2026 A4 Annual Benefit

Joan Shigekawa served as acting chair of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in the Obama Administration. In 2023 she was awarded the nation’s highest honor in the arts, The National Medal of Arts by President Biden “for a lifetime of service to art in America”.

As an officer of the Rockefeller Foundation Ms. Shigekawa led domestic and international programs in the arts, including the NYC Cultural Innovation Fund, Creativity in a Digital Age and the foundation’s Greater Mekong Sub-Region Collaborative Artist Exchange. During her tenure at the Metropolitan Museum of Art she served as the Director of the International Production Laboratory at the Program for Art on Film, a partnership with the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Ms. Shigekawa is an emerita board member of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, a founding member of the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM). and a trustee of United States Artists, which supports individual artists in the visual, performing, media and traditional arts.

Ms. Shigekawa served as a Mayoral appointee to the New York City Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission, and as a trustee of the New York State Council for the Humanities, the Independent Television Service (ITVS), the New York Foundation for the Arts, Grantmakers in the Arts, and Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media.

A multi-faceted leader in the arts, nonprofit, government, and higher education sectors, Dr. Mariko Silver is the president and CEO of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Previously, Dr. Silver was also president and CEO of the Henry Luce Foundation and president of Bennington College. She helped lead the transformation and expansion of Arizona State University and held positions in state and federal government advising on international policy, economic development, technology, innovation, and higher education.

Dr. Silver serves on the board of several organizations including Yale University, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Council on Foreign Relations, MacArthur Foundation, and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. She holds a PhD in Economic Geography (UCLA), a MSc in Science and Tech Policy (University of Sussex), and a BA in History (Yale).

Yao King is the founder and chief investment officer of YKAM, a multi-strategy hedge fund based in New York City, and executive producer of Asian Comedy Fest. Known for nearly a decade of quiet, sustained work and investment in the AAPI creative community, now organized under White Rabbit Trust, his philanthropic work spans film, comedy, food, fashion, art, and literature. In 2018, he co-founded the #GoldOpen movement and led the East Coast efforts with Gold House in support of Asian-led films, and would go on to co-found the annual Asian Comedy Fest, now entering its eighth year. Since 2020, he has underwritten and hosted a house for AAPI filmmakers at Sundance Film Festival, executive-produced AAPI-led films that have premiered at Sundance and the Tribeca Film Festival, and championed and organized meaningful opportunities for creatives in our community in the most visible rooms across industries, from the CFDA Fashion Awards to the National Book Awards.

Away from the city, he runs a small farm rooted in regenerative agriculture, where he cultivates crops, keeps bees, produces his own maple syrup, and regularly hosts friends and members of the community. A graduate of MIT, Yao received the Karl Taylor Compton Prize, the Institute’s highest honor for devotion to community.

Danny Yung was a founding member of the Basement Workshop (1970–1986), the first Asian American arts and cultural organization on the East Coast in NYC. Yung holds degrees in architecture from UC Berkeley and in urban design from Columbia University. Based in Hong Kong since the late 1970s, he has worked across experimental arts including film, comics, video, and theatre worldwide. He co-founded Zuni Icosahedron in 1982 and has served as its artistic director since 1985. As the creator of the Tian Tian Xiang Shang (TTXS) conceptual comics, figurines, and sculptures, his key projects include TTXS Gateway - Smithsonian Folklife Festival (2014), a large-scale installation on the National Mall in Washington, DC, where he was the sole artist from Hong Kong invited by the Smithsonian Institution, and Shanghai EXPO – Japan Pavilion (2010), where he was commissioned by the Japanese government to co-direct Toki, a performance combining Kun opera, Noh Theatre, and robotics that was presented more than 6,000 times and received over 6 million visitors.

Danny Yung’s contributions to arts and culture have been recognized internationally. His honors include the Merit Cross of the Order of Merit on Ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany, bestowed by the President of Germany in 2009; the 2014 Fukuoka Prize - Arts and Culture Prize; the Music Theatre NOW Award by the International Theatre Institute of UNESCO in 2008; the Award for Outstanding Contribution in Arts by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council in 2022; and the Red Dot Design Award 2022 for “X-Xperimenting Exhibition — Danny Yung 50 Year Creations” at Hong Kong Heritage Museum.

Alison Kuo makes sculptures from found objects and creates performances that tell stories about the Asian diasporic experience. She is a community arts organizer in Manhattan’s Chinatown and a second-generation immigrant. She is currently the artist-in-residence at the New Museum and will debut a performance in its theater on October 22.

Kuo has exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the Hessel Museum of Art, Think!Chinatown, Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space, the Abrons Art Center, the Godwin-Ternbach Museum in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA. Internationally, her work has been shown in the 4th Overseas Chinese Artists Invitational Exhibition at the He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen, Singapore Arts Week 2022, the 2016 Nanjing International Art Festival, and the MATERIAL art fair in Mexico City. She has created site-specific performance works for Paraiso Bajo in Bogotá, Colombia, and Malagana Macula in Managua, Nicaragua. She is a recipient of a Rema Hort Mann Foundation 2020 Artist Community Engagement Grant and a What Can We Do? (WCWD?) grant from Asian American Arts Alliance and has been awarded residencies at Mass MOCA and Ma’s House on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum.

Kuo’s artistic practice extends into her work as an organizer and educator. She is a board member of the Asian American Arts Centre and a co-founder of Sisters in Self-Defense, a women’s martial arts training group formed in response to violence directed at the Asian American community during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has worked as a teaching artist at the Abrons Arts Center, The W.O.W. Project, Hamilton-Madison House Older Adult Center, P.S. 130M, and Think!Chinatown, and was previously a faculty member in the School of Visual Arts MFA program.

Priya Roy is an NYC-based multidisciplinary artist, producer, and creative director whose work entices audiences to enjoy the pleasures of life while healing from its prickly pains. Exploring the emotions of grief, heartbreak, love, and rage, her creations blend music, theatre, and dance into transformative audience experiences. She holds a degree from UC Berkeley in political economy and performance studies.

An AEA actor, ASCAP songwriter, and classically trained vocalist, Roy effortlessly navigates genres from opera and jazz to rock. Her foundation includes an American Ballet Theatre dance education and headlining titular musical theatre roles like Cinderella. In November 2025, she released her debut record, (Be)loved: The Live EP, a personal narrative of healing from trauma through glitter, stilettos, and spirituality.

Under her celebrated stage name, Stella Sundari, she shines as an icon of queer Asian nightlife in NYC and beyond. Pioneering the field as one of only five South Asian burlesque artists in the US, she fuses ballet, heels, belly dance, feather fans, and live music to unleash a compelling spectrum of sensuality and storytelling on stage.

Since 2023, Roy has directed and headlined over 150 regional productions, including sold-out immersive theatrical cabarets at venues like The Cutting Room, Minton’s Playhouse, and The Red Pavilion. A dedicated advocate for healing through the arts, she serves on the board of Killer Queen Opera Company and frequently collaborates with organizations like Desi Rainbow and The Trevor Project.