Eunice Byun is the co-founder and CEO of Material, the go-to destination for today’s home cooks. Material designs high-quality, material-conscious goods for cooking, dining and hosting. Since launching in 2018, Material has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, Oprah’s Favorite Things and GQ’s Best Stuff of The Year. Eunice started her career at Goldman Sachs, has helped launch and advise several start-ups in the consumer space, and was most recently Head of Digital at Revlon. Her favorite weeknight dish to cook (and eat) is doenjang-jjigae. Outside of work, Eunice can be found chasing her two daughters (7 and 2.5) around the city or planning food-based fundraisers via Banchan Box Party. Eunice graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in Learning and Organizational Change.

Cathy Cha is president and CEO of the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund. Under her leadership, Haas, Jr. is pursuing new ways to advance equality and justice so every person has opportunities to thrive and live life with dignity and hope.

Cathy’s pathbreaking approach to collaboration among funders, nonprofits, and government has helped spark wide-ranging social impact, including California’s leadership among states in adopting pro-immigrant policies. Cathy joined other community leaders to create the California Black Freedom Fund, a statewide power building effort. She co-founded Activate California to build a broader constituency of Asian American Pacific Islanders who stand up for justice.

In 2018, Cathy co-created the California Campus Catalyst Fund to expand services for undocumented students across California’s public higher education systems. She is a founder of the New Americans Campaign, which has assisted 500,000 immigrants to become citizens. She led the California Civic Participation Funders to increase voting and organizing in five counties.

Cathy is driven by a career-long commitment to improving the lives of aspiring communities facing poverty. She previously worked for the Hyams Foundation, Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, and United Way of King County. 

Cathy is a frequent public speaker on civic engagement, immigration, and innovative philanthropy. She received the Outstanding Foundation Professional on Philanthropy Day in 2021. In 2019, she was named one of the Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business. She serves on the boards of the California Budget and Policy Center, Asian American Futures and Positive Coaching Alliance. Cathy has a master’s degree in city and regional planning from UC Berkeley.

Marie Myung-Ok Lee is the author of the 2022 novel The Evening Hero, which was a Good Morning America Book Club Buzz pick. Her journalism and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Paris Review and many others. She is a founder and former board president of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and teaches fiction at Columbia, where she is the Writer in Residence.

James Rhee is an acclaimed impact leader, entrepreneur, educator, investor, and goodwill strategist. He transforms people, brands, and organizations by identifying and unleashing purpose through the systemic union of mathematical and creative systems, thereby making tangible the otherwise intangible.

His most current venture, red helicopter, is a collective media-education platform that is uniting a forward-looking global community at the intersection of the values of kindness and math. The celebrated reinvention story of Ashley Stewart, a brand serving and employing predominantly Black women, under his unlikely leadership as chairman, CEO, and investor from 2013-2020, is tangible proof of the power of diverse ecosystems and a blueprint for the future of multi-stakeholder capitalism. The story has been featured by the world’s leading media platforms, including most recently by TED Conferences and Brene Brown.

As an investor, James founded FirePine Group, a family-office impact investment platform that has stewarded the capital of some of the world’s most sophisticated investors. Prior to founding FirePine Group, James held senior roles managing billions of dollars of growth and distressed private equity capital at leading institutions with a particular focus on human, brand, and capital intersectionality. He is actively backing systems entrepreneurs. As an educator, he serves as the Johnson Chair of Entrepreneurship and a professor of entrepreneurship at Howard University.

He is also the executive in residence and a strategic adviser at the MIT Leadership Center and holds an appointment as senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. As a corporate leader, James provides connectivity across and on behalf of people by serving as a member of the Advisory Council of JPMorgan Chase’s Advancing Black Pathways and the Governing Committee of the CEO Action for Racial Equity. He also served as a director of Conscious Capitalism, where he was on the Executive Committee. He works with some of the world’s leading organizations and their leaders on defining and operationalizing change strategy, broadly defined.

He is a Frederick Douglass honoree of the New York Urban League. He is a former regional EY Entrepreneur of the Year honoree, as well as a former board member of the National Retail Federation, where he was awarded its annual Power Player designation for those individuals most impacting the future of retail.

James received his A.B. with honors from Harvard College and his J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

He is a former board member of the American Repertory Theatre.

He is writing a book.

Rhea Suh was appointed President & CEO of Marin Community Foundation (MCF) in September 2021.

One of the largest foundations in the country, MCF partners with over 520 individuals and families in their philanthropic endeavors, annually distributing more than $150 million to address critical needs locally, nationally and globally. 

Previously, Rhea served as the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Under her leadership, the organization grew by more than $50 million, increased its membership by more than 40 percent, and expanded its social following by 230 percent (the highest subscriber rate of all environmental groups). Over her four and a half year tenure, Suh led the creation of a new ten-year strategic plan; established a new internal organizational structure; helped steer high-level discussions that led to the historic global climate agreement in Paris; championed a precedent-setting settlement for the residents of Flint, Michigan, to ensure an end to the city’s toxic drinking water crisis; and was a featured speaker at the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, D.C. 
 
Before joining NRDC, Suh served as the assistant secretary for policy, management, and budget at the U.S. Department of the Interior. She was nominated for the position by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate in 2009. Suh led several cross-cutting initiatives at the department including establishing a successful diversity program for the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, leading the inter-agency Wildland Fire national coordinating body, and creating the first-ever national strategy for federal land acquisition. With her diverse portfolio, she also led the Administration’s successful effort to create a federal recognition effort for the Native Hawaiian community. In 2011, she co-led the complex reorganization of the agency responsible for offshore oil
and gas oversight in the midst of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  
 
Prior to her appointment to the Interior Department, Suh worked at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, where she created and managed a $200 million program dedicated to environmental conservation and clean energy in the West. She helped to establish the first-ever collaboration among nonprofits to coordinate conservation efforts across the Colorado River Basin—from the headwaters in Colorado to the delta in Mexico. In addition, she helped to develop the foundation’s strategy for reducing climate change emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.  
 
Suh developed similarly far-reaching programs at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. While there, she designed the foundation’s first clean energy and climate change initiative and led the effort to create the Great Bear Rainforest, one of the most successful land-protection campaigns in North America. She also launched a portfolio designed to focus on environmental justice issues for underserved populations in the United States. 
 
Suh earned her bachelor’s degree in environmental science from Barnard College and received a Fulbright Fellowship to Seoul, South Korea. She has served as a senior legislative assistant for Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, and earned a master’s degree in education, administration, planning, and social policy from Harvard University. 
 
With her expertise in environmental and public health solutions, Suh is a media commentator making frequent appearances in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, NPR, and other outlets. 
 
Rhea was born in Boulder, Colorado and spends as much time as she can with her daughter enjoying the great outdoors.

Kyung B. Yoon is the president and co-founder of the Korean American Community Foundation (KACF), a leading funder of Korean and Asian American nonprofit organizations in the Greater New York City area and a model of inclusive and participatory philanthropy in the immigrant community.

Her career in poverty alleviation, development economics, and media encompasses her roles as the Executive Producer of Television at the World Bank Institute and a correspondent for WNYW-Fox Channel 5 where she made history as the first Korean American broadcast reporter in New York City.

Kyung is currently a contributing reporter to CUNY-TV’s Asian American Life, which is broadcast nationally on PBS stations and for which she received an Emmy nomination in 2015. She has previously served as the board chair of Philanthropy New York and Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP), as a trustee of the New York Foundation, and as a board member of United Way of New York City.

Kyung holds a BA in English and political science from Wellesley College and an MA in development economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Sebastian Yoon earned a Bard College bachelor’s degree in Social Studies through the Bard Prison Initiative in 2017. His story is featured in Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s documentary, College Behind Bars. Now a Program Officer at the Open Society Foundations, Sebastian manages Open Society-U.S. Pro-Democracy Alliance Program’s BIPOC power building grants with the goal of developing a multiracial coalition capable of shaping and sustaining freedom, justice, and democracy in the United States by building power in Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI); American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN); Black; Latinx; and Muslim, Arab, South Asians (MASA) communities across the country. Sebastian is also pursuing an MPA at Baruch College.