AAPI Month
As part of AAPI Month, WID asked to hear from our AAPI sisters working in development to share their stories.
If there is one thing that you would like the WID community to know in honor of AAPI month, what would that be?
Kathleen Burke, Director of Individual Giving & Development Operations, Brooklyn Academy of Music:
As we look ahead to AAPI Month, it’s an opportunity to reflect on the vibrant and varied landscape of the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
It’s imperative that we cultivate spaces where AAPI voices are not only heard but valued and empowered. This means fostering environments where AAPI individuals can thrive professionally, where their insights are embraced, and where their contributions are duly recognized. Moreover, it’s crucial to acknowledge and address the unique challenges that AAPI communities may face, whether it’s systemic barriers or cultural stereotypes.
By actively championing diversity, equity, and inclusion within our organizations, we not only pay homage to AAPI heritage but also fortify the fabric of our communities and amplify our capacity to effect meaningful change.
Melissa Wong, Director of Individual Giving, Guttmacher Institute:
A 2021 report from the Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy reveals a stark statistic – the AAPI community accounts for 7% of the population in the U.S. and receives 0.02% of all grant making dollars in the country.
In honor of AAPI month, I’ve chosen to reup this particular example, but we know that this is one of many that evidences the unequal distribution of wealth and resources in this nation and globally.
I became a fundraiser because I am motivated by the possibility of creating more equitable societies and world-views with like-minded communities. Bringing our diverse authentic and whole selves into spaces where wealth is being shared, redistributed, and discussed is an important element to the long-term health and success of our profession and by inference, the betterment of the communities where we choose to work. I look forward to further conversations with the WID community about this and more.
Poonam Prasad, Founder, Prasad Consulting & Research:
As human beings, most of us are programmed to gravitate to what is safe and familiar:
the old, cozy sweater, comfort food from our childhood, the friend we’ve known from our school days. Then there are the few, amazing, enlightened, far-sighted folks who see the value of trying new experiences and reaching out to new people to enrich their lives. In my parents’ time, before travel became so easy, people had pen pals with whom they exchanged letters to learn about other cultures. Later came students and other international exchange programs where people from different countries learned to see a country’s famous sights and experience other people’s life and culture. In most cases, this resulted in the traveler learning that for all the differences they had read about, human beings everywhere were much the same in their emotions, ambitions and hopes for their families.
Anyone who has traveled abroad can agree that being a stranger in a foreign land is never easy. For an immigrant, it is harder because the change is permanent, and there is usually no going back to the old familiar land. When I first came to this country, I had worked in journalism and advertising but had no knowledge of fundraising as a profession. It was Edie Pearson, a Black American woman, who had lived in the Hawaiian Islands as a student (I later found out that she was a descendant of one of America’s founding fathers) from whom I learned about development and research for fundraising. She was my first mentor and also my first client.
Along the way, I attended a professional mentoring session, where I met Eleanor Cicerchi, who had once lived in South Asia as an exchange student. From her, I learned how to expand my Business. Some years later at a WID event, I was fortunate to meet former WID President, Linda Hartley. As we walked back together after the event, she invited me to be a speaker at a WID Luncheon and subsequently nominated me for the board. Perhaps appropriately, my first role on the board was as co-chair of Career Coaching. During this time, not only did we find great mentors for other members, I was also fortunate to be mentored by two well-known, experienced consultants, Eleanor Shakin and Nancy Raybin.
Later, I served on the board as WID’s 25th Anniversary Chair, Brenna Sheenan Mayer, another former WID Board President, had the vision to first invite another woman of color to serve as President and then, when she declined, to tap me to serve in that role – a great and unexpected honor! During my term as President, two other Asian American women, Gloria Kao, of Chinese descent and JuWon Choi of Korean descent served in important board positions. I credit Gloria with helping us make it through the most difficult year of the 2008 recession without drawing even a single dollar from our reserves and yet maintaining all our programming despite WID’s primary revenue source, job ads, completely drying up!
Today, most of us have heard about the importance of incorporating DEIA or IDEA values into an organization.I co-lead one such effort myself. In those days, these values had not yet been clearly articulated, yet all of these women mentioned above clearly took the risk of reaching out to a new and unfamiliar-looking person. Organizations grow, change, and strengthen only when new ideas and diverse voices are invited to participate and contribute fully. I hope my tribute to my mentees will be that through my teaching at NYU, Columbia, and other venues and my continuing service and loyalty to WID, I paid it forward, bringing a new generation of diverse, young women into our profession, helping them to rise and shine!
Kathleen Burke currently serves as the Director of Individual Giving & Development Operations at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). She is responsible for developing and implementing a comprehensive strategy for Individual Giving programs—including Membership, Patron Programs, and the Annual Fund.
Prior to her current role, Kathleen served as the Associate Director of Development Operations at BAM, where she orchestrated the successful transition of contribution processing from the Finance division to the Development division through BAM’s CRM, Tessitura. She was a key liaison between the Development and Finance divisions and assisted in ongoing project management for fundraising endeavors and strategies.
Preceding her tenure at BAM, Kathleen honed her Development skills as the Manager of Stewardship & Patron Programs at Pioneer Works. There, she oversaw the Membership and Patron Programs and assisted with all Major Gifts and Board fundraising. Kathleen’s deep admiration for the performing arts were rooted in her career beginnings at Park Avenue Armory. At the Armory, she served as the owner and lead fundraiser for the General Membership program and Young Patrons group, the Avant-Garde, stewarding over 1,500 constituents annually.
Kathleen received her Bachelor of Arts in Communication Disorders from SUNY New Paltz and has since completed courses toward her Fundraising Certification through NYU’s School of Professional Studies. She currently volunteers with Women in Development (WID) on the membership committee and is the Co-Chair of the Young Professionals Taskforce, a group that seeks to raise issues of importance to Young Professionals, empower the next generation of fundraisers, and foster an environment of intergenerational exchange and future-facing conversation to spark new connections and ideas within the WID community.
Melissa Wansin Wong joined the Guttmacher Institute in May 2022. As Director of Individual Giving, she leads the strategic implementation of the Institute’s individual giving initiatives.
Melissa brings two and a half decades of interdisciplinary experience to her role. As a fundraiser, Melissa was Director of Institutional Giving at the Museum of Chinese in America, where she led its government, foundation, and corporate giving portfolios and was on the strategy team of a ten-figure capital campaign. As a fundraising consultant, Melissa has advised on and implemented fundraising campaigns for national and global organizations advocating for the rights of women and girls; the safety of human rights defenders; criminal justice reform; avoidable blindness; and environmental protections.
Committed to service, Melissa held multiple leadership and board positions for over a decade in academic membership organizations. She was also on the steering committee of the Mosaic Network and Fund–a New York Community Trust initiative advocating for equitable funding structures for ALAANA (African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, and Native American) cultural organizations. Melissa now serves as a steering committee member at the Asian Women’s Giving Circle, the first and largest giving circle in the nation led by Asian American women. Melissa has been a volunteer with Women in Development, New York since 2018, and is currently secretary on its executive board.
Melissa holds a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in Theatre and Performance from the Graduate Center, City University of New York, an M.A. in Performance Studies from the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and a B.A. with honors in English Literature from the National University of Singapore.
Poonam Prasad is President of Prasad Consulting & Research (PCR), a national fundraising consulting and prospect research firm. PCR has helped raise billions of dollars for hundreds of local, national and international organizations from every sphere of nonprofit work, by providing advanced research, audit, capital campaign, individual and major giving services as well as board and staff training.
A pioneer in helping organizations craft major donor strategies for individuals and groups with differing cultural values, the firm has counseled campaigns targeted to African American, Chinese, Dutch American, Hispanic, Korean, Scandinavian, South Asian, Sephardic,Turkish American, LGBTQ, and female populations.
She co-chairs the Diversity Committee of the Giving Institute and serves on the Advisory Committee of Women of Color in Fundraising and Philanthropy and the Advisory Board of the Women’s Coaching Alliance. Poonam was President of Women in Development New York during the recession when, contrary to results at other membership organizations, WID-NY reached its highest membership level in more than 25 years. In addition, the President’s Council membership was established, which continues today.
In January 2024, Poonam received the AFP-NYC Ralph E. Chamberlain Award, which honors a fundraising professional for a lifetime of service. She was previously honored by the U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica for “outstanding service, unrelenting dedication and resourcefulness” as President of the American Women’s Group and by the Rotary Club of Calcutta Midwest. She began her career as an investigative reporter and worked in journalism, advertising and public relations in India, Korea, Hong Kong, and the U.S. before transitioning to nonprofit work.
Woman of Achievement
On Friday, May 17, Women in Development, NY, held the annual Woman of Achievement (WOA) luncheon at the Yale Club. This year we honored one of our very own, former WID president and recently retired Chief Revenue and Development Officer of the Ad Council, Barbara Leshinsky. WOA Co-Chair Laurie Dorf, Ad Council president Lisa Sherman, and Barbara’s wife, the “other” Lisa (Vertucci), shared their favorite stories about Barbara, and applauded her care for colleagues, friends and family, sense of humor, and consistent ability to exceed her fundraising goals. In her remarks, Barbara emphasized the importance of mentorship, kindness and having fun. WID also recognized Mary McQillen, Associate Director of Development at NYU Langone Hospital, with the Rising Star Award. Many thanks to WOA co-chairs Laurie Dorf, Jennifer Levine and Jackie Garcia, along with the WOA committee, Beverly Bartow, Carol Ausubel Blumenfeld, Kathleen Burke, Mary McQuillen, Emily Pring, and Megan Whitman. Thanks to our collective efforts, this year’s luncheon raised record support for WID’s programs!
