NEW Leadership Research Series Report 
2010 API Representation on Fortune 500 Boards


       

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Key Findings

• There are 96 APIs holding 115 board seats at 98 Fortune 500 companies.
• The 115 board seats represent 2.08% of the total 5,520 board seats in the Fortune 500.
• Fifteen (15.62%) out of the 96 API directors are women.
• Ten API directors serve as chair, president and/or (co) chief executive officer of a Fortune 500 company in 2010.
• The ethnic breakdown of these API directors is as follows: Chinese (37), Asian Indian (34), Japanese (14), Pakistani (3), Vietnamese (3), Korean (2), Filipino (1), Singaporean (1) and Sri Lankan (1).
• Fifteen API board members sit on more than one Fortune 500 board. Four of these directors sit on three Fortune 500 boards accounting for twelve seats: Victor J. Dzau, Rajat K. Gupta, Andrea Jung and Arun Sarin.
• Thirteen Fortune 500 companies have more than one API director on their boards: Goldman Sachs Group (2), Best Buy (2), PepsiCo (2), Safeway (2), Cisco Systems (2), Staples (2), Avon Products (2), Synnex (3), Yahoo (2), AECOM Technology (3), SunGard Data Systems (2), Mattel (2) and MasterCard (4).
• MasterCard has 4 APIs on its board of directors, more than any other company in the Fortune 500.

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 used to refer 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 Other 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. 

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