Unmi Song is President of the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, a private foundation that supports nonprofits serving low-income communities in Chicago. The Fry Foundation focuses its grant-making in the areas of arts learning, education, employment, and health. Across all of its funding areas, the foundation’s focus is on helping organizations: build capacity to enhance the quality of services and better assess the impact of programs; develop successful program innovations that other organizations in the field can learn from or adopt; and share knowledge so that information which can help low-income communities and individuals is widely and readily available. The Foundation is especially interested in testing new ideas that will advance knowledge or practice in the fields in which its grantees work. Addressing needs of the Chicago community since 1983, it has assets of $200 million and awards $8 million in grants annually.

Song received a B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago and continued her education at the University’s Graduate School of Business, obtaining an M.B.A. in Finance and International Business. Song was a vice president of Bankers Trust Company and held positions at Citicorp Investment Bank in New York City, at the First National Bank of Chicago and at Gold Star Tele-Electric Company, in Seoul, Korea. Prior to joining the Fry Foundation, she directed the Employment grant-making program focused on job training and welfare policy issues at the Joyce Foundation.

Song has many affiliations with philanthropic and nonprofit organizations. She serves on the board of the Metropolitan Planning Council. She was appointed by President Obama to serve on the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. She has served on the boards of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, Forefront (previously the Donors Forum of Illinois), and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy; and she has served as board chair for Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the nation’s leading Pan-Asian American civil rights group. She has been honored by Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Chicago and Korean American Community Services (now known as Hana Center) for her support of the Asian American community in Chicago. She is a member of The Chicago Network, the Commercial Club of Chicago, and the Economic Club of Chicago.