CAPA21 congratulates our co-founder Glen S. Fukushima on his confirmation by the United States Senate on April 6 as a Director of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SPIC). President Biden nominated Glen to the position in October 2021. Following Glen’s confirmation, President Biden on April 11 designated him as Vice Chair of the SIPC board.

SIPC’s Board of Directors has seven members, five of whom are appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate. The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve each appoint a director. Directors are appointed for a term of three years and may serve until replaced.

Congress created the SIPC under the Securities Investor Protection Act of 1970 and serves an important role in the overall system of investor protection in the United States. Since 1971, through 330 liquidation proceedings, SIPC has distributed more than $140 billion for the benefit of more than 773,000 investors who otherwise might have lost their hard-earned savings.

Glen is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), where his research focuses on U.S. relations with Asia. Before joining CAP in 2012, he was based in Asia for 22 years as a senior executive with one European and four American multinational corporations, including AT&T and NCR, and served on several corporate boards.

During this period, he was elected to one term as Vice President and two terms as President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan. Before his business career, he served as a trade negotiator at the Office of the United States Trade Representative as Director for Japanese Affairs and as Deputy Assistant USTR for Japan and China. During the Clinton Administration, he was appointed as Vice Chair of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission.

A native of California and third-generation American of Japanese ancestry, Glen has been active in promoting Asian American advancement in American society, including co-founding CAPA21. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Global Council of the Asia Society, President’s Leadership Council of the Asia Foundation, Board of Councilors of the U.S.-Japan Council, and Advisory Committee of Harvard University’s Asia Center.
He has taught as a Visiting Professor at Kyoto University and at Waseda University in Japan. He earned his B.A. at Stanford University, M.A. at Harvard University, and J.D. at the Harvard Law School. He also studied at the Harvard Business School and was a Fulbright Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of Tokyo.

Glen co-founded CAPA21 in 2014 with Dale Minami, Maeley Tom, Ginger Lew, and others. The APA political action committee is today led by Dale, Maeley, Ginger, and Tamlyn Tomita as co-chairs. CAPA21 is descended from one of the country’s very first Asian Pacific American political action committees, the Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans, which was founded in 1988.