Ambassador Julia Chang Bloch is the first Asian American to hold such rank in U.S. history. She has had an extensive career in international affairs and government service, beginning in 1964 as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sabah, Malaysia and culminating as U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Nepal in 1989. From 1981 to 1988, Ambassador Bloch served at the U.S. Agency for International Development as Assistant Administrator of Food for Peace and Voluntary Assistance and as Assistant Administrator for Asia and the Near East, positions appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. She also was the Chief Minority Counsel to a Senate Select Committee; a Senate professional staff member; the Deputy Director of the Office of African Affairs at the U.S. Information Agency; a Fellow of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and an Associate of the U.S.-Japan Relations Program of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard. After 25 years in government service, Ambassador Bloch moved to the corporate sector in 1993, becoming Group Executive Vice President at the Bank of America, where she created the Corporate Relations Department, heading the bank’s Public Relations, Government Affairs, and Public Policy operations. From 1996 to 1998, Ambassador Bloch moved into philanthropy, serving as President and CEO of the United States-Japan Foundation, a private grant making institution, with $100 million in assets. Beginning in 1998, Ambassador Bloch shifted her focus to China, first becoming Visiting Professor at the Institute for International Relations and Executive Vice Chairman of the American Studies Center at Peking University, and subsequently affiliating with Fudan University in Shanghai, as well as the University of Maryland as Ambassador-in-Residence at the Institute for Global Chinese Affairs.

Professor Gordon Chang joined the Stanford University faculty in 1991 and is currently a professor of history as well as Senior Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education. He has focused his research and teaching on historical connections between race and ethnicity in America with a particular focus on trans-Pacific relations, especially the interconnections between East Asia and America. He is interested in several different areas of history, including the historical connections between race and ethnicity in America, on the one hand, and foreign relations, on the other, and trans-Pacific relations in their diplomatic as well as their cultural and social dimensions. Professor Chang has written and continues to publish in the areas of U.S. diplomacy, America-China relations, the Chinese diaspora, Asian American history, and global history. He has recently published two books on the history of Chinese railroad workers in America in the 19th century. Chang has also authored several other books in the fields of Asian American history, U.S. diplomacy, the Cold War, and U.S.-China relations past and present. Chang received a bachelor’s degree in history from Princeton University and earned a doctorate in history from Stanford.

Milton Chen is senior fellow and executive director emeritus of The George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF). He was founding director of the KQED Center for Education (PBS) in San Francisco, managing the channel's television programming, Web content, and outreach services for schools and families. Chen was also a director of research at Sesame Workshop, in New York, working on Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and 3-2-1 Contact, and an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Karen Leong Clancy is the Director of Development and Outreach for the P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for Silk Road Studies. She has worked with the Committee of 100 and served for 14 years on the Board of Trustees for the Belmont-Redwood Shores School District. From 2013 - 2015, she was Alumni Regent on the University of California Board of Regents. She has over 30 years of experience in education, both locally and at the state level across grades K-16. She served six years as a Commissioner for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) Accreditation Commission which accredits K-12 schools in California, Hawaii and international schools in East Asia. She was a member of the California Commission on Technology and Learning that drafted the Master Plan for K-12 Technology and on the Board of Directors of the California School Boards Association as the Director-at-Large, Asian Pacific Islander. In 2006, she spearheaded the education conference sponsored by the Berkeley China Initiative on Chinese language learning, “Preparing a Global Workforce,” at UC Berkeley; and in 2007, 2008, and 2009 she led the San Mateo County – UC Berkeley Summer Institute on China that provided a three-week intensive staff development course for middle school and high school teachers. She led the 2011, 2014, 2016 and 2018 Summer Institutes which were funded by Fulbright-Hays Groups Projects Abroad (an additional program grant has been funded for 2022), and organized the 2012 Summer Institute, which was designated part of President Obama’s 100,000 Strong Initiative. In 2007, she was Interim Program Director to launch the new National Center for K-16 Chinese Language Pedagogy at the University of California, Berkeley. She also worked with the California School Boards Association-sponsored Shanghai Principals Exchange that involved placing K-12 principals from Shanghai in host schools throughout California, and in the spirit of exchange, sending participating American principals to Shanghai. She has worked with the 1990 Institute on the Teachers’ Workshop and served on their board from 2017 – 2019. At UC Berkeley, she recently helped to secure an NEH planning grant to bring an exhibition related to Dunhuang and the Mogao Caves to the San Francisco Asian Art Museum. She received a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in Economics.

Clayton Dube has headed the U. of Southern California (USC) U.S.-China Institute (USCI) since it was established in 2006 to focus on the multidimensional U.S.-China relationship. Prior to joining USC, Clay managed the Asia Institute at UCLA where he edited the academic journal Modern China (1998-2002) and headed up the web publications AsiaMedia and Asia Pacific Arts. At USC, Clay established US-China Today and relaunched Asia Pacific Arts. Dube has produced two documentary films and consulted on several others. He currently heads a USCI team producing the six-part assignment: China documentary series on American media coverage of China since the 1940s. He writes USCI’s popular Talking Points newsletter and is frequently called upon by American and Chinese broadcast and print media to comment on current affairs. Clay received the 2012 Perryman Fund Social Studies Educator of the Year award. He serves as a director of the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia, is a Center on Public Diplomacy fellow, and is on the executive committees of the Center for International Studies and the Center for International Business Education and Research. In addition, he serves on the Education about Asia editorial board and the LinkAsia (LinkTV) advisory board.

Mei Fong is an award-winning communicator and writer. As a Wall Street Journal China correspondent, she won multiple awards, including a shared Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. Her first book, on China’s one-child policy, was critically acclaimed and winner of a non-fiction award by the American Society of Journalists and Authors. When tightening censorship led to a scrapping of a Chinese edition of her book, Fong released a free digital version in Chinese, paying for it through an innovative crowd-funding initiative. Her efforts led to her being named a Top 50 influencer on U.S.-China relations by Foreign Policy magazine. Fong has served as juror for journalism prizes awarded by the Asia Society and the Overseas Press Club and is on the advisory board for the nonprofit 100Reporters. She has appeared on CNN, CBS, ABC and her writings have been published in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Guardian. She was a fellow at the D.C.-based think tank New America and taught at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She is a graduate from the National University of Singapore and holds a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University.

William P. Fuller has served as a leader in US and international organizations for over 50 years. He has held senior management positions at the Ford Foundation, the World Bank, UNICEF, U.S. AID, and been the President and CEO of The Asia Foundation, from 1989 until 2004. Bill has lived in Paris, Jakarta, Bangladesh, Thailand, Cairo, and New York. From 2004 to 2008 he was Vice Chairman and Senior Adviser of ChinaVest, a merchant bank with offices in Shanghai, Beijing and San Francisco. Mr. Fuller has won numerous awards during his illustrious career including the President’s Meritorious Service Award (twice), USAID’s Distinguished Honor Prize, Korea’s Medal for Diplomatic Service, the Citizen’s Award from the World Affairs Council, and the Mongolian Medal of Friendship. Bill currently serves on multiple Boards including Give2Asia, the World Affairs Council, Japan Society of Northern California, Asia Society of Northern California, Array Networks, the China Foundation for Education and Culture in Taiwan, and the Bank of the Orient. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the President’s Council of the United Religions Initiative, and has been a Board member of the 1990 Institute for over a decade. Bill holds B.A., and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Harvard University.

Thomas B. Gold is a retired Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. From 2000 to 2016, he also served as Executive Director of the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies (IUP), a consortium of North American universities that administers an advanced Chinese language program at Tsinghua University in Beijing. At Berkeley, Tom also served as Associate Dean of International and Area Studies, Founding Director of the Berkeley China Initiative, and Chair of the Center for Chinese Studies. He became interested in China as an undergraduate at Oberlin College, and after graduating he taught English at Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan. He then received a Masters in Regional Studies-East Asia and a PhD in Sociology, both from Harvard University. Tom was among the first group of American exchange students to study in China, spending a year at Fudan University in Shanghai in 1979-1980. He also worked part-time for many years as a Chinese language escort-interpreter for the State Department. His research focuses on many aspects of the societies of East Asia, primarily mainland China and Taiwan. In the largest sense, he examines the process of the emergence of the increasingly empowered and autonomous individual and a private sphere in societies which have combined traditional and modern forms of authoritarian rule. He explores this from many angles: youth and the life course; personal relations (guanxi, social capital), private business and entrepreneurship, popular culture, non-governmental organizations, and civil society.

Since 2006, Stephen Gong has been the Executive Director of the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), a public media and cultural non-profit organization located in San Francisco. He has previously held senior management positions at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Film Institute. Stephen has also been a lecturer in the Asian American Studies program at UC Berkeley, a writer about film history, and a historian on Asian films. He is the Board Chair of the Chinatown Media and Arts Collaborative; Board Chair of the Center for Rural Strategies; Board member of the Ninth Street Independent Film Center and serves on the Advisory Board of the San Francisco Silent Film Society.

Lei Guang is the So Family Executive Director of the 21st Century China Center at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Minnesota and is professor emeritus of political science at San Diego State University. His scholarly research has focused on the Chinese state and society, political economy and U.S.-China relations. He has also written on Indian politics, including China-India relations. He is on the editorial boards of The China Quarterly and The China Journal, two leading academic journals on China.

Professor Russell Jeung has been a professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University since 2002. His research interests include the Sociology of Race, the Sociology of Religion, and Social Movements. He is extensively engaged with his students in conducting community-based, participatory research with Asian American communities. In 2020, Dr. Jeung, together with Chinese for Affirmative Action and the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, launched Stop AAPI Hate, a project which tracks Covid-19 related discrimination in order to develop community resources and policy interventions to fight racism. Professor Jeung is the author of numerous books and articles on race, ethnicity and religion. In addition, he co-produced a documentary about a landmark housing lawsuit involving his fellow Cambodian and Latino tenants. Professor Jeung received a BA in Human Biology and a MA in Education from Stanford University. After working in China and in the Mayor's Office of San Francisco, he obtained his PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2000.

Robert A. Kapp is President of Robert A. Kapp & Associates, Inc., Port Townsend, Washington, USA. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College, and received his doctorate in modern Chinese history from Yale University. From 1970 to 1980, Dr. Kapp served in the History Departments of Rice University and the University of Washington. He published one scholarly monograph on 20th century Chinese history and several shorter pieces. He was Editor of The Journal of Asian Studies, 1978-1980. From 1980 to 1987, Dr. Kapp served as the Founding Executive Director of the Washington State China Relations Council in Seattle, resuming his role there from 1992 to 1994. He was President of the Washington Council on International Trade, focused on U.S. and global trade policy issues,1987-94. From 1994 to late 2004, Dr. Kapp served as President of the US-China Business Council, the principal national organization of American firms engaged in trade and investment with the People’s Republic of China. He played a prominent role in the American debate over China policy, and represented the American business community on numerous occasions, in Washington and China. He has spoken at numerous conferences in China. Since the completion of his work with the US-China Business Council, Dr. Kapp has offered consulting services to leading American companies. He has also translated several books from Chinese to English. He served for many years as Senior Advisor to the China Program of The Carter Center, and currently serves as Special Advisor to the US-China Education Trust. He is a member of the Board of The Blakemore Foundation, which provides generous grants to distinguished applicants for advanced study of Chinese, Japanese and other Asian languages. Dr. Kapp is a member of The Council on Foreign Relations, the National Committee on US-China Relations, and the Washington State China Relations Council. He has received a number of honors and awards, both for his teaching and for his efforts on behalf of stable and productive U.S.-China relations. He and his wife make their home in Port Townsend, Washington.

Mr. Tim Kochis has over 40 years of experience in the personal financial and investment planning profession. In 2012, Tim founded Kochis Global which fosters best in class wealth management and investment planning services, especially in Asia. Tim . He has advised a select group of executives, professionals, and business owners throughout the United States and overseas since 1973. Mr. Kochis has served as Chairman and CEO of Aspiriant and prior to that was the National Director of Personal Financial Planning for Deloitte & Touche (1985 – 1991) and for Bank of America (1981 – 1985). Tim has long been recognized as one of the key leaders of the wealth management and investment planning profession, his success in building leading organizations within the profession, his service in professional and educational organizations, and his extensive writing and frequent speaking engagements to audiences around the world. Mr. Kochis also devotes considerable effort to philanthropy and civic involvement. He currently serves on the Boards of the University of San Francisco, the Asian Art Museum and the Asia Foundation. He served formerly on the boards of the YMCA of San Francisco, San Francisco Beautiful, and the San Francisco Maritime National Park Foundation.​ Tim earned a BA in Philosophy from Marquette University (1968), a JD degree from the University of Michigan (1973), and an MBA from the University of Chicago (1979). Tim served in the US Army from 1969 to 1971 including a tour of duty in Vietnam where he received a Purple Heart for wounds received in action.

Walter Lim is a retired financial executive with over thirty-five years of financial management experience having worked in high tech companies ranging in size from Fortune 50 to startups with less than fifteen employees. In those settings, he has had roles as CFO, Corporate Controller, Treasurer, Director of Strategic and Financial Planning and Analysis. Among the enterprises where Walter has worked are IBM, Synopsys and Informatica. During the latter part of his professional career, he provided consulting CFO services to VC-funded startups in sectors such as biotechnology, software, internet infrastructure and applications and professional services. Walter received his A.B. degree from University of California at Berkeley in 1971, and earned his M.Sc. degree from the University of California Los Angeles in Health Services Planning in 1973 and his MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1983. Nonprofit Experience: His early participation in volunteer activities included youth group advisor and member of the Housing Committee of the Presbyterian Church in Chinatown which developed a 185 unit HUD-funded project in San Francisco’s Chinatown. More recently, Walter has served as Program Leader / Board member for the Friends of Roots non-profit organization which assists Chinese Americans in researching and traveling to their ancestral villages in China. Walter volunteers for the Alumni Consulting Team of the Stanford Business School providing Bay Area non-profit organizations with pro-bono assistance.

Susan Shirk is research professor and chair of the 21st Century China Center. She is one of the most influential experts working on U.S.-China relations and Chinese politics. She is also director emeritus of the University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC). ​Susan Shirk first visited China in 1971 and has been teaching, researching and engaging China diplomatically ever since. From 1997-2000, Dr. Shirk served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs, with responsibility for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia. Shirk’s book “China: Fragile Superpower” helped frame the policy debate on China in the U.S. and other countries. Her other publications include The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China; How China Opened its Door; Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies in China; and her edited book, Changing Media, Changing China. Her current book project is Overreach: How China’s Domestic Politics Derailed its Peaceful Rise. Her articles have appeared in leading academic publications in the fields of political science, international relations and China studies, and her views on a range of issues relating to modern Chinese politics are highly sought. Shirk co-chairs a task force of China experts that issued its second report “Course Correction: Toward an Effective and Sustainable China Policy,” in February 2019. She is also co-chair of the UC San Diego Forum on U.S.-China Relations, the first ongoing high-level forum focused entirely on the U.S.-China relationship. ​She was awarded the 2015 Roger Revelle Medal.

Lok Siu (BA, UC Berkeley; MA and PhD, Stanford University) is currently Associate Professor in Ethnic Studies and Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley. She is a cultural anthropologist working in the areas of Asian diasporas in the Americas, Chinese diaspora, belonging and cultural citizenship, ethnography, and the cultural politics of food. Her books include Memories of a Future Home: Diasporic Citizenship of Chinese in Panama (2005), Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions (2007, co-edited with Rhacel Parreñas); Gendered Citizenships: Transnational Perspectives on Knowledge Production, Political Activism, and Culture (2009, co-edited with Caldwell, Koll, Fisher, Ramirez), and Chinese Diaspora: Its Development in Global Perspective (2020, co-edited with Khachig Tölölyan). She is a two time recipient of the Association of Asian American Studies Social Science Book Award. Currently she is completing her manuscript, Worlding Asian Latinx: Intimate Publics of Cultural Mixing. At UC Berkeley, she serves as Chair of the Senate Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Campus Climate and is on the Steering Committee of the newly established Asian American Research Center (AARC). She is also on the Academic Board of Advisors for the Zoryan Institute.

Mr. Brian Wong is an internet executive with over 20 years of management experience in e-commerce and digital media in Greater China, SE Asia, India, the US and Europe. He is an investor in start-up ventures and recently retired from Alibaba where he served as Special Assistant to the Chairman (Jack Ma) and as the Executive Director of the Alibaba Global Leadership Academy (AGLA). His 15-year career at Alibaba included leading the company's global sales, marketing, and business development operations, and spearheading Alibaba.com's international expansion. In previous roles, Brian has held executive positions at the McGraw-Hill Companies and served as Special Assistant to Mayor Willie L. Brown of San Francisco. He is also Founder and Chairman of the digital media platform RADII (www.radiichina.com), an initiative dedicated to bridging understanding between China and the world. Brian has been an advisor to various governments on e-commerce strategies and has been featured as a speaker at international conferences including the World Economic Forum at Davos, the B20, the ASEAN World Economic Forum, and the UNCTAD E-commerce Week. He has been an advisor on CNBC’s TV series "Pop-up Start-up" and a technical consultant for the HBO television series "Silicon Valley". Brian holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College, and M.A. from the Johns Hopkins (SAIS)-Nanjing Center, and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Swarthmore College Council on Presidential Initiatives, a former member of the Wharton School Alumni Board, and has been a director of the 1990 Institute for 6 years. Brian was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and is a China Fellow with the Aspen Institute.

Dr. Jeremy S. Wu is the Founder of APA – Justice and a long-time advocate for civil rights. He has also been a leading statistician and civil servant in the U.S. Census Bureau and the Departments of Transportation, Energy, and Agriculture. Dr. Wu was a Project Director for the Center for Economic Studies (Census), the Acting Chief Statistician and Director of the Department Office of Civil Rights (Transportation), the National Ombudsman (Energy), and the Deputy Director, Office of Civil Rights (Agriculture). Dr. Wu was the principal advisor to Secretary Norman Mineta on civil right and equal opportunity issues and advisor to Secretary Bill Richardson, on advancing diversity and trust in the workplace and to handle the workforce crisis in the national laboratories. He became the first Asian Pacific American career senior executive in USDA in 1997, after serving 15 years as Chief Statistician for the Marketing and Regulatory Programs at USDA. Dr. Wu participated in extended research and negotiations with China on U.S. wheat exports from the Pacific Northwest, leading to China lifting its wheat embargo in 1999. He earned his doctorate degree in Mathematical Statistics from the George Washington University and served three terms as Chair of the Asian American Government Executives Network.

A sought-after strategist, speaker, instructor, and practitioner of philanthropy, Dien has spent the past 25 years fostering innovation and creating impact for communities worldwide. Dien co-founded Daylight Advisors to revolutionize the field and practice of philanthropic advising. Bringing together her expertise in gift planning, wealth management, professional development, and social impact, Daylight helps maximize philanthropy’s potential for transforming lives by advancing the training, research, professionalization, and diversity of today’s philanthropic field. Dien founded the Center for Philanthropy and Social Impact at The American College of Financial Services, where she also developed and taught courses as the Blunt-Nickel Professor in Philanthropy for the Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy® (CAP®) designation. While at the College, Dien launched the Advisors of Color Network, a study and support group for BIPOC advisors pursuing their CAP® designations. That initiative tripled the number of CAP-trained BIPOC philanthropic advisors in the field in less than three years. In addition, she developed and launched Purpose School, an immersive, interactive learning experience to help philanthropic leaders explore meaning and purpose in their lives. Dien’s expertise and impact extend to Asia, where she is the lead faculty for philanthropy at Singapore’s Wealth Management Institute (WMI). She has taught in the inaugural Philanthropy Advisors Fellowship at the Asia Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN). Overall, Dien has supported more than one thousand advisors seeking greater competence, confidence, and cultural dexterity in their work. Earlier in her career, Dien worked for several wealth management firms and held executive positions in regional and global development organizations. Today she serves on the boards of Give2Asia, Giving Compass, Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, and The 1990 Institute and is an advisor to the Asia Society Northern California and Global SF.