In August, Riverside Church in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights neighborhood hosted a panel discussion on art, storytelling and culture held alongside the screening of “Photographic Justice: The Corky Lee Story,” a documentary about the Queens-born photojournalist who chronicled Asian American communities across five decades.
The panel was moderated by Andrea Louie, executive director of the Serica Initiative, and reflected the vision of Serica’s founder Anla Cheng, a New York City-based veteran financier. Through Serica, Cheng has spent years amplifying Asian American stories, convening leaders across industries and creating opportunities for a community she believes has long been overlooked. Since the organization’s founding in 2018, Serica’s work has taken on added urgency amid the COVID-era surge in anti-Asian hostility and rocky U.S.-China relations.
But Cheng’s philanthropy extends beyond Serica. She is married to Mark Kingdon, the New York City hedge fund investor — through their Mark and Anla Cheng Kingdon Fund, the couple support a wide range of causes, from Asian American communities and education to Jewish institutions and conservation. It’s another one of those stealth foundations we talk about, holding around $272 million in assets and giving away nearly $11 million in 2024, despite having no website and minimal web presence.
I recently caught up with Cheng to learn more about her work through Serica, the challenges facing Asian American philanthropy today, and what she and Kingdon support through their family foundation.
Cheng’s background and how Serica got its start
Cheng was born and raised in Japan. Both of her parents were refugees who worked for the Taiwanese government: while fleeing China, her mother hid her grandmother’s jewelry, and she later used the proceeds to invest in real estate. Cheng said her mother saved all of her money so her children could go to school in the United States.
“Help others if you can. Of course, help yourself first. But help others,” Cheng said, recalling her mother’s credo. Whenever somebody needed help, her mother would do what she could, even as she saved to give her children opportunities she hadn’t enjoyed herself.
A graduate of Pratt and Wharton, Cheng eventually built a career in finance, working at firms including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup before managing Asian investment portfolios. Her giving alongside Kingdon grew with the couple’s financial success, but Cheng’s civic involvement was never limited to writing checks. She led parent-teacher associations, helped organize galas and was for six years a trustee at Riverdale Country School, the Bronx-based private school their son Jason attended.
In 2016, Cheng also established a for-profit news company, initially called SupChina and later renamed The China Project, focused on journalism and business information about China. As the company grew, people began approaching her with requests to work on projects extending beyond its commercial model. The requests ranged from a documentary about the first Trump administration’s China Initiative, which examined researchers accused of ties to China, to a podcast featuring interviews with West Coast professors. Others focused on issues such as sex trafficking. Cheng’s involvement with those projects helped pave the way for Serica.
For a while, she split her time between the two organizations, devoting about 80% to the commercial company and 20% to Serica. But as U.S.-China relations soured, sponsors began asking her to remove “China” from the company’s name. The pressure came amid a broader political controversy. In 2022, a former employee made accusations that Beijing was influencing The China Project and called for it to register as a foreign agent. Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Marco Rubio, amplified the allegations, which the company’s leadership denied.
Cheng said she found herself caught up in the suspicion, with some people even treating her as a spy. She also recalled sponsors asking, “Can you remove the name ‘China?’ Call yourself ‘The Project.’ Don’t call yourself ‘China Project.’”
She refused. “I said, well, that’s ridiculous, because once you read it, all you have to do is [see] one line, and we’re all about China,” she said. But the controversy took its toll. Some China Project donors pulled back, and defending herself against the allegations brought substantial legal expenses. The China Project eventually shut down in November 2023.
Cheng, all the while, decided to go all in with Serica, especially as anti-Asian hostility intensified during and in the wake of the pandemic. Cheng said she wanted to make sure its work represented Asian Americans writ large, rather than focusing exclusively on Chinese Americans. As she put it, people targeting Asians make no distinction between Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, Indonesian and Vietnamese.
How Serica pursues its mission to empower Asian Americans
Since its 2018 founding, Serica has developed a mix of documentary projects, and offered educational resources and events. In partnership with PBS and WNET, it produced “be/longing: Asian Americans Now,” a series profiling Asian Americans confronting hate and navigating questions of identity and belonging. Another series, “Between Black & White: Asian Americans Speak Out,” explored cross-racial solidarity and the relationship between Asian Americans and other communities of color. Serica has also collaborated with the media platform ALL ARTS on “Climate Artists,” which profiles Asian American artists working at the intersection of climate change and the environment.
“Our mission is to storytell, convene and empower our Asian community and make people feel like they belong, that they feel stronger by being part of our community,” Cheng said.
For Cheng, the work is partly about making Asian American history more visible to people who have had little exposure to it. She told me that less than 1% of the time spent teaching history is allocated to Asian history, even turning the question back on me, a history major and history nerd at that. “How much time were you taught Asian and Asian American history?” she asked. I had to admit that it wasn’t until college that I really started digging in.
Serica is also working with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on educational materials that use Asian films as a way into that history, from Depression-era films starring Anna May Wong all the way through 2018’s global sensation “Crazy Rich Asians.”
“It’s ignorance that creates hate, right?” Cheng said. “You hate somebody because you think you feel threatened, you know, you feel that your livelihood is being threatened. But if you understand the nature of who you think the opponent is, maybe you won’t think of them as an opponent.”
She estimates that since the rise in hate during the pandemic, the Asian American nonprofit world has grown to add upward of 800 AAPI nonprofit organizations to the field over the last few years, including dozens of large organizations with staff of 30 or more people.
A philanthropic landscape still catching up
Still, the philanthropic numbers lag behind. Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP) reported that Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities received just 0.34% of U.S. institutional philanthropic dollars in 2023, despite representing about 7% of the population. That amounts to 34 cents of every $100 awarded by institutional funders. AAPIP found that the share had never exceeded 0.60% in more than 35 years of tracking.
The figures concern funding directed toward these communities, rather than the total amount given by Asian American donors. Those are different questions, and Cheng’s experience points to a tension between the two. Asian Americans have built substantial wealth in this country, but that has not automatically translated into sustained institutional support for AAPI organizations.
Cheng sees an opportunity to change that, particularly among younger, next-gen donors working in technology. Some are building companies, experiencing liquidity events and accumulating wealth at a relatively young age. But they may be too busy with their careers to think about charitable giving, or may not have grown up in families where formal philanthropy was a regular part of life.
Her response is the Family Office Philanthropy Legacy Program, a Serica initiative that officially launched in 2026 in partnership with HSBC and EY. The program aims to introduce wealthy AAPI families and entrepreneurs to the practical and strategic dynamics around philanthropy alongside financial planning and wealth management. That includes questions about establishing a family office, allocating assets, tax planning and succession.
Cheng described the goal as introducing a new generation to the idea of “doing well, but you must do good to the community.” She wants philanthropy to become part of the conversation as people build wealth, rather than only after they have accumulated their fortunes.
She also sees generational differences in how people approach money. Cheng grew up in a household where saving was a necessity, and she still thinks about the value of a dollar in ways younger people may not. She recalled living on $15 a week at one point and said she still brings leftover food home rather than throwing it away.
“For me, that’s very hurtful because I used to live on $15 a week, so I know what it’s like to watch your food bills,” she said.
Still, Cheng sees reasons for optimism. “I feel that the next generation is much more philanthropic, or at least they’re talking about being more philanthropic,” she said. “They care about the environment, they care about equality… financially and also treatment of different segments of society.” The challenge then is helping turn those values into durable giving.
Cheng said that after her experience with the political climate surrounding her earlier work, she no longer wants money from China or to give money there. But she continues to see opportunities for collaboration between the two countries, especially where shared interests can create common ground.
One such area is environmental conservation. Cheng has been involved with The Nature Conservancy for more than a decade and is vice chair of its Asia Pacific Council. One Nature Conservancy Asia Pacific Council project explores nature-based approaches to flooding in New York and Hong Kong. The Asian Development Bank has also supported efforts to develop nature-based solutions across Asia. She hopes that working together on shared problems can create “a sense of goodwill and camaraderie” between communities that might otherwise find themselves divided by politics.
The Mark and Anla Cheng Kingdon Fund’s other priorities and what’s next
Cheng’s work through Serica is only one aspect of the family’s philanthropy. The Mark and Anla Cheng Kingdon Fund, established in 1998, reflects both of the couple’s interests, though Cheng told me that Kingdon was the initial driving force behind its establishment.
“It’s not as systematic or professional as I like it to be, because we’re so busy doing our day to day,” she said.
A hedge fund manager and founder of Kingdon Capital Management, Kingdon has steadily supported Harlem Children’s Zone for more than 25 years. Cheng described how Harlem Children’s Zone has grown from a neighborhood effort covering a handful of blocks into a comprehensive system of support for children and families across Harlem. Its programs extend from early childhood and parent support through school, college and the transition into employment. Other Wall Street figures, including Stan Druckenmiller, and business leaders such as Home Depot cofounder Ken Langone, have also supported the organization.
Overall foundation giving spans education, Jewish causes, Asian and Chinese issues, policy, human services, women’s initiatives and, more recently, the arts. Recent grants have gone to the United Jewish Appeal Federation ($1 million in 2024), Carnegie Hall Society, The Asian American Foundation, New York City Center, and Pioneer Works Art Foundation. Education remains the foundation’s main focus, though the spouses bring different interests to their philanthropy.
“He’s Jewish, so he focuses on Jewish issues. I’m Chinese, so I focus on Chinese and Asian issues, women’s issues,” Cheng said.
Cheng said their children are slowly becoming more engaged in the foundation, though they are not yet heavily involved. Daughter Jessica Kingdon is a director and filmmaker, while son Jason works for his father’s firm and is a donor to and member of Gold House, a nonprofit platform for Asian and Pacific Islander changemakers.
For now, the family foundation mainly reflects the interests and commitments of its founders, while Serica gives Cheng a more direct way to pursue the issues that matter most to her. Serica’s family office initiative may prove especially impactful as more Asian Americans build substantial wealth, some of which can be put toward philanthropy.
At the end of September, Cheng received an award for her leadership at Committee of 100, a Chinese American organization formed after the ‘89 Tiananmen Square crackdown. “Right now, we Asians are banding together to make sure that we can feel stronger. So I just got honored. It’s not so much me, but it’s Serica. They’re recognizing the importance of those organizations that can bring people together,” she said.
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