November 19, 2025

Twenty-two years of visionary leadership, thoughtful investments, and lasting impact — that’s the legacy Unmi Song leaves as she steps down from her role as President of the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation. 

“Unmi has brought a sense of rigor and focus to our work. She has helped the Foundation take a long-view and guided smart investments that helped to advance practice in the fields of arts learning, school leadership, workforce development, and health care for the uninsured. She is leaving the Fry Foundation on strong footing and to continue to do good work.”
—Amina Dickerson, Fry Foundation Board Member

To mark this milestone, we invited Unmi to share insights from her 22 years of leadership and her reflections on the future of philanthropy.

Congratulations on your retirement. Twenty-two years is a long-time to serve as the leader of a foundation. What do you know now that you didn’t know twenty-two years ago?

I think—20 years on—I now see more clearly that philanthropy is a long game. Good things can happen but the really good things take time. And innovation doesn’t happen overnight. You really need to understand the history, the context, and the landscape of the issues you want to address. One example would be the Foundation’s work to support effective school leaders. Early on, the Fry Foundation supported a couple of grantees—UIC Center for Urban School Leadership and New Leaders—that were taking a new approach to training principals to lead Chicago schools. We thought this was interesting and promising, but I’m not sure we knew where it was really going. Over time, these two groups were part of a movement that really changed the way urban school districts across the country—not just Chicago—think about school leaders and their capacity to improve the way teachers teach and students learn. And now our entire Education portfolio is focused on school leadership. 

And I want to go back to the idea of innovation. Of course, we all want to invest in innovation and people like to talk about the importance of “disrupters.”  But, again, I would argue that real innovation doesn’t reliably come from newcomers to any given field.  In my experience the real innovation comes from people who have spent many years gaining a really deep understanding of an issue. Think about the COVID-19 vaccine. It is remarkable that it was developed in less than a year. But the mRNA technology that allowed those vaccines to be developed was sixty years in the making. It’s possible we would not be past the pandemic without sixty years of federal and private investments in that work.

I think this is a critical piece of understanding for all leaders—including leaders running foundations, that the work takes time and there are so many different phases of the work. There is the time when the innovators are working with their heads down in their labs or basements or wherever—doing the research and the hard thinking. Then the ideas get presented and tested in the world with pilots and maybe new policies. And then the work needs help getting to scale. There is an opportunity for funders to hop on at any time, but I guess for me— I appreciate the opportunity to be in it for the long haul.

This is a complicated moment for the country and Chicago, and I have a two-part question about how philanthropy responds and negotiates its place in this moment. 

First, the communities the Fry Foundation cares about are under threat. Are there new and different ways philanthropy can respond during this time of uncertainty?

And second, trusted institutions like universities are negotiating with the federal government to maintain federal funding. These institutions are being threatened because of long-held values for DEI, free speech and academic freedom. Some believe that philanthropy may be the next institution targeted. Are you worried about this? Should philanthropy be preparing for federal interference?

To say the moment is complicated is an understatement. I really don’t see one path for philanthropy. This isn’t the perfect analogy, but I think about Hurricane Katrina (whose anniversary was recently, so it’s been in the news). There was the time to support immediate response efforts and a time to support rebuilding efforts. I’m an optimist at heart so I assume there will be a time when we can invest in rebuilding. Right now, institutions that safeguard public health, democracy, and free and unbiased access to information are being decimated. Can philanthropy staunch the bleeding and keep some oxygen flowing to these institutions so at least they are on life support? It is not clear whether private philanthropy has the resources to play that role and at the scale that is now needed. Perhaps philanthropy’s most important role will come when we reach the rebuilding stage. I hope we get there.

As for the question of what happens if the current federal administration targets philanthropy by trying to limit the sector’s free speech or block our ability to fund organizations they don’t like? I really don’t know. Would some foundation’s bend at the knee, as we’ve seen certain law firms, universities and media outlets do? Probably. The sector isn’t homogeneous; some will stand firm while others fold. Remember that private philanthropy is just a rounding error against government funding, so it’s hard to know how impactful the sector can really be in this moment. But if the sector is organized in any way, I hope it can stay true to its purpose of promoting the welfare of others and the public good.

There are several bleak scenarios I can imagine. The government could, for example, attempt to yank our tax-exempt status. Maybe philanthropy could say—okay, go ahead and take away our tax-exempt status. Foundations could liquidate assets and still find ways to direct resources to our communities.

You have a reputation for having a high bar for integrity. Getting a clear definition of integrity can be a bit slippery. A Google search did not provide a consistent definition. For you—what are some of the ways integrity shows up in philanthropy?

Of course it’s complicated and multifaceted. Sometimes integrity is very black and white but sometimes it shows up in more subtle ways. It’s more than just which organizations get the grants. It’s also about our processes. I generally think we applied integrity to our work by trying to do a couple things well: communicating clearly and setting up processes that are consistent and fair. We want the Foundation to be accessible to people who might not otherwise know how to get access.

So, what does that look like in practice?

First—it can be hard, and we certainly don’t do it perfectly—but we try to communicate very clearly about what we will and won’t fund. This is through our website, our conversations in the communities we serve, and even through our decline letters. I tortured our program staff on the clarity of decline letters because I really want applicants to know that their requests are taken seriously and to understand the reasons behind the decline.  Some people might argue that this is not a good use of our time, but the decline process clarified our thinking and—we hope—is respectful to the people who took the time to submit proposals.

As a woman from an immigrant family, I think a lot about how—as Aaron Burr sings in Hamilton—how to get in the room where it happens, which means in the rooms where decisions are made. So many people have insight into how to make things better, but they don’t have the information or the networks to navigate the systems or application process. I wanted the Fry Foundation to have systems and processes that were not mysterious but were open and let all kinds of people and organizations have access to the room where it happens. And if the work is not a good fit for funding, they are given good information so they understand why.

And I should add—I think the Fry Foundation tries to be really good at listening. For example, we know that a great presentation or a well written proposal doesn’t always correlate to an effective program or project. Our program officers go deep in their funding areas and get to know the groups working in the field. For example, in the Arts Learning program, we work with organizations with huge fundraising teams and we work with small organizations doing excellent work but may not have a deep bench for grant writing. We really want to be available to everyone doing good work in the areas we fund. 

Finally, another two-part question—what are you going to miss and what are you going to do next?

That is a surprisingly hard question to answer. The answer to both is really—so much! At the Fry Foundation, we have a core directive: figure out how we can be helpful. I will continue to apply that core directive into my new configuration, but I don’t know yet exactly what that will look like. In the near term, I will take advantage of newfound flexibility in my schedule for some tennis, skiing, and travel. What am I going to miss? I will probably know more about what I miss when I’m not doing the day-to-day work of the Foundation. Of course, these kinds of jobs are a privilege. I do know that one of the best things about this job was the opportunity to always be learning from people who are doing the most important work in the city—helping to improve lives in our communities. It was a real gift to meet so many amazing and smart people and to be in a constant learning mode. The trick will be to find ways keep learning without the structures provided by the Fry Foundation and figure out how to be helpful in one way or another.