SOURCE OF WEALTH: NetScreen, Fortinet
FUNDING AREAS: Education, athletics
OVERVIEW: Ken Xie, his brother Michael and their family do their grantmaking through the Xie Foundation. The family prioritizes funding for schools with which family members have connections.
BACKGROUND: Ken Xie graduated with B.S. and M.S. degrees from Tsinghua University and an M.S. from Stanford University. He started his first network security company, SIS, in 1993, designing software firewalls while studying at Stanford University. He also started NetScreen, which sold to Juniper for $4 billion. He went on to co-found Fortinet, a security platform. Michael Xie graduated from Tsinghua University and the University of Manitoba. He was software director and architect for NetScreen before going on to co-found Fortinet with his brother Ken.
ISSUES:
EDUCATION: Education is the Xie Foundation’s largest area of giving, by far. More than half of all grants to date have supported higher education. The Xies appear to prioritize their alma maters, including China’s Tsinghua University, where their parents were teachers, and Stanford University, where they fund an electrical engineering chair. They have also supported and University of Miami. The foundation’s K-12 grantees include the Pinewood School in Los Altos, California and the Sacred Hearth Schools of Atherton, California.
ATHLETICS: Through their foundation, the Xies have made small grants to athletic organizations including the the Asian American Tennis Foundation and East Palo Alto Tennis and Tutoring.
LOOKING FORWARD: The Xies have until now prioritized a handful of organizations with which they maintain personal connections. Grantmaking has fluctuated dramatically from $500,000 to almost $4 million over the past several years, so it is difficult to ascertain the future direction of the Xie brothers’ giving.
CONTACT:
Xie Foundation
325 Sharon Park Dr., Ste. 802
Menlo Park, CA 94025
LINK: