The Pacific Asian Consortium in Employment (PACE) was founded in 1976. At that time, Mayor Tom Bradley, the first and to date the only African American mayor of Los Angeles, took a big chance on the fledgling organization and provided PACE with grant funding to serve the Asian community with job training and job placement services.  Shortly after PACE’s founding, Mr. Kerry Doi took over as President—just before the fall of Saigon.  It was at this time that Los Angeles was flooded with refugees from Southeast Asia and PACE was the primary non-profit organization that worked with the refugees to help them gain job skills and find employment.

Under Kerry’s leadership PACE has not only sustained itself, but grown to serve all low income people in the communities it serves.  Since its founding in 1976 PACE has served almost 600,000  low income people—helping them acquire the skills they need to be economically self-sufficient.  While PACE began as an organization to serve low income Asians, PACE clients today reflect the increasing ethnic diversity of the targeted communities.  PACE is recognized as a leader in addressing problems of poverty and economic inequity in minority, ethnic and immigrant communities. PACE has a reputation of being responsive to community needs and is known for creating innovative solutions to the myriad of challenges faced by our target population. PACE’s scope of services include:

• An extensive workforce development program.

• Affordable housing and home repair service programs.

• An environmental program that helps low income people address energy conservation while promoting home habitability.

• A business development center that helps ethnic minority and immigrant entrepreneurs access capital and resources to succeed in the business world.

• An early childhood education program that prepares children of low-income families for the public school system and empowers parents to become advocates for their children’s education.

• An asset building program that provides financial literacy and opportunities for low income families to benefit from public and private savings programs.

In 2009, PACE assisted over 50,000 low-income families in these various programs.