Ms. Dianne Fukami

Dianne Fukami began her journalism career at KPIX-TV, the CBS O&O in San Francisco. In the nearly 15 years she was there, she rose through the producing ranks to became Assistant News Director, one of the few Asian American news executives in the country at the time.

After leaving TV news, she co-founded Bridge Media, Inc. with gayle k. yamada and began producing video projects and documentary television films. She has directed a number of documentaries about the Asian American experience which have been broadcast on PBS stations across the country.

In 2019, the award-winning film, “Norman Mineta and His Legacy: An American Story,” which she co-produced with Debra Nakatomi, was broadcast nationally on PBS on May 19, one of the few times an independently produced one-off film has been given that type of exposure. Partnering with the Stanford Program for Internal Cross-Cultural Education, they developed the companion curriculum “What Does It Mean To Be An American?” which is currently available for free to educators across the country.

Fukami is an Emmy award-winning producer, a TEDx speaker, a founding member of the San Francisco Bay Area AAJA (Asian American Journalists Association) chapter, and has been elected to the Silver Circle of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. In 2022, she was named Japanese American of the Biennium by the National Japanese American Citizens League for her work in the arts/literature/communications field. She was a faculty member at the School of Multimedia Technologies and Communications at the Academy of Art University for 10-years beginning in 2009, where she developed and taught courses in multimedia and news production.

Born and raised in San Francisco, she has been active in the community, serving on the boards of the National Japanese American Historical Society, Asian Community Mental Health Services, Japanese Cultural & Community Center of Northern California, as well as the Dean’s Advisory Council for the UCSF School of Nursing. She is currently the Vice President of the Topaz Museum Board and is a founding member of the Vincent Chin Institute.