Avenger of the Week | Sonal Shah, President of The Asian American Foundation

With successful careers in government, nonprofit and business sectors, Sonal Shah is now the founding president of the newly formed The Asian American Foundation (TAAF), making her our Avenger of the Week.

Sonal Shah. Photo credit: Brookings Institution [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0], via Flickr.

TAAF was created this month, which is Asian American and Pacific Island (AAPI) Month, with an initial $125 million in donations from its board of directors. It intends to raise additional money to make grants to Asian American and Pacific Islander organizations and causes over the next five years.

Spurred by anti-Asian hate incidents over the past year, Shah told CBS News that the board wants TAAF to be “the incubator, the convenor, supporting the community organizations by funding anti-hate, data and research and education.”

Shah was the director of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation in the Obama administration, coordinating governmental efforts to aid innovative nonprofit groups and social entrepreneurs in addressing pressing social issues. Most recently a professor and the founding executive director of the Beeck Center for Social Policy and Innovation at Georgetown University, she also served on President Biden’s Unity Task Force.

Born in Mumbai, India, her family came to America when she was 4 years old. She was raised in Houston, Texas, is a graduate of the University of Chicago, and holds a master’s degree in economics. Shah began her 16-year career at the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 1995, becoming director of the office overseeing strategy and programs for sub-Saharan Africa, which included debt relief, development programs, and World Bank/International Monetary Fund strategies. She also worked with the Ministries of Finance in Bosnia and Kosovo to design the post-war banking system.

She left government to work at the Center for Global Development and the Center for American Progress before joining Goldman Sachs as a vice president, where she focused on green initiatives and implementation of environmental, social, and governance criteria for all investments. Her next stop was Google as director of Global Initiatives before returning to public service in the Obama administration.

In addition to serving on a number of nonprofit boards, Shah and her siblings founded the India-based nonprofit Indicorps, which is focused on “a new generation of socially-conscious global leaders” to cultivate principled, value-based leadership to serve with community-based organizations across India.

We salute Avenger of the Week Sonal Shah for putting her outstanding expertise in economic and social development to work by launching The Asian American Foundation to create “belonging and prosperity that is free from discrimination, slander, and violence” for the AAPI community.

The @GenderAvenger #AvengerOfTheWeek is the accomplished and outstanding @SonalRShah, president of the newly launched @taaforg to create “belonging and prosperity that is free from discrimination, slander, and violence”. #StopAAPIHate #GenderAvenger https://www.genderavenger.com/blog/avenger-of-the-week-sonal-shah