Seattle group gives leadership award to Comcast community investment director

The past two years alone, Comcast has given back more than $7.5 million to the communities we serve in Seattle, Spokane, and the rest of Washington. A big part of those in-kind and cash donations go through our director of community investment, Diem Ly.

Diem doesn’t just write checks; she dives in deep with dozens of organizations throughout the state every year. The other day, Diem received a leadership award in Seattle from the Community Voice Awards, which is hosted by the International Examiner, the only nonprofit pan-Asian Pacific Islander newspaper in the United States.

“We gave Diem the Tatsuo Nakatas Leadership Award this year in recognition of her longstanding dedication to supporting the API community. In her current role, Diem does much more than writing checks for local nonprofits; she brings passion and deep personal care to her work serving the community, and pushing for a better society,” said Ron Chew, a longtime community organizer and member of the awards program.

Comcast teammates and members of Diem’s family were on hand at Joyale Seafood Restaurant in Seattle to celebrate the award, including her niece Sasha. That’s Sasha with Diem in the photograph above. Diem keeps a picture of Sasha within line of sight at her workstation and credits Sasha as her main inspiration for her community work.

You can read what Diem has to say about community investment here in the International Examiner. Several other people won awards, and you can read about them here.

There’s a lot of detail packed into this quote from Diem in the interview above, but if you unpack it, you get some sense of just how busy she is … and how important her work is to her.

“…the transition from a nonprofit, community worker in the Chinatown International District to a corporate employee wasn’t easy — but it redefined to me what an advocate can be and from where they can lead change from.

“You can also be an advocate and ally in the corporate halls of a Fortune 50 company. And indeed, having launched or supported six employee resource groups at Comcast NBCUniversal for Women, Black, APAs, LGBTQ, Veterans, and Hispanic employees, funding over $3.5M to over 50 nonprofits across the State in 2017 alone, building collaboration spaces in Seattle for people to use for free, and now serving as a co-chair of our Diversity & Inclusion Council to encourage conversation that leads to action — I’m finding another way to be an advocate.

“I hope that’s an example for others.”