This month, New Breath Foundation board member Aakar Vachhani shares how his family’s history of displacement shaped the values that led him to New Breath Foundation’s work of keeping families together.
As board treasurer, Aakar brings his finance and philanthropy background to work supporting communities affected by incarceration, deportation, and systemic inequity. We spoke with him about his family’s story and what community care means to him.
What first brought you to New Breath Foundation?
Stephanie Gee, New Breath Foundation’s Sr. Director of Operations & Communications, first introduced me to the organization. We had served together on the board of San Francisco Achievers, a mentorship and scholarship program for high schoolers. She’s someone I deeply respect, so I paid attention when she introduced me to New Breath. Once I met Eddy and learned about his story and the work the organization was doing, I felt a strong alignment with my own story. I’ve been on the board since 2022 – about four and a half years now.
Was there a particular moment that made you want to get more involved?
I’m an investor at Fairview Capital, where we back venture capital funds led by women and minority founders – often newer, smaller funds just getting started. I spend a lot of time evaluating leaders and thinking about how capital flows across the economy and who actually gets access to it. But honestly, Eddy’s story was the real catalyst. When you meet someone who has lived through incarceration and immigration detention and then goes on to found an organization like New Breath, it’s powerful. I’ve seen this throughout my career as well: the people closest to a problem understand it in ways that people looking at it from a distance simply can’t.
What part of New Breath’s mission resonates with you the most?
All our areas of work are meaningful, but the part of NBF’s mission that resonates with me most is the work around keeping families together. My family’s story made displacement very real to me long before I ever heard of New Breath. My father and grandfather were both born in Burma. In 1961, a military coup nationalized everything overnight, and because they were of Indian origin, they were forced out of the country with nothing. My grandmother sold her clothes and jewelry just to buy train tickets to get my father, seven at the time, his younger brother, and herself to the border. My grandfather and his brother walked. I have a seven-year-old now, which puts that image into perspective in a new way. Eventually, my family made their way to the U.S. in 1978. That journey isn’t abstract to me. It’s something I grew up hearing about, and it shaped my understanding of how displacement affects a family across generations.
How has your family’s story shaped the way you think about deportation and immigrant justice specifically?
My family’s story is different from the experiences of many of the people New Breath serves, but it gives me an emotional point of connection to displacement and family separation. People often talk about deportation as a policy or legal matter. But there’s a lived experience behind it, and it’s never just one person impacted – it’s spouses, children, parents, entire communities, with effects that ripple across generations. Joining the board has also deepened my understanding of how immigration and the criminal justice system intersect.
What has surprised you most since joining the board?
The depth, breadth, and sophistication of the work. From the outside, it’s easy to think of New Breath as a foundation making grants to other organizations. But being close to it, I’ve seen how much of the work is about leadership development, capacity building, and long-term relationship-building with grassroots leaders. The trust-based approach of giving unrestricted, multi-year grants without heavy reporting burdens has been especially meaningful to see in practice. It lets people actually do the work instead of spending their energy justifying it.
What gives you hope, or excites you, about New Breath’s future?
It’s been incredible to see the growth. We started with a handful of local Bay Area organizations, and now we’re supporting over 50 organizations across 20 states, with international work as well. The real question is how we scale without losing the community-led model that made us special. I believe this trust-based, participatory approach to grantmaking could be a model for philanthropy more broadly, not just in this specific area of focus.
What would you want someone hearing about New Breath for the first time to know?
We’re living in a fast-changing, uncertain time — geopolitically, technologically — and the people most affected by that change often don’t have a voice in it. If you’re in a position to help shape the trajectory of other people’s lives, you have a responsibility to help create opportunities for others. New Breath’s impact is real and immediate. If we don’t act now, the risks people face will only be amplified. This is the time to act.
What does community care mean to you?
Community care means seeing the whole person – not just the circumstances they’re in. It means listening before making assumptions about someone’s background or what they need. And it means providing support in a way that preserves people’s dignity and agency. It isn’t just doing something to or for people. It’s about helping change the conditions around them so they can uplift themselves and lead their own communities.
I have a deep appreciation for what can happen when people are given the opportunity to rebuild and restart. Individuals and families can be defined by their hardest chapter, but I see how they keep going. That’s the connection I feel to New Breath: you never want to define someone by the most difficult moment in their life. Given the right opportunity, people can change, and things can evolve – and that can change everything.
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Aakar Vachhani is a Managing Partner of Fairview Capital, an investment management firm focused on backing diverse and emerging venture capital fund managers. He is a member of Fairview’s investment committee and is involved in research, due diligence, investment monitoring, and business development for Fairview’s venture capital and private equity partnership and direct co-investment portfolios.
Prior to joining Fairview, Aakar was with Cambridge Associates, a leading investment advisor to foundations, endowments, and corporate and government entities. He was responsible for analyzing private equity and venture capital investments in support of the firm’s clients and consultants. In addition, he led research and data analytics projects on the firm’s private equity and venture capital database. Aakar also spent time with MK Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm with a sector focus on software and cloud services. He is a founding advisor to Alterion, an emerging leader in AI governance.
Aakar holds a B.S. in Economics-Finance from Bentley University and an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship & Innovation from the Kellogg School of Management. He is a member of the Board of Directors of San Francisco Achievers and the New Breath Foundation and Co-Leads the Northern California chapter of the Association of Asian American Investment Managers (AAAIM). He established and leads Fairview’s San Francisco office.