Alumni elect first Fil-Am member of Harvard board of overseers

Geraldine Acuña-Sunshine is the first Filipina to be on Harvard’s Board of Overseers. HARVARD.EDU

SAN FRANCISCO — Geraldine Acuña-Sunshine has been elected to Harvard University’s Board of Overseers, along with five others, the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA), announced. She is the first Filipina to be a member of the Board of Overseers

The board is the university’s second-highest governing body, which advises Harvard’s top administrators and its primary function “is to encourage the University to maintain the highest attainable standards as a place of learning. [It] exerts broad influence over the University’s strategic direction, provides essential counsel to the University’s leadership on priorities and plans,” according to Harvard’s website.

Acuña-Sunshine, ’92 cum laude and President of Sunshine Care Foundation for Neurological Care and Research, an international NGO that searches for innovative ways of delivering health care to impoverished rural areas in the Philippines, and encouraging international collaboration in the fields of medicine, public health, and science to find the cure for rare neurodegenerative diseases.

Acuña-Sunshine earned a bachelor’s degree in government studies at Harvard College and her master’s at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

The other elected members were Retired United States (US) Navy Vice Admiral Philip Hart Cullom, Md.; Boston Ballet Executive Director Meredith “Max” Hodges; Holland & Knight LLP Partner Marilyn Holifield; Intuit Inc. Executive Vice President Diego Rodriguez; and National Congress of American Indians Policy Research Center Director Yvette Roubideaux.