PHI NGUYEN
35-year-old litigation director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta
The first philanthropic project that I was involved in was through Athena’s Warehouse, the nonprofit that my sister Bee Nguyen (State House Representative, district 89, and the first Vietnamese-American woman elected to Georgia’s General Assembly) started in 2009. Athena’s served high school girls at under-resourced public high schools: largely women of color, immigrants, or children of immigrants. We saw the ways in which our laws make it difficult to be undocumented. Even if one of the girls we worked with excelled academically, her options for higher education were significantly restricted and often economically infeasible.

QAADIRAH ABDUR-RAHIM
41-year-old CEO of Future Foundation, giving underserved youth the skills to thrive
My brother and I, born and raised in Atlanta, both went to the University of California, Berkeley on athletic scholarships. When we got there, we were completely unprepared to compete academically because we hadn’t gone to the best schools. We both made it, and my brother, Shareef, decided that, if given the opportunity, he would create a place that could help underserved children. He went to the NBA, played for the Atlanta Hawks, and when he came home, he reminded me of our dream to help kids. I’d just finished my first master’s, so I moved back to help build the nonprofit in 2003. We started with about 15 children. I took over as CEO in 2005 and from then to 2010, we grew to serve 5,000 kids and their families, and we kept growing.

Read the full article about the next generation of giving by Christina Lee and Jennifer Bradley Franklin at Atlanta Magazine.