Asian American Artists Foundation: Fighting for Hollywood diversity

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Philip Fung and Julia LamPhilip Fung and Julia Lam, founders of A3 Foundation, discuss their mission of supporting Asian-American artists in American entertainment media.

The 2016 Academy Awards may go down as the most contentious and controversial ever as calls for greater diversity in Hollywood grow louder and louder.

According to a new University of Southern California report on diversity in media, more than half of all film, TV and streaming shows surveyed failed to portray one speaking or named Asian role on screen.

So, in 2012, Philip Fung, Julia Lam and Franklyn Chien, all Facebook alumni, decided to channel their frustrations into making a difference.

“After talking to a lot of people in our network, we found out that a lot of people are interested in this issue, they just don’t want to talk about it,” explained Fung.

Asian American Artists Foundation: Fighting for Hollywood diversity

Philip Fung and Julia Lam, founders of A3 Foundation, discuss their mission of supporting Asian-American artists in American entertainment media.

So, they created A3 Foundation, a non-profit group that set out to foster and support Asian-American artists in American entertainment media.

“There’s this hunger now for media that’s targeted more toward Asian Americans. What we’re trying to do is we just think this is the right time, the right place, a great opportunity to foster fantastic artists that just happen to be Asian American,” said Lam.

From San Francisco, both Julia Lam and Philip Fung joined May Lee in our Los Angeles studio to talk about their foundation’s mission.