On Friday, May 5, The Asian American Foundation (TAAF) hosted its second annual AAPI Heritage Month Summit and its inaugural Heritage Heroes Award Dinner in celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. The event raised $2.7 million for the AAPI community. Some of AAPI’s brightest stars graced the red carpet, including Simu Liu, Michelle Yeoh, Vera Wang, and Daniel Dae Kim.
Liu was part of a fireside chat during the summit in which he spoke about his experience breaking the Bamboo ceiling in TV and film. The summit brought together over 500 attendees from various industries, ranging from media to corporate to philanthropy. The summit featured programming on building coalitions to mobilize against hate, advancing the AAPI studies movement, expanding AAPI representation in media and entertainment, and the importance of AAPI leadership.
Yeoh was one of the awardees of the Heritage Heroes Award Dinner, which took place at The Glasshouse in New York. The dinner celebrated the outstanding achievements of AAPI leaders across various industries. Yeoh recently won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Everything Everywhere All at Once), making her the first Asian woman to win the prestigious award in the history of the Oscars. Other awardees recognized during the dinner included Phillip Lim, Prabal Gurung, Laura Kim, Tina Leung, Ezra J. William (House of Slay), Congresswoman Grace Meng, Manny Maceda (CEO of Bain), and the Founders of The Sikh Coalition (with Harpreet Singh accepting the award).
The Summit Day 2 continued on Saturday, May 6, with breakout discussions on education, narrative change, and anti-hate, along with a screening of American Born Chinese, which will be available on Disney+ on May 24.
TAAF is an organization that was founded in 2021 in response to rising anti-Asian hate in the United States and to address the long-standing underinvestment in AAPI communities. It funds best-in-class organizations working to mobilize against hate and violence, educate communities, and reclaim AAPI narratives through their core pillars of anti-hate, education, narrative change, and resources and representation.
