NEW Leadership Research Series Report 

       

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Key Findings

• There are 36 APIs holding 37 board seats at 24 of the top100 foundations.
• The ethnic breakdown of these API board members is as follows: Chinese (13), Japanese (8), Asian Indian (6), Korean (3), Filipino (2) Vietnamese (2), Singaporean (1) and Thai (1).
• The 37 board seats represent 4.95% of the total 748 board seats in the top 100 foundations.
• Twelve (33.33%) out of the 36 API directors are women.
• One board member sits on more than one foundation board: Irene Hirano Inouye.
• No APIs head a foundation in the role of executive director, president and/or CEO.
• Two API directors serve as chair of a foundation board: Tessie Guillermo and Irene Hirano Inouye.
• Seven of the top 100 foundations have two or more API directors on their boards: The Ford Foundation (3), The California Endowment (3), The Rockefeller Foundation (4), Silicon Valley Community Foundation (4), The James Irvine Foundation (2), The San Francisco Foundation (2) and The Commonwealth Fund (2).
• The Rockefeller Foundation has 25% API representation on its board of trustees, the highest percentage of any other foundation in the top 100.

About Asian and Pacific Islanders (APIs)

People of Asian and Pacific Islander descent make up more than half the world’s population and 5.6 percent (17.1 million) of the total U.S. population making it one of the fastest-growing groups in the United States.

There are several terms that are used referring to this community: Asian, Asian American, Asian Pacific Islander, Asian Pacific Islander American and Asian Pacific American, to name a few. There are two major groups that comprise the community: Asian and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

The U.S. Census Bureau defines the Asian category as “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent,” which includes over 20 different ethnic groups.  Southeast Asian generally includes Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian and Vietnamese.  South Asian generally includes Asian Indian, Bangladeshi, Bhutanese, Nepalese, Pakistani, and Sri Lankan. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2008 American Community Survey, the largest Asian groups in the U.S. include: Chinese (23.70%), Filipino (20.20%), Asian Indian (17.83%), Vietnamese (11.31%), Korean (10.53%) and Japanese (8.50%).

The Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander category is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands,” which includes 20 different ethnic groups. Native Hawaiian, Samoan and Chamorro (Guamanian) are the largest Pacific Islander groups in the country.

Disclosure

LEAP made every effort to achieve a high degree of accuracy. Information on race, ethnicity and gender composition of board members is not always publicly available. If errors or omissions are discovered, LEAP will make necessary adjustments. 

Please contact the report author, Rima K. Matsumoto, Vice President of Research and Strategic Alliances at (202) 412-4190 or via email at rmatsumoto@leap.org

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