Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics Report: Asian Pacific Americans Remain Absent from Corporate Boardrooms

Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Inc. announced it has unveiled the findings of its 2009 Corporate Governance Report measuring Asian Pacific American (APA) inclusion on the boards of Fortune 100 companies.

"Despite social, business and economic rise, Asian Pacific Americans remain absent from corporate boardrooms," said J.D. Hokoyama, LEAP's President and CEO. "This is an issue we hope to address fully in 2010 as part of our long-term strategy on research of APA representation in top leadership roles in the public, private, foundation, education and nonprofit sectors."

Highlights of the report include:

- There are 23 APAs that hold 27 board seats at 24 Fortune 100 companies.

- The 27 board seats represent 2.2 percent of the total 1,220 board seats in the Fortune 100.

- The breakdown of these APA board of directors by ethnic group is as follows: Asian Indian (13), Chinese (6), Japanese (2), Filipino (1) and Vietnamese (1).

- Five (21.7 percent) out of the 23 APA directors are women.

- Four board members sit on more than one Fortune 100 board: John S. Chen, Rajat K. Gupta, Andrea Jung and Marissa T. Peterson.

- Seven APA directors served as (vice) chair, (co) president and/or (co) CEO of a Fortune 500 company in 2009.

- Three Fortune 100 companies have more than one APA director on their boards: Goldman Sachs, PepsiCo and Best Buy.

There are several terms that are used interchangeably referring to this community: Asian, Asian American, Asian Pacific Islander and Asian Pacific American, to name a few. There are two groups that comprise the community: Asian and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. The US 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 ethnic groups. The Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander category is defined as "a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands."

People of Asian and Pacific Islander descent make up more than half the world's population and more than 5 percent (16.2 million) of the total US population making it one of the fastest-growing groups in the United States. According to the US Census Bureau's 2007 American Community Survey, the largest Asian groups in the US include: Chinese (23.28 percent), Filipino (20.06 percent), Asian Indian (18.22 percent), Vietnamese (10.78 percent), Korean (10.13 percent) and Japanese (8.02 percent). Native Hawaiian, Samoan and Chamorro (Guamanian) are the largest Pacific Islander groups in the country.

Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics is a national organization founded in 1982 with a mission to achieve participation and equality for Asian Pacific Americans through leadership, empowerment and policy.

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