Asian-American Business Leaders Fund Effort to Fight Discrimination
Summary
Some of the wealthiest and most influential Asian-American business leaders are mounting an ambitious plan to challenge anti-Asian discrimination, rewrite school curriculums to reflect the role of Asian-Americans in history and collect data to guide policymakers. The group has pledged $125 million to a new initiative, the Asian American Foundation. Over the past year, hate crime against Asian-Americans has jumped 169 percent, according to a study by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, which tracks the crimes in 15 major American cities. The donors to the foundation include Joseph Bae, a co-president of the private equity firm KKR; Sheila Lirio Marcelo, the founder of the caregiver marketplace Care.com; Li Lu, the founder and chairman of the hedge fund Himalaya Capital; Joseph Tsai, a co-founder and the executive vice chairman of the Chinese technology giant Alibaba; Jerry Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo; and Peng Zhao, the chief executive of the market maker Citadel Securities. The group’s advisory committee includes Indra Nooyi, a former chairman and chief executive of PepsiCo; the professional basketball player Jeremy Lin; and the journalist Fareed Zakaria.