Report finds lack of APIs on foundation boards
- October 5, 2010
There are only 36 Asian Pacific Islanders holding 37 board seats at 24 of the top 100 foundations in the United States today. These 37 board seats represent 4.95% of the total 748 board seats in these foundations.
Only two Filipino-Americans – Tessie Guillermo and Thurgood Marshall, Jr. – are in this elite group of 36, according to a report by Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Inc. (LEAP), which recently unveiled the findings of its newest leadership series report measuring Asian and Pacific Islander (API) inclusion on the boards of the top 100 foundations.
"Less than a quarter of the largest 100 foundations in the United States have Asian and Pacific Islander representation on their boards," said J.D. Hokoyama, LEAP’s President and CEO. "Even more disconcerting is the fact that no foundation in the top 100 is headed by a president, executive director and/or CEO of Asian and Pacific Islander descent."
According to LEAP, "Diverse boards with different experiences enable these foundations to develop unique strategies to accomplish their goals. API directors bring rich and diverse voices that enhance foundation boards’ ability to achieve their defined missions."
LEAP is a national organization founded in 1982 with a mission to achieve full participation and equality for Asian and Pacific Islanders (APIs) through leadership, empowerment and policy.
The 2010 API Representation on the Top 100 Foundation Boards report marks the second in a series of reports evaluating the inclusion of APIs at the highest leadership levels (Boards of Directors) in the private, foundation, nonprofit and education sectors.
Marshall and Guillermo
Thurgood Marshall, Jr. is the son of the late Supreme Court of the United States Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to serve on the US Supreme Court. He worked in the Clinton White House and is currently a partner at the international law firm Bingham McCutchen, LLP and a principal at its lobbying subsidiary, Bingham Consulting.
Aside from being a member of the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation, he is also a member of the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service. According to documents filed with the SEC, he is a director serving on the board of Corrections Corporation of America, the largest commercial vendor of federal detainment and prisoner transport in the United States.
Marshall’s mother is Cecilia Suyat-Marshall, a second-generation Filipino-American born in Hawaii.
Tessie Guillermo is President and CEO of ZeroDivide, a cutting-edge public foundation which supports technology adoption and capacity-building in underserved communities.
Prior to ZeroDivide, Ms. Guillermo served for 15 years as CEO of the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum, a leading national health policy/advocacy organization with offices in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. In 2000, Ms. Guillermo was appointed by former President Bill Clinton to serve as an inaugural member of the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
Aside from currently serving as Board Chair for The California Endowment, and Vice-Chair for Catholic Healthcare West. Ms. Guillermo is also a member of the Board of the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, the Nonprofit Finance Fund in New York and Northern California Grantmakers (NCG).
Ms. Guillermo is an alumna of the University of California, Berkeley and California State University, East Bay, with a BA in Economics. She is a graduate of the Gallup Leadership Institute and was a 1997 Fellow of the Asian Pacific American Women’s Leadership Institute.
Key Findings
LEAP identified the top 100 grant making US foundations, which controlled more than $200 billion in assets. APIs constitute 5.6% of the US population and its buying power is projected to climb to $696.5 billion by 2014.
The study found out further that there is no API heading a foundation in the role of executive director, president and/or CEO. One of only two API directors serving as chairman of the board is Filipina Tessie Guillermo (The California Endowment), and the other is Irene Hirano Inouye (The Ford Foundation), who also sits on more than one foundation board.
The 37 board seats represent 4.95% of the total 748 board seats in the top 100 foundations. The ethnic breakdown of these API board of directors is as follows: Chinese (13), Japanese (8), Asian Indian (6), Korean (3), Filipino (2), Vietnamese (2), Singaporean (1) and Thai (1).
Seven of the top 100 foundations have 2 or more API directors on their board: The Ford Foundation (3), The California Endowment (3), The Rockefeller Foundation (4), The 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 foundation in the top 100. (Momar G. Visaya/AJPress)
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