Cloud Ventures, a venture fund that invests in seed-stage to later-stage tech companies that build infrastructure and value chains around data.
Yang is set to become the first Asian American to serve as the Chair of Stanford University’s Board of Trustees in July, 2021. At Stanford, he has served twice on the board of trustees, the first time from 2005 to 2015. He joined the board again in October 2017 and has served as its vice chair. Yang and Filo were recognized as Engineering Heroes by the Stanford School of Engineering in 2013. The program recognizes the achievements of Stanford engineers who have advanced the course of human, social and economic progress through engineering.
Yang currently sits on the boards of Alibaba, Workday and Lenovo. He also serves as director of the Monterey Peninsula Foundation and a trustee of Dunhuang Foundation (USA). He is a member of the Committee of 100 and the Council on Foreign Relations. He previously served on the boards of Cisco Systems and Asian Pacific Fund of San Francisco.
Jerry Yang was born in Taipei and immigrated to the United States in 1978, growing up in San Jose, California. Yang and his wife, Akiko Yamazaki (also a Stanford graduate), have been active philanthropists At Stanford, Yang and Yamazaki have supported a wide range of programs, including initiatives around artificial intelligence, environment and sustainability, the arts, COVID-19 research, and various scholarships and fellowships. Yang and Akiko were early supporters of UCSF’s Covid-19 Response Fund. Yang and Yamazaki are the lead donors to the San Francisco Asian Art Museum expansion.
"If ever there was a time for collaboration, it is NOW. The way we’ll defeat this virus of racism and scapegoating is if people come together across the country and disciplines to share resources and knowledge."
Peng Zhao
Peng Zhao
Peng Zhao is Chief Executive Officer of Citadel Securities, a global financial services firm with offices across the United States, Asia-Pacific and Europe.
Read Bio
Peng Zhao
Peng Zhao is Chief Executive Officer of Citadel Securities, a global financial services firm with offices across the United States, Asia-Pacific and Europe. One of the firm’s early architects, he joined Citadel Securities directly out of graduate school as a Senior Quantitative Researcher.
Peng has led the company through a period of continued growth and sustained expansion. He was named to Fortune Magazine’s 40 Under 40 list, which noted that under his stewardship, “Citadel Securities has not only widened its lead as the top market maker in U.S. stocks,” but also emerged as a transformative influence in new and growing markets.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Peng and his wife Cherry, both Chinese Americans, organized the donation of over one million masks to first responders and helped raise funds for medical supplies in Hubei province, aid to families displaced by the pandemic and early resources for vaccine development.
Peng earned his PhD in Statistics from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a Berkeley Fellow, and holds a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics from Peking University. He serves on the Board of Trustees for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
"My wife Cherry and I are grateful for the hard work of our frontline responders. We wanted to do our part to ensure that they had the necessary resources to fulfill their critical mission. We’re also committed to driving positive change in response to harmful rhetoric directed against AAPI communities. I’m pleased that TAAF will lead the way in protecting our AAPI frontline workers, who risk their lives every day to save all Americans, and in fostering greater unity and understanding."
advisory council
Angela Chao
Read Bio
Angela Chao
Angela Chao is the current Chair and CEO of the Foremost Group, a global leader in dry bulk shipping and a pioneer in incorporating environmentally friendly designs into its modern fleet of ships.
Before joining the Foremost Group, Chao worked in the mergers and acquisitions department of what is now Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. She currently serves on a number of public and nonprofit boards.
Chao holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard, where she graduated magna cum laude in Economics in three years, and earned her MBA degree from Harvard Business School. She resides in Austin, TX and speaks Mandarin Chinese.
Daniel Dae Kim
Read Bio
Daniel Dae Kim
Daniel Dae Kim is an actor, director, and producer who captivates global audiences with compelling performances across film, television and theater. Kim can currently be seen in Netflix's "Stowaway" and in Disney's "Raya and The Last Dragon." Upcoming projects include AMC’s "Pantheon," an animated drama inspired by Ken Liu’s short stories, and National Geographic’s "The Hot Zone: Anthrax."
Kim is a longtime champion of diversity and inclusion in Hollywood and an important voice against anti-AAPI violence. In 2015, Kim launched his production company 3AD to feature traditionally underrepresented in front of and behind the camera. 3AD produces the ABC hit "The Good Doctor" and has several projects in development, including the recently announced "Shoot the Moon," with Ken Jeong. Kim starred on the hit series "Hawaii Five-0" and "Lost," as well as on stage in Lincoln Center's Tony Award-winning production of "The King and I."
Born in South Korea, raised in Pennsylvania, Kim began his career on stage after graduating from Haverford College and earning an MFA from NYU.
X. Rick Niu
Read Bio
X. Rick Niu
X. Rick Niu is President of Starr Strategic Holdings LLC, part of a global insurance and investment organization chaired by WWII hero Maurice R. Greenberg.
A regular advisor to world leaders, Starr presents a superior global capability that meets the principal investment, wealth management, commercial insurance and other strategic needs of emerging-market investors doing business in the U.S. and around the world, as well as companies and local governments in developed and developing countries seeking international investments that support commercial growth, capital optimization and job creation.
Niu is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Committee of 100. He has been involved in numerous charitable efforts helping to develop the next generation of American leadership, and actively supporting Starr's historic commitment to U.S.-China relations.
Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Niu earned a B.S. from Tsinghua University in Beijing, and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School. He also attended INSEAD’s Senior Executive Leadership Program in Paris and Singapore.
Farah Pandith
Read Bio
Farah Pandith
Farah Pandith is author of How We Win and a world-leading expert and pioneer in countering violent extremism. She served as a political appointee under three presidents on the National Security Council, at the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, and most recently as the first-ever Special Representative to Muslim Communities. She is a senior fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. In fall 2020, the Muhammad Ali Center named Pandith the first-ever Muhammad Ali Global Peace Laureate.
Don Chen
Read Bio
Don Chen
Don Chen is the President of the Surdna Foundation where he leads the 100-year old foundation’s efforts to strengthen and further leverage its commitment to social justice.
Prior to his appointment, Chen was the Director of the Cities & States program at the Ford Foundation, where he worked to make housing more affordable, promote more equitable land use practices, and empower communities to have a powerful decision-making voice in U.S. cities and in developing countries. He also led a multi-program team to strengthen social justice organizations and networks in the U.S.
Chen was also the Founder and CEO of Smart Growth America, where he created the National Vacant Properties Campaign and Transportation for America, and managed a merger with the Growth Management Leadership Alliance.
Chen currently serves as Co-Chair of the Presidents’ Council on Impact Investing and on the boards of Living Cities, Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, and Philanthropy New York. He holds an M.A. from the Yale School of the Environment and a B.A. in political science from Yale.
Lanhee Chen
Read Bio
Lanhee Chen
Lanhee J. Chen, Ph.D. is the David and Diane Steffy Fellow in American Public Policy Studies at the Hoover Institution and Director of Domestic Policy Studies and Lecturer in the Public Policy Program at Stanford. He is also a Senior Counselor at the Brunswick Group and Chairman of the Board of Directors of El Camino Health.
Chen has worked in American politics, the U.S. government, academia, and business. He is a veteran of several high-profile campaigns and served as policy director and chief policy adviser for Governor Mitt Romney’s 2012 bid for the presidency; a senior adviser to Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign; and a health policy adviser to the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign. Chen was a presidentially-appointed member of the Social Security Advisory Board and a senior appointee at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the George W. Bush Administration.
Chen's writings have been published in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He appears often on national television programming. He earned his Ph.D. and A.M. in political science from Harvard, his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School, and his A.B. magna cum laude in government from Harvard.
Patricia Eng
Read Bio
Patricia Eng
Patricia Eng is the President and CEO of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, the only national philanthropy serving organization focused on AAPI communities.
Eng previously served as Chief Service Officer at the Mayor’s Office of the City of New York to deepen and expand civic engagement through volunteer and service programs. She founded the New York Asian Women’s Center, the first organization on the East Coast working with battered immigrant Asian women. She innovated grantmaking strategy in several areas, including early support for men’s efforts to address masculinity and violence, and launched the first collaborative fund in the country focused on young women and gender non-binary youth of color.
A graduate of Hunter College School of Social Work and Princeton, Eng studied community organizing, politics, and teacher preparation. She lives on the East Coast where she participates in several social justice giving circles.
Lisa Hasegawa
Read Bio
Lisa Hasegawa
Lisa Hasegawa is the Regional Vice President of the Western Region at NeighborWorks America (NWA). She served as the Executive Director of the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development (National CAPACD), the first national advocacy organization dedicated to meeting the affordable housing and community development needs of AAPI communities for 15 years.
She currently serves on the boards of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and Asian Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation (APIAHiP). Previously, she worked at UCLA, the White House Initiative on AAPIs and the Department of Health and Human Services, and served on boards of the National Council for Asian Pacific Americans, Little Tokyo Service Center, Congressional Progressive Caucus Center, National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum and National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC).
She is a fourth generation Japanese American from Orange, CA, and attended UCLA and the Harvard School of Public Health.
Kenneth Hersh
Read Bio
Kenneth Hersh
Since 2016, Ken Hersh has served as President and CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, a non-partisan institution which houses the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum and the George W. Bush Institute.
In 1988, he co-founded NGP Energy Capital Management, one of the largest natural resources private equity firms in the world with over $20 billion of total committed capital. Until 2016, he served as CEO of the firm. From 1988 through 2015, under his leadership, NGP invested over $12 billion and achieved returns making it one of the nation’s leading private equity firms.
Additionally, Ken manages his family investment office and serves as Senior Advisor to The Carlyle Group’s natural resources division. He is on the Hoover Institute’s
Board of Overseers, the Harvard Kennedy School Dean’s Council and, among other corporate and civic organizations, sits on the board of the Texas Rangers Baseball Club.
Moushumi Khan
Read Bio
Moushumi Khan
Moushumi Khan is an attorney with 25 years of business, legal, and government experience. She is active in non-profits, public advocacy, and advising on emerging markets. Ms. Khan was most recently the founding CEO of Nirapon, a leading safety monitoring initiative of North American brands sourcing readymade garments from Bangladesh.
Ms. Khan served as the Country Director for The Foundation for Charitable Activities in Bangladesh, and as the first Director of Legal and Compliance at BRAC, the world’s largest NGO.
Ms. Khan is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She serves on the Boards of the Interfaith Center of New York and Rahimafrooz Renewable Energy Ltd. She is listed in the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations’ Global Expert Finder. Ms. Khan also helped found the Muslim Bar Association of New York.
Moushumi Khan earned her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, a MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, an A.B. degree in Critical Social Thought, cum laude, from Mount Holyoke College and a Certificate in General Course in Government at the London School of Economics. She grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Jim Yong Kim
Read Bio
Jim Yong Kim
Jim Yong Kim M.D., Ph.D., is Vice Chairman and Partner at Global Infrastructure Partners. Kim served as the 12th President of the World Bank Group and helped the organization establish two goals to guide its work: to end extreme poverty by 2030; and to boost shared prosperity, focusing on the bottom 40% of the population in developing countries.
A physician and anthropologist, Kim’s career has revolved around health, education, and improving the lives of the poor. Prior to joining the WBG, he served as the President of Dartmouth and held professorships at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. From 2003 to 2005, Kim served as Director of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS department and led their “3 by 5” initiative, the first-ever global goal for AIDS treatment to expand access to antiretroviral medication. In 1987, Kim co-founded Partners In Health, a non-profit medical organization.
Kim received a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, was recognized as one of America’s “25 Best Leaders” by U.S. News & World Report, and was named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World.”
Erika Lee
Read Bio
Erika Lee
Professor Erika Lee is an award-winning historian and author, Regents Professor of History and Asian American Studies, Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, and President-Elect of the Organization of American Historians.
The granddaughter of Chinese immigrants, Lee was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and testified before Congress in its historic hearings on anti-Asian discrimination and violence.
Lee is the author of four award-winning books including The Making of Asian America and America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in America, which won the American Book Award and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and more. Identified as an essential book illuminating the Trump era and the 2020 elections, it will be published with a new epilogue on xenophobia and racism during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Making of Asian America will also soon be republished with a new postscript about the latest campaigns against Asian Americans. Lee has been featured in PBS’s film series “Asian Americans” and has been interviewed for many news shows, podcasts, and publications.
Jeremy Lin
Read Bio
Jeremy Lin
A Palo Alto native, Jeremy Lin is a nine-year NBA veteran, NBA Champion, and philanthropist. His rise to prominence spread like wildfire during February 2012, when he took over the starting point guard role for the struggling New York Knicks and began one of the most improbable journeys sports has ever seen. Suddenly, everybody was following the inspiration of Lin that is forever known as “Linsanity.”
A Harvard University graduate, Lin helped pave the way for his Harvard team to become nationally-ranked for the first time in its history along with making their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1946. Lin has played with the Warriors, Knicks, Rockets, Lakers, Hornets, Nets, Hawks, and NBA Champion Raptors.
Lisa Ling
Read Bio
Lisa Ling
Lisa is the Executive Producer and host of THIS IS LIFE on CNN.
Previously, Lisa EP’d and hosted Our America on OWN. She was also a field correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show and contributor to ABC News' Nightline. For these shows she reported from dozens of countries; covering stories about gang rape in the Congo, bride burning in India and the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, among other issues that are too often ignored.
Lisa was the first female host of National Geographic’s flagship show Explorer which sent her to cover female suicide bombing, the spread of the MS-13 gang, and the humanitarian crisis inside North Korea.
She started in journalism as a correspondent for Channel One News where she covered the civil war in Afghanistan at 21 years of age. She then became a co-host of ABC hit show The View, which won its first daytime Emmy during her time.
Lisa is the co-author of “Mother, Sister. Daughter, Bride: Rituals of Womanhood,” and “Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and The Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home” that she penned with her sister Laura.
In 2014, President Obama appointed Lisa to the Commission on White House Fellows. She is an advisory board member for Fostering Media Connections, The Amani Project, and a Baby2Baby angel.
Melvin Mar
Read Bio
Melvin Mar
Melvin Mar began his career at Dreamworks SKG, Scott Rudin Productions, where he built a solid relationship with “Orange County” director Jake Kasdan. They have since worked together on films including “The TV Set,” “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” “Bad Teacher,” “Sex Tape”, “Jumanji: Welcome to The Jungle”, Jumanji: The Next Level, the indie feature "Lucky Grandma" and the hit television comedy “New Girl.” Besides serving as executive producer on the upcoming Doogie Kamealoha for Disney+, Mar served as an executive producer on “Fresh Off the Boat”, "Bless This Mess", “Weird Loners”, “The Grinder” and "Speechless".
Mar and Kasdan have an overall deal at Walt Disney Television, where they are developing comedies and dramas for cable, streaming and network television. He is based in Los Angeles and New York.
Mee Moua
Read Bio
Mee Moua
Mee Moua is a racial healing, racial equity consultant who provides training, facilitation and coaching support for individuals and organizations seeking equity transformation. She is passionate about democracy building, heart leadership, and making visible the interconnectedness among peoples. Some of her clients are local and State elected officials, community and national foundations, colleges and universities, and non-profits.
Moua was the President and Executive Director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-AAJC and the Vice President the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum. Prior to her work in Washington, D.C., she was an attorney and a member of the Minnesota State Senate. Moua was born in Laos and came to the U.S. in 1978 as a refugee. She grew up in the midwest, attended Brown, received her M.P.A. from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and earned her J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School.
She currently works and lives in Maryland with her husband and their three children.
Amanda Nguyen
Read Bio
Amanda Nguyen
Amanda Nguyen is an internationally acclaimed social entrepreneur. She was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. Nguyen penned her own civil rights into existence by unanimously passing the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights. She has trained hundreds of activists using her theory of organizing, "Hopeanomics," to pass 34 laws protecting more than 85 million sexual violence survivors. Recently, her viral video sparked national coverage on anti-asian hate crimes.
Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Rise, a social movement accelerator where she teaches grassroots organizing. In recognition of her work, Amanda is a Heinz Laureate, Nelson Mandela Changemaker, Forbes 30 Under 30, Foreign Policy 100, Time 100 Next, Frederick Douglass 100, and Marie Claire Young Woman of the Year. Previously, Nguyen served at NASA and the State Department under the Obama Administration. She graduated from Harvard.
Indra Nooyi
Read Bio
Indra Nooyi
Indra Nooyi is the former chairman and CEO of PepsiCo and served as a board member between 2001 and February 2019.
Currently, Nooyi is a member of the Board of Amazon and chairs the Audit Committee. She sits on the Supervisory Board of Philips and is a member of the Nominating and Corporate Governance committee. She is a member of the International Advisory Council of Temasek and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She is a Dean’s Advisory Council member at MIT’s School of Engineering, and an Executive Committee member of the MIT Corporation. Nooyi serves on the Board of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the Partnership for Public Service. She is the Class of 1951 Chair for the Study of Leadership at West Point.
Nooyi holds a B.S. from Madras Christian College, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, and a master’s in public and private management from Yale.
Michael Park
Read Bio
Michael Park
Michael Park is a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, where he leads the firm's Global Organization and Accelerate Practices. Prior to that, he led McKinsey Academy and the firm's Strategy and Corporate Finance Practice. He also helped found and leads Asians at McKinsey, their Asian employee resource group.
As an active member in the community, Park has led McKinsey's research on accelerating growth and competitiveness in U.S. industry, including the McKinsey Quarterly article “Translating innovation into US growth” and work with the Brookings Institute, World Economic Forum, and state governments. He sits on the board of Global Health Corps and Leaders for Educational Equity.
Park was selected as a David Rockefeller Fellow of the Partnership for New York City in 2011-12. He graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard with an A.B in Economics. Park and his wife and three children reside in New York City.
Joshua Cooper Ramo
Read Bio
Joshua Cooper Ramo
Joshua Cooper Ramo is Chairman and CEO of Sornay. He served as lead China advisor on over $200 billion of completed China transactions and led investments alongside China’s most significant commercial and financial players. Previously, he was CEO and Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates and the Foreign Editor and Senior Editor of TIME Magazine. He serves as a director of Starbucks and FedEx.
Ramo authored two New York Times bestsellers, The Age of the Unthinkable and The Seventh Sense, and has been featured in TIME, FORTUNE, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times. He shared an Emmy and Peabody Award for his work as as NBC analyst during the Olympics in Pyeongchang and Beijing, and has been seen on Meet the Press, CNN, CNBC, and Charlie Rose.
Ramo has been a Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Asia21 project, a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Leaders for Tomorrow, and a founder of the US-China Young Leaders Forum.
Raised in New Mexico, Ramo holds degrees from the University of Chicago and NYU.
Naheed Qureshi
Read Bio
Naheed Qureshi
Naheed Qureshi is Head of Policy Partnerships at Instacart where she builds relationships with stakeholders to further joint policy goals. She is also a commissioner on President Biden's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.
Prior to joining Instacart, Naheed developed deep expertise in public policy during her 20+ year civil rights career. She was a founding board member and later deputy director of Muslim Advocates, a national civil rights advocacy organization where she focused on combatting discrimination and hate crimes and managed large coalitions to fight the Muslim ban and other forms of bigotry targeting communities of color. Naheed also served as the co-chair of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Hate Crimes and Bigotry Taskforce.
After 9/11 Naheed was recruited to join the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. She joined the Justice Department through the Attorney General’s Honors Program where she acted as an attorney advisor to Immigration Judge Ellen K. Thomas. Naheed also worked for the City of Los Angeles Department of Neighborhood Empowerment and the national legislative office of the ACLU. At the ACLU, she focused on racial profiling, voting rights, the USA Patriot Act and other national civil rights issues.
Naheed received a B.A. in political science from the University of Wisconsin and J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. The daughter of immigrants from Pakistan, Naheed was raised in Wisconsin and is a proud cheesehead.
Condoleezza Rice
Read Bio
Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy. In addition, she is a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, an international strategic consulting firm.
Rice served as the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, the second woman and first black woman to hold the post. Rice also served as President George W. Bush’s Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, the first woman to hold the position.
Rice served as Stanford University’s provost from 1993 to 1999. Rice has won two of the university’s highest teaching honors – the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.
She is the author of bestsellers, Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom (2017); No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (2011); and Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family (2010).
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Rice earned her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver; her master’s in the same subject from the University of Notre Dame; and her Ph.D.in political science from the University of Denver.
Motoatsu Sakurai
Read Bio
Motoatsu Sakurai
In December 2019, Motoatsu Sakurai retired from Japan Society NY after serving as President for over a decade and is now President Emeritus. After a successful 40-year career in the private sector, Sakurai was the first business executive to serve as Ambassador and Consul General of Japan in New York.
After graduating from Tokyo University Faculty of Law in 1968, Mr. Sakurai entered Mitsubishi Corporation. He received an MBA from INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France in May 1976. In 1978, Mr. Sakurai served as a Loan Officer with the World Bank and as an Investment Officer at the International Finance Corporation in Washington D.C. In the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, Mr. Sakurai served in several senior managerial capacities for Mitsubishi International Corporation in New York and Washington, D.C. In 1995, he was named General Manager of Corporate Planning at MC and in 1998, General Manager for Regional Strategy and Coordination. In April, 2003, he was named President and CEO of MIC. Simultaneously, he was named President, Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in New York.
Sakurai is married and lives in New York.
Mariko Silver
Read Bio
Mariko Silver
Dr. Mariko Silver is the president and CEO of the Henry Luce Foundation. She was previously the president of Bennington College. During the Obama administration, she served for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as Acting Assistant Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Policy. Dr. Silver also served for Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano as the Policy Advisor for Economic Development, Innovation, and Higher Education.
Prior to her government service, Dr. Silver was instrumental in the transformation and expansion of Arizona State University, leading in work on economic development policy and metrics, science, technology and innovation policy, state K-12 and higher education policy, sustainability science, and global health. Dr. Silver is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She serves on the boards of Scholars at Risk, African Leadership University, and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). Dr. Silver holds a Ph.D. in Economic Geography from UCLA; MSc, Science and Technology Policy from SPRU, University of Sussex (UK) and B.A., History from Yale.
Eric Toda
Read Bio
Eric Toda
Eric Toda is a marketing executive, angel investor, and non-profit board member. He is currently the Global Head of Social Marketing at Facebook and has held previous marketing leadership roles at Gap Inc, Airbnb, Snapchat, and Nike. Eric is also an advisor to many disruptive startups like Yumi, Wardrobe, Upaway, Fyllo, and many others. Eric sits on the board of directors for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Reimagine and LAAUNCH (Leading Asian Americans to Unite for Change) and is an investor at Hyphen Capital.
Robert Underwood
Read Bio
Robert Underwood
Robert Underwood was the Congressional Delegate from Guam in the 103-107th Congresses and recently retired as the President of the University of Guam. He is both a Professor Emeritus and President Emeritus and is the longest serving President in the University’s history.
Mr. Underwood has played a national leadership role on Asian Pacific American issues. He served as Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, introduced legislation for the establishment of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Serving Institutions, fought for Filipino World War II veteran equity, and was the founding chair of the national Asian Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund.
Mr. Underwood has served on numerous boards and commissions. He was Chair of the Chamoru Language Commission, served on the National Board of Educational Sciences, Guam Board of Education, founding member of the Guam Humanities Council, and on the National Advisory Council on Bilingual Education and American Folklife Center Board of Trustees (Appointed by Speaker Pelosi). He has worked for UNDP in Micronesia, and served as a delegate to the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environmental Program and WASC accreditation teams for universities and colleges in the Pacific.
Fareed Zakaria
Read Bio
Fareed Zakaria
Fareed Zakaria has hosted CNN’s flagship international affairs program, FAREED ZAKARIA GPS, since 2008. He has interviewed President Obama, Emmanuel Macron, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, among others. The program earned the prestigious Peabody Award in 2011 and has received multiple Emmy nominations.
Zakaria is also a columnist for The Washington Post and the bestselling author of Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, In Defense of a Liberal Education, The Post-American World, and The Future of Freedom.
Zakaria was named a “Top 10 Global Thinker of the Last 10 Years” by Foreign Policy magazine in 2019, and Esquire once called him "one of the 21 most important people of the 21st Century.” In 2010, he was awarded the “Padma Bhushan” by the Government of India, one of the country's highest civilian honors.
Zakaria holds a B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D. from Harvard.
advisory council
Read Bio
Angela Chao
Angela Chao is the current Chair and CEO of the Foremost Group, a global leader in dry bulk shipping and a pioneer in incorporating environmentally friendly designs into its modern fleet of ships.
Before joining the Foremost Group, Chao worked in the mergers and acquisitions department of what is now Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. She currently serves on a number of public and nonprofit boards.
Chao holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard, where she graduated magna cum laude in Economics in three years, and earned her MBA degree from Harvard Business School. She resides in Austin, TX and speaks Mandarin Chinese.
Read Bio
Daniel Dae Kim
Daniel Dae Kim is an actor, director, and producer who captivates global audiences with compelling performances across film, television and theater. Kim can currently be seen in Netflix's "Stowaway" and in Disney's "Raya and The Last Dragon." Upcoming projects include AMC’s "Pantheon," an animated drama inspired by Ken Liu’s short stories, and National Geographic’s "The Hot Zone: Anthrax."
Kim is a longtime champion of diversity and inclusion in Hollywood and an important voice against anti-AAPI violence. In 2015, Kim launched his production company 3AD to feature traditionally underrepresented in front of and behind the camera. 3AD produces the ABC hit "The Good Doctor" and has several projects in development, including the recently announced "Shoot the Moon," with Ken Jeong. Kim starred on the hit series "Hawaii Five-0" and "Lost," as well as on stage in Lincoln Center's Tony Award-winning production of "The King and I."
Born in South Korea, raised in Pennsylvania, Kim began his career on stage after graduating from Haverford College and earning an MFA from NYU.
Read Bio
X. Rick Niu
X. Rick Niu is President of Starr Strategic Holdings LLC, part of a global insurance and investment organization chaired by WWII hero Maurice R. Greenberg.
A regular advisor to world leaders, Starr presents a superior global capability that meets the principal investment, wealth management, commercial insurance and other strategic needs of emerging-market investors doing business in the U.S. and around the world, as well as companies and local governments in developed and developing countries seeking international investments that support commercial growth, capital optimization and job creation.
Niu is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Committee of 100. He has been involved in numerous charitable efforts helping to develop the next generation of American leadership, and actively supporting Starr's historic commitment to U.S.-China relations.
Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Niu earned a B.S. from Tsinghua University in Beijing, and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School. He also attended INSEAD’s Senior Executive Leadership Program in Paris and Singapore.
Read Bio
Farah Pandith
Farah Pandith is author of How We Win and a world-leading expert and pioneer in countering violent extremism. She served as a political appointee under three presidents on the National Security Council, at the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, and most recently as the first-ever Special Representative to Muslim Communities. She is a senior fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. In fall 2020, the Muhammad Ali Center named Pandith the first-ever Muhammad Ali Global Peace Laureate.
Read Bio
Don Chen
Don Chen is the President of the Surdna Foundation where he leads the 100-year old foundation’s efforts to strengthen and further leverage its commitment to social justice.
Prior to his appointment, Chen was the Director of the Cities & States program at the Ford Foundation, where he worked to make housing more affordable, promote more equitable land use practices, and empower communities to have a powerful decision-making voice in U.S. cities and in developing countries. He also led a multi-program team to strengthen social justice organizations and networks in the U.S.
Chen was also the Founder and CEO of Smart Growth America, where he created the National Vacant Properties Campaign and Transportation for America, and managed a merger with the Growth Management Leadership Alliance.
Chen currently serves as Co-Chair of the Presidents’ Council on Impact Investing and on the boards of Living Cities, Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, and Philanthropy New York. He holds an M.A. from the Yale School of the Environment and a B.A. in political science from Yale.
Read Bio
Lanhee Chen
Lanhee J. Chen, Ph.D. is the David and Diane Steffy Fellow in American Public Policy Studies at the Hoover Institution and Director of Domestic Policy Studies and Lecturer in the Public Policy Program at Stanford. He is also a Senior Counselor at the Brunswick Group and Chairman of the Board of Directors of El Camino Health.
Chen has worked in American politics, the U.S. government, academia, and business. He is a veteran of several high-profile campaigns and served as policy director and chief policy adviser for Governor Mitt Romney’s 2012 bid for the presidency; a senior adviser to Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign; and a health policy adviser to the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign. Chen was a presidentially-appointed member of the Social Security Advisory Board and a senior appointee at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the George W. Bush Administration.
Chen's writings have been published in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He appears often on national television programming. He earned his Ph.D. and A.M. in political science from Harvard, his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School, and his A.B. magna cum laude in government from Harvard.
Read Bio
Patricia Eng
Patricia Eng is the President and CEO of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, the only national philanthropy serving organization focused on AAPI communities.
Eng previously served as Chief Service Officer at the Mayor’s Office of the City of New York to deepen and expand civic engagement through volunteer and service programs. She founded the New York Asian Women’s Center, the first organization on the East Coast working with battered immigrant Asian women. She innovated grantmaking strategy in several areas, including early support for men’s efforts to address masculinity and violence, and launched the first collaborative fund in the country focused on young women and gender non-binary youth of color.
A graduate of Hunter College School of Social Work and Princeton, Eng studied community organizing, politics, and teacher preparation. She lives on the East Coast where she participates in several social justice giving circles.
Read Bio
Lisa Hasegawa
Lisa Hasegawa is the Regional Vice President of the Western Region at NeighborWorks America (NWA). She served as the Executive Director of the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development (National CAPACD), the first national advocacy organization dedicated to meeting the affordable housing and community development needs of AAPI communities for 15 years.
She currently serves on the boards of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and Asian Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation (APIAHiP). Previously, she worked at UCLA, the White House Initiative on AAPIs and the Department of Health and Human Services, and served on boards of the National Council for Asian Pacific Americans, Little Tokyo Service Center, Congressional Progressive Caucus Center, National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum and National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC).
She is a fourth generation Japanese American from Orange, CA, and attended UCLA and the Harvard School of Public Health.
Read Bio
Kenneth Hersh
Since 2016, Ken Hersh has served as President and CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, a non-partisan institution which houses the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum and the George W. Bush Institute.
In 1988, he co-founded NGP Energy Capital Management, one of the largest natural resources private equity firms in the world with over $20 billion of total committed capital. Until 2016, he served as CEO of the firm. From 1988 through 2015, under his leadership, NGP invested over $12 billion and achieved returns making it one of the nation’s leading private equity firms.
Additionally, Ken manages his family investment office and serves as Senior Advisor to The Carlyle Group’s natural resources division. He is on the Hoover Institute’s
Board of Overseers, the Harvard Kennedy School Dean’s Council and, among other corporate and civic organizations, sits on the board of the Texas Rangers Baseball Club.
Read Bio
Moushumi Khan
Moushumi Khan is an attorney with 25 years of business, legal, and government experience. She is active in non-profits, public advocacy, and advising on emerging markets. Ms. Khan was most recently the founding CEO of Nirapon, a leading safety monitoring initiative of North American brands sourcing readymade garments from Bangladesh.
Ms. Khan served as the Country Director for The Foundation for Charitable Activities in Bangladesh, and as the first Director of Legal and Compliance at BRAC, the world’s largest NGO.
Ms. Khan is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She serves on the Boards of the Interfaith Center of New York and Rahimafrooz Renewable Energy Ltd. She is listed in the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations’ Global Expert Finder. Ms. Khan also helped found the Muslim Bar Association of New York.
Moushumi Khan earned her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, a MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, an A.B. degree in Critical Social Thought, cum laude, from Mount Holyoke College and a Certificate in General Course in Government at the London School of Economics. She grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Read Bio
Jim Yong Kim
Jim Yong Kim M.D., Ph.D., is Vice Chairman and Partner at Global Infrastructure Partners. Kim served as the 12th President of the World Bank Group and helped the organization establish two goals to guide its work: to end extreme poverty by 2030; and to boost shared prosperity, focusing on the bottom 40% of the population in developing countries.
A physician and anthropologist, Kim’s career has revolved around health, education, and improving the lives of the poor. Prior to joining the WBG, he served as the President of Dartmouth and held professorships at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. From 2003 to 2005, Kim served as Director of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS department and led their “3 by 5” initiative, the first-ever global goal for AIDS treatment to expand access to antiretroviral medication. In 1987, Kim co-founded Partners In Health, a non-profit medical organization.
Kim received a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, was recognized as one of America’s “25 Best Leaders” by U.S. News & World Report, and was named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World.”
Read Bio
Erika Lee
Professor Erika Lee is an award-winning historian and author, Regents Professor of History and Asian American Studies, Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, and President-Elect of the Organization of American Historians.
The granddaughter of Chinese immigrants, Lee was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and testified before Congress in its historic hearings on anti-Asian discrimination and violence.
Lee is the author of four award-winning books including The Making of Asian America and America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in America, which won the American Book Award and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and more. Identified as an essential book illuminating the Trump era and the 2020 elections, it will be published with a new epilogue on xenophobia and racism during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Making of Asian America will also soon be republished with a new postscript about the latest campaigns against Asian Americans. Lee has been featured in PBS’s film series “Asian Americans” and has been interviewed for many news shows, podcasts, and publications.
Read Bio
Jeremy Lin
A Palo Alto native, Jeremy Lin is a nine-year NBA veteran, NBA Champion, and philanthropist. His rise to prominence spread like wildfire during February 2012, when he took over the starting point guard role for the struggling New York Knicks and began one of the most improbable journeys sports has ever seen. Suddenly, everybody was following the inspiration of Lin that is forever known as “Linsanity.”
A Harvard University graduate, Lin helped pave the way for his Harvard team to become nationally-ranked for the first time in its history along with making their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1946. Lin has played with the Warriors, Knicks, Rockets, Lakers, Hornets, Nets, Hawks, and NBA Champion Raptors.
Read Bio
Lisa Ling
Lisa is the Executive Producer and host of THIS IS LIFE on CNN.
Previously, Lisa EP’d and hosted Our America on OWN. She was also a field correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show and contributor to ABC News' Nightline. For these shows she reported from dozens of countries; covering stories about gang rape in the Congo, bride burning in India and the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, among other issues that are too often ignored.
Lisa was the first female host of National Geographic’s flagship show Explorer which sent her to cover female suicide bombing, the spread of the MS-13 gang, and the humanitarian crisis inside North Korea.
She started in journalism as a correspondent for Channel One News where she covered the civil war in Afghanistan at 21 years of age. She then became a co-host of ABC hit show The View, which won its first daytime Emmy during her time.
Lisa is the co-author of “Mother, Sister. Daughter, Bride: Rituals of Womanhood,” and “Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and The Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home” that she penned with her sister Laura.
In 2014, President Obama appointed Lisa to the Commission on White House Fellows. She is an advisory board member for Fostering Media Connections, The Amani Project, and a Baby2Baby angel.
Read Bio
Melvin Mar
Melvin Mar began his career at Dreamworks SKG, Scott Rudin Productions, where he built a solid relationship with “Orange County” director Jake Kasdan. They have since worked together on films including “The TV Set,” “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” “Bad Teacher,” “Sex Tape”, “Jumanji: Welcome to The Jungle”, Jumanji: The Next Level, the indie feature "Lucky Grandma" and the hit television comedy “New Girl.” Besides serving as executive producer on the upcoming Doogie Kamealoha for Disney+, Mar served as an executive producer on “Fresh Off the Boat”, "Bless This Mess", “Weird Loners”, “The Grinder” and "Speechless".
Mar and Kasdan have an overall deal at Walt Disney Television, where they are developing comedies and dramas for cable, streaming and network television. He is based in Los Angeles and New York.
Read Bio
Mee Moua
Mee Moua is a racial healing, racial equity consultant who provides training, facilitation and coaching support for individuals and organizations seeking equity transformation. She is passionate about democracy building, heart leadership, and making visible the interconnectedness among peoples. Some of her clients are local and State elected officials, community and national foundations, colleges and universities, and non-profits.
Moua was the President and Executive Director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-AAJC and the Vice President the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum. Prior to her work in Washington, D.C., she was an attorney and a member of the Minnesota State Senate. Moua was born in Laos and came to the U.S. in 1978 as a refugee. She grew up in the midwest, attended Brown, received her M.P.A. from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and earned her J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School.
She currently works and lives in Maryland with her husband and their three children.
Read Bio
Amanda Nguyen
Amanda Nguyen is an internationally acclaimed social entrepreneur. She was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. Nguyen penned her own civil rights into existence by unanimously passing the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights. She has trained hundreds of activists using her theory of organizing, "Hopeanomics," to pass 34 laws protecting more than 85 million sexual violence survivors. Recently, her viral video sparked national coverage on anti-asian hate crimes.
Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Rise, a social movement accelerator where she teaches grassroots organizing. In recognition of her work, Amanda is a Heinz Laureate, Nelson Mandela Changemaker, Forbes 30 Under 30, Foreign Policy 100, Time 100 Next, Frederick Douglass 100, and Marie Claire Young Woman of the Year. Previously, Nguyen served at NASA and the State Department under the Obama Administration. She graduated from Harvard.
Read Bio
Indra Nooyi
Indra Nooyi is the former chairman and CEO of PepsiCo and served as a board member between 2001 and February 2019.
Currently, Nooyi is a member of the Board of Amazon and chairs the Audit Committee. She sits on the Supervisory Board of Philips and is a member of the Nominating and Corporate Governance committee. She is a member of the International Advisory Council of Temasek and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She is a Dean’s Advisory Council member at MIT’s School of Engineering, and an Executive Committee member of the MIT Corporation. Nooyi serves on the Board of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the Partnership for Public Service. She is the Class of 1951 Chair for the Study of Leadership at West Point.
Nooyi holds a B.S. from Madras Christian College, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, and a master’s in public and private management from Yale.
Read Bio
Michael Park
Michael Park is a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, where he leads the firm's Global Organization and Accelerate Practices. Prior to that, he led McKinsey Academy and the firm's Strategy and Corporate Finance Practice. He also helped found and leads Asians at McKinsey, their Asian employee resource group.
As an active member in the community, Park has led McKinsey's research on accelerating growth and competitiveness in U.S. industry, including the McKinsey Quarterly article “Translating innovation into US growth” and work with the Brookings Institute, World Economic Forum, and state governments. He sits on the board of Global Health Corps and Leaders for Educational Equity.
Park was selected as a David Rockefeller Fellow of the Partnership for New York City in 2011-12. He graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard with an A.B in Economics. Park and his wife and three children reside in New York City.
Read Bio
Joshua Cooper Ramo
Joshua Cooper Ramo is Chairman and CEO of Sornay. He served as lead China advisor on over $200 billion of completed China transactions and led investments alongside China’s most significant commercial and financial players. Previously, he was CEO and Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates and the Foreign Editor and Senior Editor of TIME Magazine. He serves as a director of Starbucks and FedEx.
Ramo authored two New York Times bestsellers, The Age of the Unthinkable and The Seventh Sense, and has been featured in TIME, FORTUNE, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times. He shared an Emmy and Peabody Award for his work as as NBC analyst during the Olympics in Pyeongchang and Beijing, and has been seen on Meet the Press, CNN, CNBC, and Charlie Rose.
Ramo has been a Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Asia21 project, a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Leaders for Tomorrow, and a founder of the US-China Young Leaders Forum.
Raised in New Mexico, Ramo holds degrees from the University of Chicago and NYU.
Read Bio
Naheed Qureshi
Naheed Qureshi is Head of Policy Partnerships at Instacart where she builds relationships with stakeholders to further joint policy goals. She is also a commissioner on President Biden's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.
Prior to joining Instacart, Naheed developed deep expertise in public policy during her 20+ year civil rights career. She was a founding board member and later deputy director of Muslim Advocates, a national civil rights advocacy organization where she focused on combatting discrimination and hate crimes and managed large coalitions to fight the Muslim ban and other forms of bigotry targeting communities of color. Naheed also served as the co-chair of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Hate Crimes and Bigotry Taskforce.
After 9/11 Naheed was recruited to join the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. She joined the Justice Department through the Attorney General’s Honors Program where she acted as an attorney advisor to Immigration Judge Ellen K. Thomas. Naheed also worked for the City of Los Angeles Department of Neighborhood Empowerment and the national legislative office of the ACLU. At the ACLU, she focused on racial profiling, voting rights, the USA Patriot Act and other national civil rights issues.
Naheed received a B.A. in political science from the University of Wisconsin and J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. The daughter of immigrants from Pakistan, Naheed was raised in Wisconsin and is a proud cheesehead.
Read Bio
Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy. In addition, she is a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, an international strategic consulting firm.
Rice served as the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, the second woman and first black woman to hold the post. Rice also served as President George W. Bush’s Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, the first woman to hold the position.
Rice served as Stanford University’s provost from 1993 to 1999. Rice has won two of the university’s highest teaching honors – the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.
She is the author of bestsellers, Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom (2017); No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (2011); and Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family (2010).
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Rice earned her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver; her master’s in the same subject from the University of Notre Dame; and her Ph.D.in political science from the University of Denver.
Read Bio
Motoatsu Sakurai
In December 2019, Motoatsu Sakurai retired from Japan Society NY after serving as President for over a decade and is now President Emeritus. After a successful 40-year career in the private sector, Sakurai was the first business executive to serve as Ambassador and Consul General of Japan in New York.
After graduating from Tokyo University Faculty of Law in 1968, Mr. Sakurai entered Mitsubishi Corporation. He received an MBA from INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France in May 1976. In 1978, Mr. Sakurai served as a Loan Officer with the World Bank and as an Investment Officer at the International Finance Corporation in Washington D.C. In the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, Mr. Sakurai served in several senior managerial capacities for Mitsubishi International Corporation in New York and Washington, D.C. In 1995, he was named General Manager of Corporate Planning at MC and in 1998, General Manager for Regional Strategy and Coordination. In April, 2003, he was named President and CEO of MIC. Simultaneously, he was named President, Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in New York.
Sakurai is married and lives in New York.
Read Bio
Mariko Silver
Dr. Mariko Silver is the president and CEO of the Henry Luce Foundation. She was previously the president of Bennington College. During the Obama administration, she served for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as Acting Assistant Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Policy. Dr. Silver also served for Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano as the Policy Advisor for Economic Development, Innovation, and Higher Education.
Prior to her government service, Dr. Silver was instrumental in the transformation and expansion of Arizona State University, leading in work on economic development policy and metrics, science, technology and innovation policy, state K-12 and higher education policy, sustainability science, and global health. Dr. Silver is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She serves on the boards of Scholars at Risk, African Leadership University, and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). Dr. Silver holds a Ph.D. in Economic Geography from UCLA; MSc, Science and Technology Policy from SPRU, University of Sussex (UK) and B.A., History from Yale.
Read Bio
Eric Toda
Eric Toda is a marketing executive, angel investor, and non-profit board member. He is currently the Global Head of Social Marketing at Facebook and has held previous marketing leadership roles at Gap Inc, Airbnb, Snapchat, and Nike. Eric is also an advisor to many disruptive startups like Yumi, Wardrobe, Upaway, Fyllo, and many others. Eric sits on the board of directors for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Reimagine and LAAUNCH (Leading Asian Americans to Unite for Change) and is an investor at Hyphen Capital.
Read Bio
Robert Underwood
Robert Underwood was the Congressional Delegate from Guam in the 103-107th Congresses and recently retired as the President of the University of Guam. He is both a Professor Emeritus and President Emeritus and is the longest serving President in the University’s history.
Mr. Underwood has played a national leadership role on Asian Pacific American issues. He served as Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, introduced legislation for the establishment of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Serving Institutions, fought for Filipino World War II veteran equity, and was the founding chair of the national Asian Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund.
Mr. Underwood has served on numerous boards and commissions. He was Chair of the Chamoru Language Commission, served on the National Board of Educational Sciences, Guam Board of Education, founding member of the Guam Humanities Council, and on the National Advisory Council on Bilingual Education and American Folklife Center Board of Trustees (Appointed by Speaker Pelosi). He has worked for UNDP in Micronesia, and served as a delegate to the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environmental Program and WASC accreditation teams for universities and colleges in the Pacific.
Read Bio
Fareed Zakaria
Fareed Zakaria has hosted CNN’s flagship international affairs program, FAREED ZAKARIA GPS, since 2008. He has interviewed President Obama, Emmanuel Macron, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, among others. The program earned the prestigious Peabody Award in 2011 and has received multiple Emmy nominations.
Zakaria is also a columnist for The Washington Post and the bestselling author of Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, In Defense of a Liberal Education, The Post-American World, and The Future of Freedom.
Zakaria was named a “Top 10 Global Thinker of the Last 10 Years” by Foreign Policy magazine in 2019, and Esquire once called him "one of the 21 most important people of the 21st Century.” In 2010, he was awarded the “Padma Bhushan” by the Government of India, one of the country's highest civilian honors.
Zakaria holds a B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D. from Harvard.
team members
Prisca Bae
Read Bio
Prisca Bae
Prisca Bae joins the Asian American Foundation from the private sector where she designed and launched philanthropic and social impact initiatives centered around communities of color and women.
At PepsiCo, Prisca oversaw the gender diversity and women’s strategy for the Global Diversity & Engagement Center of Excellence. She helped develop and launch a $100 million commitment to women and girls and worked with leaders company-wide on gender parity and pay equity issues. She also served as chief of staff to PepsiCo’s Global Public Policy and Government Affairs group. Prior to PepsiCo, Prisca advised companies and nonprofits on strategic women’s initiatives as Vice President at Seneca Women, the advisory firm founded by the former U.S. Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues, Melanne Verveer. Before joining PepsiCo, she served as the inaugural Director of the Women in the World Foundation, a public charity founded out of Tina Brown’s Women in the World Summit at Newsweek & the Daily Beast and managed Goldman Sachs Gives, a billion dollar charitable fund for the partners of Goldman Sachs.
Prisca began her career as an attorney at Latham & Watkins, LLP and received her B.A. from Columbia College, Columbia University and J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
She currently serves on the boards of The Roger Lehecka Double Discovery Center at Columbia University, the Korean American Community Foundation and The Li.st, a community of high impact women in media, business and tech. Prisca was born in South Korea, was raised in Chicago, and is currently based in New York City.
Georgette Bhathena
Read Bio
Georgette Bhathena
Georgette Bhathena is the Chief Programs Officer at The Asian American Foundation (TAAF) overseeing programming and strategy to achieve maximum impact. She has over 20 years of experience working across sectors in purpose-driven organizations.
Prior to joining TAAF, Georgette led the trust-based grantmaking strategy and nonprofit partnerships on the Zoom Cares team. Zoom Cares, the social impact arm of Zoom, puts the full weight of the company’s platform, dollars, employees, and voice behind a commitment to foster equity, democratize opportunity, and address some of humanity’s biggest challenges. Zoom is a proud partner of TAAF on the AAPI Giving Challenge. Previously, Georgette held senior positions at Tipping Point Community, the San Francisco Foundation, and JPMorgan Chase, among others.
Georgette received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Washington and her Master in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She is a Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Fellow. Georgette lives in the Bay Area with her family and favorite corgi Rosie.
.png)
Leigh Cafferty
Read Bio
Leigh Cafferty
Leigh Cafferty has over 15 years’ experience in digital and print media, purpose-driven live events, and strategic communications. She has produced events for media outlets including The New York Times, NowThis News, Thomson Reuters, The Daily Beast, IFC Films, Starz, Fortune, and Penske Media.
Leigh oversaw all communications and media relations for Tina Brown and her flagship Women in the World Summit, during which she built and managed a global community of 500+K followers, averaged over 5+ billion media impressions yearly, and successfully introduced Women in the World to new markets in Dubai, Toronto, New Delhi, London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Dallas, and San Antonio. She additionally coordinated global event partnerships for Women in the World including World Economic Forum dinners with Credit Suisse, Art Basel Miami Salons with Bumble, and UN General Assembly Dinner with Bank of America.
Leigh produces TAAF’s purpose-driven events, curated conversations, and growing live events calendar alongside the Partnerships team.
She lives in New Jersey with her comedian husband and two children. She is a former ballerina and passionate about animal rescue.
Sruthi Chandrasekaran
Read Bio
Sruthi Chandrasekaran
Sruthi Chandrasekaran (she/her) serves as TAAF’s Director of Data and Research. She leads strategy development and implementation for the Data and Research team and targeted studies that identify and address the needs of the AAPI community.
Sruthi brings her lived experience as a first-generation Indian American and a recent immigrant to the United States, along with her professional expertise in research and monitoring, evaluation, and learning, to TAAF. She has over a decade of experience working with small and large non-profit organizations, foundations, and government funding agencies on issues faced by marginalized populations. Sruthi also has extensive experience generating and using evidence to inform policy and programming across diverse contexts. Most recently, she was a co-Principal Investigator on a mixed methods, community-based participatory research study documenting the needs of, perspectives on, and access to sexual and reproductive health in the AAPI comunity.
Sruthi holds an MSc in Comparative Social Policy from the University of Oxford, where she was a Felix Scholar and Maude Royden Fellow, and an MA in Economics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT-Madras). She was a Women Deliver Young Leader and a Global Health Corps Fellow. Sruthi resides in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband and daughter.
Erin Chen
Read Bio
Erin Chen
Erin Chen is a Social Media Strategist at The Asian American Foundation, working to build out TAAF’s social media presence and raise brand awareness. She brings editorial and social expertise from her time at Bloomberg L.P. and Insider Inc., where she owned social media strategy and distributed content and breaking news across social platforms. Erin graduated from the University of Rochester with a BA in Communications, and is currently pursuing a MA in Communications at Johns Hopkins University. Outside of work, Erin reads and writes novels in the dark (which worsens her eyesight exponentially) and swears that she’ll learn how to ride a bike someday.
Norman Chen
Read Bio
Norman Chen
Norman Chen is the Chief Executive Officer of TAAF and brings a thirty-year career in entrepreneurship, healthcare and community leadership in the United States and Asia. Norman is passionate about building organizations in both the nonprofit and private sectors that positively impact society.
Prior to his appointment at TAAF, Norman co-founded the nonprofit Leading Asian Americans to Unite for Change (LAAUNCH) and helped to create a landmark study, The STAATUS Index, of American attitudes towards Asian Americans.
As a healthcare entrepreneur, Norman was the founder and CEO of Asia Renal Care, a network of specialty medical centers in six countries, and co-founder of DeltaHealth Hospital, a world-class hospital in partnership with Columbia Heartsource. As a venture capitalist, Norman led successful life sciences investments at Fidelity Asia Ventures (now Eight Roads) and 6 Dimensions Capital.
Norman grew up on the East Coast and currently lives in the Bay Area. He has been a board or advisory council member at The Nature Conservancy (CA), Children’s Medical Foundation (HK), SF Marine Science Institute, and Positive Coaching Alliance. He holds a B.S. degree from MIT and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
.png)
Sonia Chou
Read Bio
Sonia Chou
Sonia Chou is the Manager of Corporate Affairs & Philanthropy at The Asian American Foundation, working closely with TAAF's corporate and fundraising partners to unlock resources for the AAPI community and community based organizations. She has had the great privilege of working in the fundraising and development departments at organizations such as Supermajority, Lincoln Center, the New York Youth Symphony, and Voices of Ascension. She graduated from the University of Chicago, where she double majored in Art History and Anthropology with a specialization in Edo period Japanese tattoos. Sadly, she is not an art historian, anthropologist, or tattoo artist.
Nick Chow
Read Bio
Nick Chow
Bernadette Cruz
Read Bio
Bernadette Cruz
Bernadette Cruz is Director of Operations at The Asian American Foundation managing vendor relations, contracting processes, and oversees effective procedures throughout the organization. She is passionate about building culture and values and unifying staff around mission, vision, strategies and work plans and supports all organizational functions including IT and technology, finance, budgeting as well as HR and new hire onboarding.
Prior to TAAF, she was Deputy Director of Operations at Supermajority, a women's activism group harnessing the collective power of women voters, was an award-winning Director of Marketing at Humane Society Silicon Valley, finding forever homes for shelter animals, and started her career in marketing and publicity roles at Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House, before finding her passion in the nonprofit sector in 2014. Bernadette loves a good road trip full of Whitney Houston singalongs.
.jpg)
Stella Cunanan
Read Bio
Stella Cunanan
Stella provides administrative support for TAAF staff that are based on the West Coast. She joins TAAF from the University of California, Hastings Law where she served as a lead administrative assistant to UC Hastings faculty. Stella was the recipient of the UC Hastings Certificate of Leadership and the UC Hastings Outstanding Contribution by Staff during her time there. She holds a Bachelor's of Science in Visual Communication Design from San Francisco State University. She enjoys bringing her creative knowledge and problem solving skills to all of her roles.
In her spare time, Stella loves to collect records, go to concerts, cook, and try new restaurants. She's also an avid TV binger and loves to deep dive into TV shows she's currently obsessed with.
Tong Yuan Douville
Read Bio
Tong Yuan Douville
As the Anti-Hate and Belonging Program Associate, Tong Yuan manages the team's administrative needs, coordinates grantee communications, and cultivates collaboration within the Anti-Hate and Belonging National Network. In addition to her work on Anti-Hate, she provides event planning for many of TAAF commemorative events.
Prior to joining TAAF, Tong Yuan has worked in refugee employment services at the International Rescue Committee and as the coordinator of a healthy corner store program in Pittsburgh with Just Harvest. Passionate about the intersection of food, identity, and agency, she also apprenticed at Orchard Kitchen Farm in Washington State to experience the livelihood of the over 1 billion people globally who work in agriculture.Tong Yuan graduated summa cum laude with bachelor’s in medical anthropology and public health from Southern Methodist University, where she was a President’s Scholar and Maguire Public Service Fellow. She has published research on Rwanda’s family planning program, created materials for culturally competent health services for the Seattle/King County Clinic, and developed a food-secure resettlement pilot program for the IRC in Dallas. Tong Yuan was adopted from China and raised in Seattle, Washington. Her adoptee identity drives her to break down the myth of Asian Americans as a monolith.
.png)
Charity Espiritu
Read Bio
Charity Espiritu
Charity Espiritu manages the Anti-Hate and Belonging flagship program at TAAF and brings 15 years of experience in philanthropy, social impact, and public policy. Previously, she held leadership positions at the Asian Americans Advancing Justice, The Asia Foundation, and a startup social enterprise. She served as a board member at community nonprofits focusing on education, gender, and human rights. Charity has an MPA from Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley. She is from San Francisco, California.
Polly Fong
Read Bio
Polly Fong
Polly Fong is a Creative Manager at The Asian American Foundation, overseeing creative projects that help build the TAAF brand. She brings creative and strategic expertise from brand experience agency Jack Morton, where she led projects for clients including Google and Amazon in design, copy, and creative strategy. In 2021 Polly was a finalist in Chief Marketer’s Top Women in Marketing Awards, and is most recently a finalist in the Young Lions Competition in the US. She’s a Bay Area native who now lives in Brooklyn. Outside work, Polly loves cocktails, trap music, and running. Her favorite drink is a tie between a Gimlet and a Clover Club.
Baonam Giang
Read Bio
Baonam Giang
Baonam ‘Nam’ Giang serves as the Community Engagement Manager for the Anti-Hate and Belonging Program at The Asian American Foundation (TAAF). He supports the Anti-Hate National Network and the local AAPI Action Centers as they work to develop a national infrastructure for tackling hate across the country. He is passionate about serving the AAPI community, having spent most of his career embedded in local and national AAPI organizations.
Prior to joining TAAF, he was at the National Organization of Asians and Pacific Islanders Ending Sexual Violence (NAPIESV). During his time at NAPIESV, he supported community-based organizations, governmental agencies, and grantees of various Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women programs in enhancing their capacity to provide culturally specific and linguistically appropriate services for AAPI victims and survivors in the U.S. and U.S. Pacific Territories.
Nam graduated from the University of New Mexico with a B.A. in Criminology and a Master of Public Administration with an emphasis in public and nonprofit management. In his free time, he enjoys serving as a youth group leader, playing basketball, snowboarding, and spending time in nature with his wife and daughter.
Christine Ho
Read Bio
Christine Ho
Christine Ho is the Development Associate at The Asian American Foundation, playing a key role in advancing TAAF's mission and vision through revenue-generating activities and partnerships for TAAF. Prior to joining TAAF, Christine was an Operations Associate on the Conservation and Markets Initiative at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, in which her team partnered with NGOs and the private sector to reduce overfishing and the degradation of ecosystems that result from the production of globally traded agriculture and seafood commodities.
Christine received her BA in Economics with a minor in Global Studies at UCLA and her MBA at Santa Clara University, Leavey School of Business with a triple concentration in Leading Innovative Organizations, Entrepreneurship, and Marketing. Based in the Bay Area, she serves on the San Francisco chapter's Steering Committee at Project by Project, a 100% volunteer-run nonprofit organization that focuses on giving back to the AAPI community and developing AAPI leaders through innovative philanthropy.
When Christine isn't working, you can find her spending quality time with her family, friends, and shiba inu, as well as hiking in nature, going on food and music adventures, volunteering, reading, traveling, running, and keeping up with the latest TV shows and movies.
Isabel Kim
Read Bio
Isabel Kim
Isabel Kim is the Chief Financial Officer at The Asian American Foundation (TAAF). She has over twenty years of experience in the finance field primarily in healthcare finance management within start-ups and non-profit organizations. She oversees accounting, financial reporting, financial operations, treasury, FP&A, audit, and payroll.
Prior to joining TAAF, Isabel served as the Controller at Devoted Health, a health tech startup serving seniors in America who opt for a Medicare Advantage Plan. She helped scale the Finance team through the exponential growth of Devoted Health. Previously, Isabel held various positions at the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Mass General Brigham (formerly known as Partners HealthCare) and a Federally Qualified Health Center, among others.
Isabel received her BA and MS from Boston University. She is also a graduate of LeadBoston’s Class of 2017 and Women in NAAAP’s 2015 Lean in Circle program. Isabel was born and raised on Guam and enjoys spending time with friends and family back in the Pacific every year.
Peter Li
Read Bio
Peter Li
Peter Li serves as a Corporate Engagement and Development Manager at The Asian American Foundation (TAAF). He works closely with corporate leaders, foundation executives, and individual donors, and on The AAPI Giving Challenge. After the Atlanta shooting in 2021, Peter wanted to give back to the AAPI community, so he joined in April of 2021 to help launch TAAF.
Prior to joining TAAF, Peter worked on political campaigns in major battleground states. Most recently, he served as Deputy Campaign Manager on Congressman Ron Kind’s 2020 reelection campaign in western Wisconsin, where he managed the organizing and targeting programs, and contributed to a 2.7 percent margin of victory in a district President Trump won. Peter has also worked on presidential, federal, and local campaigns in urban, suburban, and rural communities, and got his start in 2015 organizing for Secretary Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in New Hampshire.
Raised in Boston after his family immigrated to the U.S. when he was 7 years old, Peter is an avid fan of his hometown and its sports teams—the Boston Red Sox, New England Patriots, Boston Bruins, and Boston Celtics. Peter graduated as a Posse Foundation Scholar from Union College in 2015 with a B.A. in Political Science. He is currently based in Washington DC.
Beverly Liang
Read Bio
Beverly Liang
Beverly Liang is a Project Manager at The Asian American Foundation, working across teams to create external branding and website content. She brings her expertise in guiding leading organizations in culture, technology, fashion, and retail, first as as Head of Strategy at 2x4, a globally recognized design and branding agency, leading projects for clients including Google, Prada, MoMA, and Target, and as a Strategy Director at UNIQLO's Global Creative Lab. She graduated with Honors from the University of Chicago with an AB in Cultural Anthropology, and is pursuing a MSW at the Hunter College Silberman School of Social Work. Her favorite gelato flavor is pistachio, with hazelnut as a close contender.
%20(1).png)
Lindsey Mitchell
Read Bio
Lindsey Mitchell
Lindsey Mitchell is the Finance Manager for The Asian American Foundation, and helps advance TAAF's mission and vision by focusing on financial operations and compliance for the organization's overall financial health.
Prior to joining TAAF, Lindsey worked at the University of Washington as the Associate Director for Finance and Business Operations for the Husky Union Building. In this role, she led multiple units and provided strategic oversight on issues related to accounting, finance, human resources, and back-end business operations.
When she's not working, Lindsey likes to be creative, play games (tabletop and video games), read, and watch shows. Lindsey was adopted from Seoul, South Korea and raised in the Pacific Northwest. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two dogs. One is objectively the best dog in the world, and the other is trying his best.
Sally Mo
Read Bio
Sally Mo
Joy Moh
Read Bio
Joy Moh
Joy joins TAAF from Team Rubicon where she served as its first head of communications. She is a highly creative marketing and communications executive with a depth of experience building brand and comms strategies, negotiating key press placements, developing social media campaigns, executing stunts and events, establishing innovative partnerships and managing talent in both the profit and non-profit space. Her 10+ years of experience include serving as Director of Worldwide Publicity for Sony Pictures Entertainment and consulting on communication strategies for AAPI talent and activists.
Claire Kai-Li Mondry
Read Bio
Claire Kai-Li Mondry
Claire Kai-Li Mondry serves as a Development Associate at The Asian American Foundation (TAAF). As Development Associate, she provides operational and administrative support for revenue generating activities and partnerships at the organization. Claire joins TAAF from the Design Trust for Public Space where she assisted with fundraising for public space and place-making initiatives in New York City. Claire has previously held positions at other AAPI organizations like the Asian Pacific American Leadership Institute, the Museum of Chinese in America, and Kundiman.
Claire graduated from Fordham University with a BA in American Studies and Political Science with a concentration in Diversity & Difference. Outside of her job at TAAF, Claire volunteers as a mentor to Asian American youth, teaching about the importance of community leadership and civic engagement. She is also a published writer with her essays on food, identity, and belonging featured in the Fordham Undergraduate Research Journal and Bricolage Magazine. Claire is originally from San José, California and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Eugena Oh
Read Bio
Eugena Oh
Eugena Oh serves as the Regional Director, Greater NYC Area, at The Asian American Foundation. She comes to TAAF after serving as President & CEO of the “I Have A Dream” Foundation, a national nonprofit empowering youth to achieve their dreams through education and mentorship. She believes deeply in racial justice and equity and has devoted her career to extending opportunity to historically marginalized communities, by building coalitions to build power.
Over eleven years at “I Have A Dream,” Eugena focused on unifying its federated affiliates around a shared vision and goal for “multiple pathways to success” for its youth (‘Dreamers’). She developed a first ever internal grants program that sent financial resources directly to affiliates. Under her leadership, the national headquarters was able to grow its budget from $1.5 million annually to $5.1 million. Eugena’s honors include receiving the Trailblazer award from both the Korean American Lawyers Association of Greater New York (2019) and the IvyG Conference (2018), being named to New York Non-Profit Media’s inaugural class of 40 Under 40 Rising Stars (2015) and receiving the University of Pennsylvania’s Asian Alumni Association’s Outstanding Alumna Award (2008). She serves on the University of Pennsylvania’s Alumni Board of Directors, Penn’s Pan-Asian American Community House Board of Advisors, Rise First’s Board of Advisors, as well as the “I Have A Dream” Foundation’s Board of Directors.
Eugena is an alumna of the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, and Columbia Business School’s Senior Leaders in Nonprofit Executive program. She is a proud New Yorker and second generation Korean American currently raising two children with her partner on Long Island. Eugena loves to dance to 90s hip-hop, sing power ballads during karaoke, and read just about anything.
%20(1).png)
Aryani Ong
Read Bio
Aryani Ong
Aryani Ong is TAAF's Director of Anti-Hate & Belonging, and a Chinese-Indonesian American civil rights attorney. She wrote an early community response guide to hate crimes for OCA managed the publication of a national audit of anti-Asian violence and lobbied for stronger federal hate crime law for the AAAJ-AAJC. Aryani has spoken before diverse audiences, including as an invited US expert before the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. She is Founder and President of Montgomery County Progressive Asian American Network and Senior Advisor to Communities United Against Hate.
A 30-year activist, Aryani carried out landscape studies on Asian American community organizations for Harvard’s Civil Rights Project and the Urban Institute, where she also co-authored Advancing Equity for AAPI Communities. She’s worked on a range of issues, notably the intersection of national security and civil rights. Aryani co-founded the Asian American Federal Employees for Nondiscrimination where she promotes equity to protect Asian Americans from profiling during heightened U.S-Asia conflicts. She also has promoted representation of Asian Americans in media and society, civic participation, ESOL, and educational access. Currently she serves as a board member of Asian American Futures and the Asian American Action Fund. Aryani was named among Maryland's Top 100 Women.
Howard Ou
Read Bio
Howard Ou
Howard Ou is joining The Asian American Foundation (TAAF) as the Director of Government Relations. He most recently served as Associate Director in the White House Office of Public Engagement leading on AAPI, Housing, and Agency portfolios for his team. Prior to this role, Howard was on the Biden-Harris Transition Confirmations Team working to support successful Senate confirmations for Biden Administration Cabinet Nominees for both the Domestic and the Climate/Energy pods; and was the National AAPI & LGBTQ+ Deputy Director for the Biden for President Campaign. Howard joins TAAF with extensive experience as staff for Members of Congress from the California delegation as well as serving as Policy and Press Advisor for the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.
Terry K Park
Read Bio
Terry K Park
Dr. Terry K Park (he/him) serves as TAAF’s Education and Narrative Change Program Officer. An award-winning educator, social justice advocate, and former performance artist, Terry has over twenty years of experience at the transformative intersections of anti-racist education, social change storytelling, and media advocacy.
Prior to joining TAAF, Terry founded Maum Consulting, an Asian American Studies-based educational social enterprise. He previously served as a full-time, teaching-focused professor of Asian American Studies at seven higher education institutions across the U.S., including Wellesley College, the University of Maryland, College Park, Hunter College, San Quentin State Prison and Harvard University, where he was awarded a Certificate of Teaching Excellence. Terry has also participated in several national and community-based Asian American organizations across the U.S., including a stint as the Executive Director of Hyphen, an award-winning Asian American news and culture magazine. As a social justice-oriented actor trained by Augusto Boal, Anna Deveare Smith, Judith Sloan, and Ernest Abuba, Terry wrote and performed a semi-autobiographical, oral history-based solo show, 38th Parallels, which enjoyed an Off-Broadway run with Pan Asian Repertory Theatre.
Dr. Park received his BA in International Studies from Vassar College, his MA from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and his PhD in Cultural Studies with a designated emphasis in Studies of Performance and Practice from the University of California, Davis. A second generation Korean American born in Orange County and raised in San Jose, Salt Lake City, and Seoul, Terry currently resides in Oakland, California. Fun fact: in 2011 Terry was crowned Mr. Hyphen, an Asian American male-identifying beauty pageant, by performing as his alter ego, Magical Air Guitar Unicorn.
Rohit Paul
Read Bio
Rohit Paul
Rohit serves as The Asian American Foundation’s Head of People, Talent and Culture, where he takes a lead role in developing TAAF’s culture and values while identifying its strengths and opportunities. He comes to TAAF after serving in a multitude of public sector leadership roles, including chief of human resources at the Illinois Tollway, deputy chief human resources officer at the Chicago Housing Authority, deputy chief talent officer at City Colleges of Chicago, and director of talent acquisition at Chicago Public Schools.
As a human resources leader, he launched initiatives to address and revitalize organizational culture and climate, developed inclusive performance processes, and designed professional learning programs. His thoughts on human resources have been shared in conferences, presentations, and the media.
Rohit currently serves on the board of two non-profit organizations focused on social justice. He holds undergraduate degrees from Loyola University Chicago, a law degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law, a master’s in business administration from the University of Notre Dame, and a master’s in cities from the London School of Economics and Political Science. In his free time, Rohit loves to workout, explore Chicago’s amazing restaurants, and spend time with his wife Kethaki and their kids Neeraj and Neetu.
Nicole Santos
Read Bio
Nicole Santos
Nicole Santos joins The Asian American Foundation (TAAF) as a Senior Communications Associate helping execute the overall strategy for TAAF’s communications efforts that promote and enhance the organization’s mission and brand. Additionally, she builds strong relationships with community, peers, partners, corporations and press on all media platforms.
Prior to joining TAAF, Nicole worked at GoFundMe as a Communications Manager who led the planning, development and implementation of AAPI communications strategies. She also managed the #StopAsianHate hub which featured over 250+ fundraisers supporting victims of hate crimes and violence, as well as uplifting and good news stories that the comms team amplified locally and nationally. She is a proud member of the team that won the Fundraising, Real Time Response Shorty Award for GoFundMe’s AAPI Community Relief Fund. Additionally, she served as the regional spokesperson for Northern California, Nevada and Hawaii generating media coverage about fundraisers and crowdfunding trends and managing crisis response. Fun fact: For three consecutive years, Nicole and the comms team won the Best Team Halloween Costume at GoFundMe.
Nicole graduated from California State University, Chico with a B.A. in Journalism and a minor in music. She is a mentor at A Bridge for Kids to two young Asian American women attending high school and offers support, encouragement and advice as they navigate their final years and prepare for college. In her free time, she enjoys playing beach volleyball, going to concerts and sports games, searching for the best oyster happy hour deals and adventuring with her Corgi Chandler Bing. Born and raised in Northern California, Nicole is a second generation Filipina American who now resides in San Diego.
Fatima Wahidi
Read Bio
Fatima Wahidi
Fatima Wahidi is the Program Associate for the Anti-Hate and Belonging Program at TAAF. Fatima began her career in philanthropy and nonprofit work, focusing on racial justice and education equity. Recently, she was a Bill Emerson National Fellow with the Chicago Food Policy Action Council, an Advisory Board Member with First Lady Michelle Obama's Better Make Room Initiative, and a Program and Fundraising Volunteer with the Kofi Adomako Foundation. Her professional experience includes five years of work with the Muslim Women's Professional Network and a fellowship with the American Pakistan Foundation.
Fatima has a Bachelor's degree in Sociology with a minor in Anthropology from Washington University in her hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. She was inspired by her North St. Louis County community to work toward racial and socioeconomic justice. Fatima continues to search for how she can be of service to others and, in her free time, enjoys boxing, exploring local eateries, and spending time in nature.
.png)
Audrey Yamamoto
Read Bio
Audrey Yamamoto
Audrey Yamamoto currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer of The Asian American Foundation (TAAF). She has more than twenty years of executive leadership experience in the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors where she has consistently helped organizations maximize their impact while building a collaborative, team-oriented culture.
Prior to joining TAAF, Audrey served as the President and Executive Director of the Asian Pacific Fund, the only foundation dedicated to supporting the San Francisco Bay Area’s most vulnerable Asians and Pacific Islanders. Under her leadership, the Fund reached historic levels of fundraising and grantmaking while launching new programs that increased the Fund’s visibility. Previously, Audrey served as the Executive Director of the Children’s Creativity Museum in San Francisco, where she led the organization through a strategic rebranding initiative that yielded unprecedented growth.
Audrey graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a degree in economics and has an MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA with an emphasis in nonprofit management and entrepreneurship. She serves on the board of the Asian Health Services Foundation, is an inductee of the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame, an alumnus of Leadership California and recipient of the Asian Business League’s Leadership Award. Audrey is a fourth generation Japanese American who was born and raised in Union City, California and now resides in Oakland with her husband and two teenage sons.
TAAF TEAM MEMBERS
Read Bio
Prisca Bae
Prisca Bae joins the Asian American Foundation from the private sector where she designed and launched philanthropic and social impact initiatives centered around communities of color and women.
At PepsiCo, Prisca oversaw the gender diversity and women’s strategy for the Global Diversity & Engagement Center of Excellence. She helped develop and launch a $100 million commitment to women and girls and worked with leaders company-wide on gender parity and pay equity issues. She also served as chief of staff to PepsiCo’s Global Public Policy and Government Affairs group. Prior to PepsiCo, Prisca advised companies and nonprofits on strategic women’s initiatives as Vice President at Seneca Women, the advisory firm founded by the former U.S. Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues, Melanne Verveer. Before joining PepsiCo, she served as the inaugural Director of the Women in the World Foundation, a public charity founded out of Tina Brown’s Women in the World Summit at Newsweek & the Daily Beast and managed Goldman Sachs Gives, a billion dollar charitable fund for the partners of Goldman Sachs.
Prisca began her career as an attorney at Latham & Watkins, LLP and received her B.A. from Columbia College, Columbia University and J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
She currently serves on the boards of The Roger Lehecka Double Discovery Center at Columbia University, the Korean American Community Foundation and The Li.st, a community of high impact women in media, business and tech. Prisca was born in South Korea, was raised in Chicago, and is currently based in New York City.
Read Bio
Georgette Bhathena
Georgette Bhathena is the Chief Programs Officer at The Asian American Foundation (TAAF) overseeing programming and strategy to achieve maximum impact. She has over 20 years of experience working across sectors in purpose-driven organizations.
Prior to joining TAAF, Georgette led the trust-based grantmaking strategy and nonprofit partnerships on the Zoom Cares team. Zoom Cares, the social impact arm of Zoom, puts the full weight of the company’s platform, dollars, employees, and voice behind a commitment to foster equity, democratize opportunity, and address some of humanity’s biggest challenges. Zoom is a proud partner of TAAF on the AAPI Giving Challenge. Previously, Georgette held senior positions at Tipping Point Community, the San Francisco Foundation, and JPMorgan Chase, among others.
Georgette received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Washington and her Master in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She is a Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Fellow. Georgette lives in the Bay Area with her family and favorite corgi Rosie.
Read Bio
Leigh Cafferty
Leigh Cafferty has over 15 years’ experience in digital and print media, purpose-driven live events, and strategic communications. She has produced events for media outlets including The New York Times, NowThis News, Thomson Reuters, The Daily Beast, IFC Films, Starz, Fortune, and Penske Media.
Leigh oversaw all communications and media relations for Tina Brown and her flagship Women in the World Summit, during which she built and managed a global community of 500+K followers, averaged over 5+ billion media impressions yearly, and successfully introduced Women in the World to new markets in Dubai, Toronto, New Delhi, London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Dallas, and San Antonio. She additionally coordinated global event partnerships for Women in the World including World Economic Forum dinners with Credit Suisse, Art Basel Miami Salons with Bumble, and UN General Assembly Dinner with Bank of America.
Leigh produces TAAF’s purpose-driven events, curated conversations, and growing live events calendar alongside the Partnerships team.
She lives in New Jersey with her comedian husband and two children. She is a former ballerina and passionate about animal rescue.
Read Bio
Sruthi Chandrasekaran
Sruthi Chandrasekaran (she/her) serves as TAAF’s Director of Data and Research. She leads strategy development and implementation for the Data and Research team and targeted studies that identify and address the needs of the AAPI community.
Sruthi brings her lived experience as a first-generation Indian American and a recent immigrant to the United States, along with her professional expertise in research and monitoring, evaluation, and learning, to TAAF. She has over a decade of experience working with small and large non-profit organizations, foundations, and government funding agencies on issues faced by marginalized populations. Sruthi also has extensive experience generating and using evidence to inform policy and programming across diverse contexts. Most recently, she was a co-Principal Investigator on a mixed methods, community-based participatory research study documenting the needs of, perspectives on, and access to sexual and reproductive health in the AAPI comunity.
Sruthi holds an MSc in Comparative Social Policy from the University of Oxford, where she was a Felix Scholar and Maude Royden Fellow, and an MA in Economics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT-Madras). She was a Women Deliver Young Leader and a Global Health Corps Fellow. Sruthi resides in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband and daughter.
Read Bio
Erin Chen
Erin Chen is a Social Media Strategist at The Asian American Foundation, working to build out TAAF’s social media presence and raise brand awareness. She brings editorial and social expertise from her time at Bloomberg L.P. and Insider Inc., where she owned social media strategy and distributed content and breaking news across social platforms. Erin graduated from the University of Rochester with a BA in Communications, and is currently pursuing a MA in Communications at Johns Hopkins University. Outside of work, Erin reads and writes novels in the dark (which worsens her eyesight exponentially) and swears that she’ll learn how to ride a bike someday.
Read Bio
Norman Chen
Norman Chen is the Chief Executive Officer of TAAF and brings a thirty-year career in entrepreneurship, healthcare and community leadership in the United States and Asia. Norman is passionate about building organizations in both the nonprofit and private sectors that positively impact society.
Prior to his appointment at TAAF, Norman co-founded the nonprofit Leading Asian Americans to Unite for Change (LAAUNCH) and helped to create a landmark study, The STAATUS Index, of American attitudes towards Asian Americans.
As a healthcare entrepreneur, Norman was the founder and CEO of Asia Renal Care, a network of specialty medical centers in six countries, and co-founder of DeltaHealth Hospital, a world-class hospital in partnership with Columbia Heartsource. As a venture capitalist, Norman led successful life sciences investments at Fidelity Asia Ventures (now Eight Roads) and 6 Dimensions Capital.
Norman grew up on the East Coast and currently lives in the Bay Area. He has been a board or advisory council member at The Nature Conservancy (CA), Children’s Medical Foundation (HK), SF Marine Science Institute, and Positive Coaching Alliance. He holds a B.S. degree from MIT and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Read Bio
Sonia Chou
Sonia Chou is the Manager of Corporate Affairs & Philanthropy at The Asian American Foundation, working closely with TAAF's corporate and fundraising partners to unlock resources for the AAPI community and community based organizations. She has had the great privilege of working in the fundraising and development departments at organizations such as Supermajority, Lincoln Center, the New York Youth Symphony, and Voices of Ascension. She graduated from the University of Chicago, where she double majored in Art History and Anthropology with a specialization in Edo period Japanese tattoos. Sadly, she is not an art historian, anthropologist, or tattoo artist.
Read Bio
Nick Chow
Read Bio
Bernadette Cruz
Bernadette Cruz is Director of Operations at The Asian American Foundation managing vendor relations, contracting processes, and oversees effective procedures throughout the organization. She is passionate about building culture and values and unifying staff around mission, vision, strategies and work plans and supports all organizational functions including IT and technology, finance, budgeting as well as HR and new hire onboarding.
Prior to TAAF, she was Deputy Director of Operations at Supermajority, a women's activism group harnessing the collective power of women voters, was an award-winning Director of Marketing at Humane Society Silicon Valley, finding forever homes for shelter animals, and started her career in marketing and publicity roles at Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House, before finding her passion in the nonprofit sector in 2014. Bernadette loves a good road trip full of Whitney Houston singalongs.
Read Bio
Stella Cunanan
Stella provides administrative support for TAAF staff that are based on the West Coast. She joins TAAF from the University of California, Hastings Law where she served as a lead administrative assistant to UC Hastings faculty. Stella was the recipient of the UC Hastings Certificate of Leadership and the UC Hastings Outstanding Contribution by Staff during her time there. She holds a Bachelor's of Science in Visual Communication Design from San Francisco State University. She enjoys bringing her creative knowledge and problem solving skills to all of her roles.
In her spare time, Stella loves to collect records, go to concerts, cook, and try new restaurants. She's also an avid TV binger and loves to deep dive into TV shows she's currently obsessed with.
Read Bio
Tong Yuan Douville
As the Anti-Hate and Belonging Program Associate, Tong Yuan manages the team's administrative needs, coordinates grantee communications, and cultivates collaboration within the Anti-Hate and Belonging National Network. In addition to her work on Anti-Hate, she provides event planning for many of TAAF commemorative events.
Prior to joining TAAF, Tong Yuan has worked in refugee employment services at the International Rescue Committee and as the coordinator of a healthy corner store program in Pittsburgh with Just Harvest. Passionate about the intersection of food, identity, and agency, she also apprenticed at Orchard Kitchen Farm in Washington State to experience the livelihood of the over 1 billion people globally who work in agriculture.Tong Yuan graduated summa cum laude with bachelor’s in medical anthropology and public health from Southern Methodist University, where she was a President’s Scholar and Maguire Public Service Fellow. She has published research on Rwanda’s family planning program, created materials for culturally competent health services for the Seattle/King County Clinic, and developed a food-secure resettlement pilot program for the IRC in Dallas. Tong Yuan was adopted from China and raised in Seattle, Washington. Her adoptee identity drives her to break down the myth of Asian Americans as a monolith.
Read Bio
Charity Espiritu
Charity Espiritu manages the Anti-Hate and Belonging flagship program at TAAF and brings 15 years of experience in philanthropy, social impact, and public policy. Previously, she held leadership positions at the Asian Americans Advancing Justice, The Asia Foundation, and a startup social enterprise. She served as a board member at community nonprofits focusing on education, gender, and human rights. Charity has an MPA from Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley. She is from San Francisco, California.
Read Bio
Polly Fong
Polly Fong is a Creative Manager at The Asian American Foundation, overseeing creative projects that help build the TAAF brand. She brings creative and strategic expertise from brand experience agency Jack Morton, where she led projects for clients including Google and Amazon in design, copy, and creative strategy. In 2021 Polly was a finalist in Chief Marketer’s Top Women in Marketing Awards, and is most recently a finalist in the Young Lions Competition in the US. She’s a Bay Area native who now lives in Brooklyn. Outside work, Polly loves cocktails, trap music, and running. Her favorite drink is a tie between a Gimlet and a Clover Club.
Read Bio
Baonam Giang
Baonam ‘Nam’ Giang serves as the Community Engagement Manager for the Anti-Hate and Belonging Program at The Asian American Foundation (TAAF). He supports the Anti-Hate National Network and the local AAPI Action Centers as they work to develop a national infrastructure for tackling hate across the country. He is passionate about serving the AAPI community, having spent most of his career embedded in local and national AAPI organizations.
Prior to joining TAAF, he was at the National Organization of Asians and Pacific Islanders Ending Sexual Violence (NAPIESV). During his time at NAPIESV, he supported community-based organizations, governmental agencies, and grantees of various Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women programs in enhancing their capacity to provide culturally specific and linguistically appropriate services for AAPI victims and survivors in the U.S. and U.S. Pacific Territories.
Nam graduated from the University of New Mexico with a B.A. in Criminology and a Master of Public Administration with an emphasis in public and nonprofit management. In his free time, he enjoys serving as a youth group leader, playing basketball, snowboarding, and spending time in nature with his wife and daughter.
Read Bio
Christine Ho
Christine Ho is the Development Associate at The Asian American Foundation, playing a key role in advancing TAAF's mission and vision through revenue-generating activities and partnerships for TAAF. Prior to joining TAAF, Christine was an Operations Associate on the Conservation and Markets Initiative at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, in which her team partnered with NGOs and the private sector to reduce overfishing and the degradation of ecosystems that result from the production of globally traded agriculture and seafood commodities.
Christine received her BA in Economics with a minor in Global Studies at UCLA and her MBA at Santa Clara University, Leavey School of Business with a triple concentration in Leading Innovative Organizations, Entrepreneurship, and Marketing. Based in the Bay Area, she serves on the San Francisco chapter's Steering Committee at Project by Project, a 100% volunteer-run nonprofit organization that focuses on giving back to the AAPI community and developing AAPI leaders through innovative philanthropy.
When Christine isn't working, you can find her spending quality time with her family, friends, and shiba inu, as well as hiking in nature, going on food and music adventures, volunteering, reading, traveling, running, and keeping up with the latest TV shows and movies.
Read Bio
Isabel Kim
Isabel Kim is the Chief Financial Officer at The Asian American Foundation (TAAF). She has over twenty years of experience in the finance field primarily in healthcare finance management within start-ups and non-profit organizations. She oversees accounting, financial reporting, financial operations, treasury, FP&A, audit, and payroll.
Prior to joining TAAF, Isabel served as the Controller at Devoted Health, a health tech startup serving seniors in America who opt for a Medicare Advantage Plan. She helped scale the Finance team through the exponential growth of Devoted Health. Previously, Isabel held various positions at the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Mass General Brigham (formerly known as Partners HealthCare) and a Federally Qualified Health Center, among others.
Isabel received her BA and MS from Boston University. She is also a graduate of LeadBoston’s Class of 2017 and Women in NAAAP’s 2015 Lean in Circle program. Isabel was born and raised on Guam and enjoys spending time with friends and family back in the Pacific every year.
Read Bio
Peter Li
Peter Li serves as a Corporate Engagement and Development Manager at The Asian American Foundation (TAAF). He works closely with corporate leaders, foundation executives, and individual donors, and on The AAPI Giving Challenge. After the Atlanta shooting in 2021, Peter wanted to give back to the AAPI community, so he joined in April of 2021 to help launch TAAF.
Prior to joining TAAF, Peter worked on political campaigns in major battleground states. Most recently, he served as Deputy Campaign Manager on Congressman Ron Kind’s 2020 reelection campaign in western Wisconsin, where he managed the organizing and targeting programs, and contributed to a 2.7 percent margin of victory in a district President Trump won. Peter has also worked on presidential, federal, and local campaigns in urban, suburban, and rural communities, and got his start in 2015 organizing for Secretary Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in New Hampshire.
Raised in Boston after his family immigrated to the U.S. when he was 7 years old, Peter is an avid fan of his hometown and its sports teams—the Boston Red Sox, New England Patriots, Boston Bruins, and Boston Celtics. Peter graduated as a Posse Foundation Scholar from Union College in 2015 with a B.A. in Political Science. He is currently based in Washington DC.
Read Bio
Beverly Liang
Beverly Liang is a Project Manager at The Asian American Foundation, working across teams to create external branding and website content. She brings her expertise in guiding leading organizations in culture, technology, fashion, and retail, first as as Head of Strategy at 2x4, a globally recognized design and branding agency, leading projects for clients including Google, Prada, MoMA, and Target, and as a Strategy Director at UNIQLO's Global Creative Lab. She graduated with Honors from the University of Chicago with an AB in Cultural Anthropology, and is pursuing a MSW at the Hunter College Silberman School of Social Work. Her favorite gelato flavor is pistachio, with hazelnut as a close contender.
Read Bio
Lindsey Mitchell
Lindsey Mitchell is the Finance Manager for The Asian American Foundation, and helps advance TAAF's mission and vision by focusing on financial operations and compliance for the organization's overall financial health.
Prior to joining TAAF, Lindsey worked at the University of Washington as the Associate Director for Finance and Business Operations for the Husky Union Building. In this role, she led multiple units and provided strategic oversight on issues related to accounting, finance, human resources, and back-end business operations.
When she's not working, Lindsey likes to be creative, play games (tabletop and video games), read, and watch shows. Lindsey was adopted from Seoul, South Korea and raised in the Pacific Northwest. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two dogs. One is objectively the best dog in the world, and the other is trying his best.
Read Bio
Sally Mo
Read Bio
Joy Moh
Joy joins TAAF from Team Rubicon where she served as its first head of communications. She is a highly creative marketing and communications executive with a depth of experience building brand and comms strategies, negotiating key press placements, developing social media campaigns, executing stunts and events, establishing innovative partnerships and managing talent in both the profit and non-profit space. Her 10+ years of experience include serving as Director of Worldwide Publicity for Sony Pictures Entertainment and consulting on communication strategies for AAPI talent and activists.
Read Bio
Claire Kai-Li Mondry
Claire Kai-Li Mondry serves as a Development Associate at The Asian American Foundation (TAAF). As Development Associate, she provides operational and administrative support for revenue generating activities and partnerships at the organization. Claire joins TAAF from the Design Trust for Public Space where she assisted with fundraising for public space and place-making initiatives in New York City. Claire has previously held positions at other AAPI organizations like the Asian Pacific American Leadership Institute, the Museum of Chinese in America, and Kundiman.
Claire graduated from Fordham University with a BA in American Studies and Political Science with a concentration in Diversity & Difference. Outside of her job at TAAF, Claire volunteers as a mentor to Asian American youth, teaching about the importance of community leadership and civic engagement. She is also a published writer with her essays on food, identity, and belonging featured in the Fordham Undergraduate Research Journal and Bricolage Magazine. Claire is originally from San José, California and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Read Bio
Eugena Oh
Eugena Oh serves as the Regional Director, Greater NYC Area, at The Asian American Foundation. She comes to TAAF after serving as President & CEO of the “I Have A Dream” Foundation, a national nonprofit empowering youth to achieve their dreams through education and mentorship. She believes deeply in racial justice and equity and has devoted her career to extending opportunity to historically marginalized communities, by building coalitions to build power.
Over eleven years at “I Have A Dream,” Eugena focused on unifying its federated affiliates around a shared vision and goal for “multiple pathways to success” for its youth (‘Dreamers’). She developed a first ever internal grants program that sent financial resources directly to affiliates. Under her leadership, the national headquarters was able to grow its budget from $1.5 million annually to $5.1 million. Eugena’s honors include receiving the Trailblazer award from both the Korean American Lawyers Association of Greater New York (2019) and the IvyG Conference (2018), being named to New York Non-Profit Media’s inaugural class of 40 Under 40 Rising Stars (2015) and receiving the University of Pennsylvania’s Asian Alumni Association’s Outstanding Alumna Award (2008). She serves on the University of Pennsylvania’s Alumni Board of Directors, Penn’s Pan-Asian American Community House Board of Advisors, Rise First’s Board of Advisors, as well as the “I Have A Dream” Foundation’s Board of Directors.
Eugena is an alumna of the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, and Columbia Business School’s Senior Leaders in Nonprofit Executive program. She is a proud New Yorker and second generation Korean American currently raising two children with her partner on Long Island. Eugena loves to dance to 90s hip-hop, sing power ballads during karaoke, and read just about anything.
Read Bio
Aryani Ong
Aryani Ong is TAAF's Director of Anti-Hate & Belonging, and a Chinese-Indonesian American civil rights attorney. She wrote an early community response guide to hate crimes for OCA managed the publication of a national audit of anti-Asian violence and lobbied for stronger federal hate crime law for the AAAJ-AAJC. Aryani has spoken before diverse audiences, including as an invited US expert before the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. She is Founder and President of Montgomery County Progressive Asian American Network and Senior Advisor to Communities United Against Hate.
A 30-year activist, Aryani carried out landscape studies on Asian American community organizations for Harvard’s Civil Rights Project and the Urban Institute, where she also co-authored Advancing Equity for AAPI Communities. She’s worked on a range of issues, notably the intersection of national security and civil rights. Aryani co-founded the Asian American Federal Employees for Nondiscrimination where she promotes equity to protect Asian Americans from profiling during heightened U.S-Asia conflicts. She also has promoted representation of Asian Americans in media and society, civic participation, ESOL, and educational access. Currently she serves as a board member of Asian American Futures and the Asian American Action Fund. Aryani was named among Maryland's Top 100 Women.
Read Bio
Howard Ou
Howard Ou is joining The Asian American Foundation (TAAF) as the Director of Government Relations. He most recently served as Associate Director in the White House Office of Public Engagement leading on AAPI, Housing, and Agency portfolios for his team. Prior to this role, Howard was on the Biden-Harris Transition Confirmations Team working to support successful Senate confirmations for Biden Administration Cabinet Nominees for both the Domestic and the Climate/Energy pods; and was the National AAPI & LGBTQ+ Deputy Director for the Biden for President Campaign. Howard joins TAAF with extensive experience as staff for Members of Congress from the California delegation as well as serving as Policy and Press Advisor for the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.
Read Bio
Terry K Park
Dr. Terry K Park (he/him) serves as TAAF’s Education and Narrative Change Program Officer. An award-winning educator, social justice advocate, and former performance artist, Terry has over twenty years of experience at the transformative intersections of anti-racist education, social change storytelling, and media advocacy.
Prior to joining TAAF, Terry founded Maum Consulting, an Asian American Studies-based educational social enterprise. He previously served as a full-time, teaching-focused professor of Asian American Studies at seven higher education institutions across the U.S., including Wellesley College, the University of Maryland, College Park, Hunter College, San Quentin State Prison and Harvard University, where he was awarded a Certificate of Teaching Excellence. Terry has also participated in several national and community-based Asian American organizations across the U.S., including a stint as the Executive Director of Hyphen, an award-winning Asian American news and culture magazine. As a social justice-oriented actor trained by Augusto Boal, Anna Deveare Smith, Judith Sloan, and Ernest Abuba, Terry wrote and performed a semi-autobiographical, oral history-based solo show, 38th Parallels, which enjoyed an Off-Broadway run with Pan Asian Repertory Theatre.
Dr. Park received his BA in International Studies from Vassar College, his MA from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and his PhD in Cultural Studies with a designated emphasis in Studies of Performance and Practice from the University of California, Davis. A second generation Korean American born in Orange County and raised in San Jose, Salt Lake City, and Seoul, Terry currently resides in Oakland, California. Fun fact: in 2011 Terry was crowned Mr. Hyphen, an Asian American male-identifying beauty pageant, by performing as his alter ego, Magical Air Guitar Unicorn.
Read Bio
Rohit Paul
Rohit serves as The Asian American Foundation’s Head of People, Talent and Culture, where he takes a lead role in developing TAAF’s culture and values while identifying its strengths and opportunities. He comes to TAAF after serving in a multitude of public sector leadership roles, including chief of human resources at the Illinois Tollway, deputy chief human resources officer at the Chicago Housing Authority, deputy chief talent officer at City Colleges of Chicago, and director of talent acquisition at Chicago Public Schools.
As a human resources leader, he launched initiatives to address and revitalize organizational culture and climate, developed inclusive performance processes, and designed professional learning programs. His thoughts on human resources have been shared in conferences, presentations, and the media.
Rohit currently serves on the board of two non-profit organizations focused on social justice. He holds undergraduate degrees from Loyola University Chicago, a law degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law, a master’s in business administration from the University of Notre Dame, and a master’s in cities from the London School of Economics and Political Science. In his free time, Rohit loves to workout, explore Chicago’s amazing restaurants, and spend time with his wife Kethaki and their kids Neeraj and Neetu.
Read Bio
Nicole Santos
Nicole Santos joins The Asian American Foundation (TAAF) as a Senior Communications Associate helping execute the overall strategy for TAAF’s communications efforts that promote and enhance the organization’s mission and brand. Additionally, she builds strong relationships with community, peers, partners, corporations and press on all media platforms.
Prior to joining TAAF, Nicole worked at GoFundMe as a Communications Manager who led the planning, development and implementation of AAPI communications strategies. She also managed the #StopAsianHate hub which featured over 250+ fundraisers supporting victims of hate crimes and violence, as well as uplifting and good news stories that the comms team amplified locally and nationally. She is a proud member of the team that won the Fundraising, Real Time Response Shorty Award for GoFundMe’s AAPI Community Relief Fund. Additionally, she served as the regional spokesperson for Northern California, Nevada and Hawaii generating media coverage about fundraisers and crowdfunding trends and managing crisis response. Fun fact: For three consecutive years, Nicole and the comms team won the Best Team Halloween Costume at GoFundMe.
Nicole graduated from California State University, Chico with a B.A. in Journalism and a minor in music. She is a mentor at A Bridge for Kids to two young Asian American women attending high school and offers support, encouragement and advice as they navigate their final years and prepare for college. In her free time, she enjoys playing beach volleyball, going to concerts and sports games, searching for the best oyster happy hour deals and adventuring with her Corgi Chandler Bing. Born and raised in Northern California, Nicole is a second generation Filipina American who now resides in San Diego.
Read Bio
Fatima Wahidi
Fatima Wahidi is the Program Associate for the Anti-Hate and Belonging Program at TAAF. Fatima began her career in philanthropy and nonprofit work, focusing on racial justice and education equity. Recently, she was a Bill Emerson National Fellow with the Chicago Food Policy Action Council, an Advisory Board Member with First Lady Michelle Obama's Better Make Room Initiative, and a Program and Fundraising Volunteer with the Kofi Adomako Foundation. Her professional experience includes five years of work with the Muslim Women's Professional Network and a fellowship with the American Pakistan Foundation.
Fatima has a Bachelor's degree in Sociology with a minor in Anthropology from Washington University in her hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. She was inspired by her North St. Louis County community to work toward racial and socioeconomic justice. Fatima continues to search for how she can be of service to others and, in her free time, enjoys boxing, exploring local eateries, and spending time in nature.
Read Bio
Audrey Yamamoto
Audrey Yamamoto currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer of The Asian American Foundation (TAAF). She has more than twenty years of executive leadership experience in the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors where she has consistently helped organizations maximize their impact while building a collaborative, team-oriented culture.
Prior to joining TAAF, Audrey served as the President and Executive Director of the Asian Pacific Fund, the only foundation dedicated to supporting the San Francisco Bay Area’s most vulnerable Asians and Pacific Islanders. Under her leadership, the Fund reached historic levels of fundraising and grantmaking while launching new programs that increased the Fund’s visibility. Previously, Audrey served as the Executive Director of the Children’s Creativity Museum in San Francisco, where she led the organization through a strategic rebranding initiative that yielded unprecedented growth.
Audrey graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a degree in economics and has an MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA with an emphasis in nonprofit management and entrepreneurship. She serves on the board of the Asian Health Services Foundation, is an inductee of the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame, an alumnus of Leadership California and recipient of the Asian Business League’s Leadership Award. Audrey is a fourth generation Japanese American who was born and raised in Union City, California and now resides in Oakland with her husband and two teenage sons.
Project team
