Ivy’s Background
Ivy Cheng spent her entire 30+ year career at the World Bank, working as an assistant, financial analyst, mission lead, project manager, and expert consultant. Her specialty was strategizing and delivering basic healthcare, clean water supply, education, and sustainable energy to the parts of the world most in need. While she was based at World Bank headquarters in Washington D.C., she spent months per year on missions to Asia, South America, and Eastern Europe, observing, interacting with, and helping countless communities. Ivy also had an expatriate stint where she was appointed as Chief of Staff for the United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD) in Nagoya, Japan, where she focused on monitoring sanitation and education projects in rural areas of Laos, Cambodia, Burma, and the Philippines.
During her illustrious career from 1978 to 2010, Ivy helped break many barriers within the white male-dominated World Bank, leading several eight-figure dollar missions as an immigrant, minority female. Though small-statured, she led with an impressive presence imbued with clear strategy, diligent work ethic, and brilliant efficiency.
Throughout her career, Ivy observed dozens of communities and different ways of life, economy, and culture, and she was able to distill some common threads. She noted that empowering people with skills and tools to succeed were paramount, and that the investment was more effective and durable when women were the ones being empowered. While there were many well-intentioned, responsible men in every community, women were still more apt to transfer their resources and successes to their children, which set the stage for the next generation to lift the community as a whole. Furthermore, Ivy noted, it was better to start empowering at a younger age, before the community had the chance to establish labels of: “uneducated”, “unskilled”, or “unable”.
Ivy leading water sanitation project in rural China
Ivy leading solar panel project in Inner Mongolia
Early Giving (2000-2018)
Armed with these observations, Ivy and Chieh-san Cheng began their philanthropic journey in the early 2000s, donating a few thousand dollars per year to pay for tuition and books for schoolchildren in rural China through the Education and Science Society (esscare.org). They then became actively involved with the AiXin Foundation (aixinfund.org), which helped them extend beyond education by also aiding basic public health services and helping with food insecurity. After all, it is difficult for a child to learn when they are hungry or sick. By the time of Ivy’s passing in 2018, she and Chieh-san had donated more than $100,000 to support hundreds of children in rural China through high school graduation.
Ivy’s Passing and Accelerated Giving (2019-2025)
After Ivy’s passing in 2018, our family decided to honor her by using her career’s lessons and continuing her mission of helping the underserved. From 2019 to 2025, we expanded our reach to providing scholarships for high school and college students, with a focus on STEM and cross-cultural education, as well as supporting infrastructure and research for under-resourced medical needs. To name the highlights, over $1M was provided for:
1) Transportation for sick pregnant women and children to hospitals, and for village doctors and midwives to deliver free clinics and medical training in rural western Tibet
2) Elevate Tutoring, a non-profit providing need-based undergraduate scholarships in Northern California
3) Endowing a need-based undergraduate scholarship for minority women at Exeter College at the University of Oxford
4) Need-based graduate engineering scholarships at Johns Hopkins University
5) Destination SPACE, a non-profit that runs a summer camp teaching remote sensing, data analytics, robotics, and rocketry to secondary and college students in the US and Taiwan
6) Starlight Cardiovascular, a start-up developing medical devices to treat congenital heart defects in neonates where there are currently no dedicated solutions.
7) “Ivy Scholarship” program in Taiwan, supporting up to 30 under-resourced students per year, focusing on first-generation ethnic minorities
8) College students in Cambodia, supporting those with financial need and the highest potential to support the health, education, and economic growth of their communities
Ivy in rural Chinese village
“Love Ivy” saving mothers and children in rural Tibet
Ivy Cheng Foundation (founded 2025)
In 2025, we established the Ivy Cheng Foundation to expand the scope and provide more flexibility for our philanthropic activities. Over the next 20 years, the Ivy Cheng Foundation commits to providing resources to support:
1) K-12 and higher education for under-resourced individuals who have the highest potential to help uplift their communities by improving healthcare, education, and infrastructure. There will be a leaning towards providing support to girls/women and underrepresented minorities.
2) Projects around improvements related to delivering education, healthcare, water supply, and sustainable energy, as well as supporting research and development in these areas.