Vicki Asakura
Executive Director,
Nonprofit Assistance Center
Seattle, WA
(206) 324-5850 x12
vasakura@nacseattle.or
www.nacseattle.org

Vicki Asakura is a third-generation Japanese American who grew up in the ethnically diverse Central Area of Seattle. Her life experiences have had a strong influence on her passion for racial justice and capacity-building work in communities of color and refugees and immigrants. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington, she started her professional career in a newly formed community-based organization providing employment services for Asian Americans in the Seattle area. Through this job she became a community advocate for programs and funding in support of English as a second language (ESL) and other bilingual services for the growing immigrant and refugee communities.

After seventeen years at the Seattle-King County Private Industry Council, where she managed federal and state-funded grants providing employment and training services for refugees, Asakura joined the newly created Nonprofit Assistance Center (NAC) in 2000, where she currently serves as executive director. Under her leadership, NAC has created new models for effective and culturally competent capacity building and leadership development for organizations and leaders based in low-income, refugee, immigrant communities, and communities of color and has implemented new strategies as part of a race and public policy agenda.

Asakura chairs the Alliance for Nonprofit Management Cultural Competency Initiative and the United Way of King County Employment Impact Council. She is past chair of the King County Refugee Planning Committee, which advocates on local and state refugee issues, and is a member of the Minority Executive Directors' Coalition of King County (based in Seattle) and the Asian Pacific Directors’ Coalition. She is also involved in various community-building efforts, including Making Connections, an initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation and BuRRST for Prosperity, an initiative of the Northwest Area Foundation.