Service to Humanity: Geraldine Acuña-Sunshine ’88

Geraldine Acuña-Sunshine ’88 is President and CEO of Khan Academy Philippines, the first international licensee of Khan Academy. Since its founding two years ago, she has led the rapid scaling of the platform and its AI capacity, reaching 2.7 million learners in more than 2,000 Philippine public schools, while training over 10,000 teachers across the country. Backed by the Philippine Department of Education and the Asian Development Bank, and advised by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Khan Academy Philippines is on track for nationwide adoption and further expansion.

A graduate of Harvard College, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and Columbia Law School, Geraldine has served as Vice-Chair of the Harvard University Board of Overseers and is now a member of Harvard’s Global Advisory Board. As Overseer, she chaired the university’s Committee on Institutional Policy and served on the Joint Committee on Inspections (risk and audit), Joint Committee on Alumni Affairs and Development, and the Committee on the Natural and Applied Sciences. As part of her duties on visiting committees, she also reviewed the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and Harvard College. She is Emerita Chair of the Harvard College Fund Executive Committee, Chair of the HKS Fund Executive Council, and active member of the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows.

As a Trustee of the Massachusetts General Hospital, Geraldine founded a pioneering research center focused on X-Linked Dystonia-Parkinsonism (XDP), a rare neurodegenerative disease found only in people of Filipino descent. Through her endeavors over the past ten years, she created the largest brain bank for a rare disease in the world, has spearheaded clinical trials and worked with US pharma on promising therapeutics to find a cure. She continues to advance medical and biotech innovation as a member of the Advisory Board of Mass General Brigham and serves on the hospital system’s audit committee and quality of care and safety committee.

Prior to devoting herself to the social impact sector, Geraldine practiced general corporate, banking, and venture capital law in New York and Boston, finally serving for more than a decade as Senior Counsel at Bracebridge Capital, a global fixed-income hedge fund specializing in derivatives and alternative investments.

Geraldine also sits on the boards of the Transnational Diversified Group Incorporated, the Women’s Foundation of Massachusetts, and the Asian American Foundation. She is a proud alumna of Fort Worth Country Day, which she credits with instilling in her both the drive for excellence and the passion for service that continue to shape her life’s work.