Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP)On March 3, AAPIP brought together four leaders whose tenures have collectively shaped the organization across three decades: Peggy Saika, former President & Executive Director of AAPIP; Bo Thao-Urabe, former Senior Director; Cathy Cha, President & CEO of the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund and former Boston Chapter co-chair; and Kiran Ahuja, former AAPIP Board Member and former Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. The conversation was moderated by AAPIP President & CEO Connie Chung Joe.
What emerged was a working session of four women thinking out loud about what philanthropy still gets wrong, and what AANHPI leaders need to know to operate inside it without losing themselves.
AAPIP as a place to develop and belong
Each speaker pointed to AAPIP as the place where they first practiced leadership. Cathy Cha described introducing her first panelist at a Boston chapter event as an early experience of leadership development, public speaking skills she went on to apply as a foundation CEO. Kiran Ahuja, then leading a young nonprofit without fundraising experience, credited time spent with Peggy and others learning how to make the case for the AANHPI community. All four speakers valued the AAPIP friendships they had made.
Bo Thao-Urabe put it plainly: AAPIP gave her a structural understanding of philanthropy she hadn’t had working on the community side. “Being at AAPIP, and certainly through Peggy’s leadership… I learned to be brave enough to try something, because when you have an institution that asks hard questions but also creates vehicles for you to try. That’s an incredible gift.”
Representation is progress but it’s not the destination
The speakers were direct about this distinction. Kiran Ahuja recalled a pattern from her time leading the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders: the assumption that an Asian American program officer would automatically understand and support AANHPI communities. It didn’t always work that way. “Representation matters, obviously. But even more so, what matters is real understanding and connection to community.”
She also named something harder: a leader entering a prominent foundation role who was told not to direct significant resources toward the AANHPI community, because it would look self-serving. “This is where we need to own our power when we have it.”
Philanthropy funds crises. Communities need infrastructure.
Bo Thao-Urabe offered the clearest diagnosis of the sector’s structural problem. AANHPI communities, she argued, receive resources when there is a visible crisis and not consistently enough to build the long-term infrastructure that would allow communities to address both immediate needs and longer-term goals. “The way we think about philanthropic dollars right now is very much still a race to the bottom. You are constantly competing for resources.”
The giving circle movement is one example of what communities built when they didn’t wait for philanthropy to catch up. AAPIP once served as the largest funder of AANHPI communities in Minnesota, something Bo described as “kind of incredible and kind of ridiculous,” because it pointed to how thin the broader investment was and still is.
Philanthropy should support movements and moments
Cathy Cha’s most pointed observation was about timing and source. The shifts she found most meaningful—community mobilization in the Twin Cities, shifts in public opinion on immigration enforcement, the Tesla accountability moment—came from everyday people taking action, not from philanthropic strategy.
“These were not philanthropic thought pieces written in some conference room,” she said. “I think where we need to go as a sector is to take those organic moments and figure out how to be quick enough to support them and give them some staying power so they last.”
What the next 35 years require
The speakers’ aspirations for future AANHPI leaders in philanthropy were consistent on a few points: know the history, because it gives you context for how far things have and haven’t moved; build in solidarity with other communities of color, because the divides are deliberate and the work is shared; and step into positions of influence without apologizing for what you intend to do with them.
Peggy Saika, whose own entry to the Council on Foundations board came through a combination of persistence and discomfort, offered a frame that ran through the whole conversation: when AANHPI leaders are in the room, something is required of them. The question is whether they’re prepared to meet that moment and whether AAPIP continues to be the place where that preparation happens.
AAPIP Sips are member programming designed to build connection across the AAPIP network. This session was open to the broader AAPIP network. To learn more about AAPIP membership, visit aapip.org.