JessicaBeinecke-2 Jessica Beinecke is a blogger fluent in Mandarin. She has a special connection with her Chinese social media followers ages 15 to 35 for teaching American slang and culture. Her daily digital content has generated a total of 70+ million video views and 1.5+ billion social media impressions. Jessica has continually produced daily digital content for a millennial Chinese audience for 5 years. She is one of 50 people on Foreign Policy’s Pacific Power Index shaping the future of the US-China relationship “for taking American culture and language viral on the Chinese web.” With the support of the US China Strong Foundation, Jessica also produces Crazy Fresh Chinese, a popular video blog that teaches one new Chinese word or phrase every day.

2016 Teachers Workshop Reception Presenter

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Matthew Boswell is Project Manager of the Rural Education Action Project (REAP), a policy research collaboration of Stanford University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has extensive experience managing development projects in northwestern China and has held research and analysis positions in several U.S.-based think tanks. He holds an MA in East Asian Studies from Stanford University, focusing on the history and politics of China’s northwestern frontier

2013 Teachers Workshop Speaker


Darlene Chiu Bryant is the Executive Director of GlobalSF, a nonprofit that supports San Francisco’s economic development efforts with global partners. As the former executive director of ChinaSF, she oversaw efforts that brought over $5.1 billion in foreign direct investment to the Bay Area. She has had a diverse career in both the public and private sectors, international trade, and public affairs. She is a current board member of Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation and founding board member of Asian Pacific American Leadership Foundation.2019 Teachers Workshop Speaker
  
 

Dr. Yong Cai is Associate Professor of Sociology, and Faculty Fellow of Carolina Population Center, at University of North Carolina. He specializes in Chinese demography, especially China’s low fertility in a global context. He demonstrates that the major fertility decline in China occurred before the one-child policy, and explains how the current low fertility has more to do with structural changes brought by socioeconomic development and cultural features deeply embedded in Chinese society. Dr. Cai received his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington, St Louis.  

2017 Teachers Workshop Speaker

Screen Shot 2015-07-26 at 10.31.58 PM Dr. Gordon H. Chang is the Olive H. Palmer Professor in the Humanities and a professor of American history at Stanford University. His academic interests lie in the connection between race and ethnicity in America, and American foreign relations. He has written several books on Asian­American history and U.S.–East Asian interactions. His latest book just published is Fateful Ties: A History of America’s Preoccupation with China(2015). Professor Chang grew up in Oakland, California, majored in history and East Asian studies at Princeton University, and received his Masters and Ph.D. in American and Chinese history from Stanford University.

2015 Teachers Workshop Speaker

Screen Shot 2015-08-02 at 11.23.35 PM Dr. Daniel K. H. Chao was the Chairman of the Board of the 1990 Institute until 2015. Dr. Chao is currently a Senior Vice President at TerraPower LLC, a company developing Fourth Generation nuclear reactor technology.  Previously, he was a Senior Vice President and partner of Bechtel Group, Inc. and Chairman of Bechtel China based in Shanghai.  An active supporter of other non-profit organizations, he has also served on the board to the Committee of 100, Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Head Royce School, U.S. – China Business Council, and others. He holds a B.A. from Stanford University, a Ph.D. from Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and an Advanced Professional Certificate in Business from New York University.

2014 Teachers Workshop Speaker

  Dr. Frank Chong is the Superintendent/President of Santa Rosa Junior College since 2012. He was the Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Education and helped to shape President Obama’s community college agenda. He also served on the San Francisco Board of Education. Dr. Chong has a wealth of experience that come from serving as president of several community colleges in California, chief of numerous higher education boards, and a leader in non-profit organizations relating to higher education and Asian communities. He holds a B.A. in Asian American Studies from UC Berkeley, an M.A. in Public Administration and Educational Management from Harvard, and a Ph.D. in Educational Administration from Dowling College, New York

2017 Teachers Workshop Speaker

  Lenora Chu is a Chinese American writer and journalist whose work focuses on education and culture. Her stories have appeared in The New York TimesCNN Money, and NPR, among others. Since moving to Shanghai in 2010, she has worked as a television correspondent for Thomson Reuters and a media consultant to universities and the private sector. Her first book, Little Soldiers, examines the Chinese education system through her son’s journey in Shanghai schools. She holds degrees from Stanford University and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.

2017 Teachers Workshop Speaker

  Dr. Qingwen Dong is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication, University of the Pacific, and the first Chinese American in the U.S. to serve as chair of a communication department. His research includes the socialization process of mass communication and new media, social media functions and impacts, and international higher education and development.  In 2012, he was selected as the University’s best research lecturer and became the undergraduate research mentor award recipient in 2015. Dr. Dong received his M.A. in Journalism from Journalism School of Missouri and Ph.D. in Mass Communication from Washington State University.

2017 Teachers Workshop Speaker

Clayton Dube is the Executive Director of University of Southern California’s U.S.-China Institute, focusing on the multidimensional U.S.-China relationship. Trained as a historian, he first lived in China in 1982 and has since returned to China many times to carry out fieldwork on economic development, lead study tours, and lecture at conferences.  Dube is recognized for his many outstanding contributions to the research and education about China, including editing scholarly journals, directing student-driven web publications, producing two documentaries, developing teacher training programs, and writing teaching guides on Chinese history. Dube has won teaching awards at three universities.  He received his education from UC Los Angeles.   

2017,  2018, 2019  Teachers Workshop Moderator and Speaker

Screen Shot 2015-08-02 at 11.23.43 PM Dr. Thomas Fingar is the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.  He has written many articles on China, most recently Ties that Bind: Strategic Stability in the U.S.-China Relationship and China’s Vision of World Order.  His direct engagement with China began in 1972 when he was part of the “receiving delegation” that welcomed the Chinese ping-pong team to the United States and helped negotiations that restored educational exchanges between the United States and China.  He received his B.A. in Government and History from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University.

2014 Teachers Workshop Speaker

  Eric Fish is a writer at Asia Society in New York, host of the Asia Society Podcast, and author of the book China’s Millennials: The Want Generation. He previously worked for the Economic Observer newspaper in Beijing and wrote on Chinese politics, social issues, and education for several foreign magazines.  During his time as a teacher, student, and journalist in China, he interviewed hundreds of Chinese youth born in the 1980s and 1990s from around the country to explore how this generation is navigating the enormous socioeconomic challenges of their lives. Fish received his B.A. in Political Science from University of Kansas and his M.A. in Global Business Journalism from Tsinghua University.
2017 Teachers Workshop Speaker
Screen Shot 2015-07-26 at 10.32.06 PM Dr. Mei Gechlik is the Founder and Director of Stanford Law School’s “China GuidingCases Project” (CGCP) as well as Founder and President of “Good GovernanceInternational” (GGI). Formerly a tenured professor in Hong Kong, she has been avisiting professor at Peking University and has spoken at prestigious law schools in theUnited States and China. Prior to teaching at Stanford Law School, Dr. Gechlik workedfor the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and testified before the U.S.Congress on various topics about China and advised the United Nations and theChinese government on implementing rule of law programs. She received her J.S.D.from Stanford Law School and her MBA in Finance from the Wharton School, Universityof Pennsylvania.

2015 Teachers Workshop Speaker

 Thomas Gold Dr. Thomas B. Gold, Moderator, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, has served as Associate Dean of International and Area Studies. He is the Founding Director of the Berkeley China Initiative and Chair of the Center for Chinese Studies. Since 2000, he has served as Executive Director of the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies (IUP), a consortium of 14 American universities which administers an advanced Chinese language program at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Professor Gold became interested in China as an undergraduate at Oberlin College. He then received a Masters in Regional Studies-East Asia and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University.  While at Harvard he was among the first group of American exchange students to study in China.

2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 Teachers Workshop Moderator and Speaker

Ben Guggenheim is a founding member of 1990 Institute’s Youth Advisory Board and has participated in three Youth Voices on China video contests. In 4th grade, he began studying Mandarin with a Chinese friend. His passion led him to found a Chinese culture and language camp for under-served youth. Ben received two State Department scholarships to study in China, most recently spending a year at a high school in Beijing. He is currently a research assistant at Asia Society Northern California and will attend Columbia University in the fall.

2018 Teachers Workshop Presenter

 Screen Shot 2015-08-02 at 11.23.55 PM Gang He is a Ph.D. candidate in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. His work focuses on energy economics, energy and climate change policy, carbon capture and sequestration, domestic coal and power sectors and their key role in both the global energy supply and in international climate policy framework.  He also studies other interdisciplinary aspects of global climate change and the development of lower-carbon energy sources.

2014 Teachers Workshop Speaker

 

Pete Hammer-new Pete Hammer has worked in the San Francisco Unified School District as a teacher, professional development facilitator, and librarian for 25 years.  He first studied Chinese as an undergraduate in the late 1960s.  Since 2000, he has traveled frequently to China, including a sabbatical year spent in Beijing studying Mandarin. In 2011, he spent five months in Singapore developing curriculum in Chinese history as part of a Fulbright teacher exchange program.  He taught journalism at Lowell High for 8 years.

2013 Teachers Workshop Speaker

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Dr. Mark Henderson is Associate Professor and Director of the Public Policy Program at Mills College, California, where he teaches environmental policy and planning. His research focuses on environmental and social issues in the US and China, including  urbanization and land use planning, global climate change and policy applications of the Geographic Information System (GIS). He has worked on projects for the US Environmental Protection Agency and has been an honorary guest professor at Lanzhou University (Gansu China) and a visiting scholar at the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University.

2013, 2019 Teachers Workshop Speaker

Screen Shot 2015-08-02 at 11.24.02 PM Dr. Roselyn Hsueh is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Temple University.  Her research focuses on the politics of market reform, comparative capitalism, development, international trade and investment, and other areas of international and comparative political economy.  She received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and conducted research as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar at the Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.  She previously served as a Hayward R. Alker Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Southern California and Residential Research Faculty at UC Berkeley.

2013, 2014 Teachers Workshop Speaker

Dr. Ellen C. Huang is a historian of art, technology, and material culture.  Her research and university teaching integrate the applied and natural sciences with the history of ideas and art.  She has held postdoctoral teaching positions at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of San Francisco.  In addition to teaching and research, she has curated Asian Art for the Cantor Center for the Visual Arts at Stanford University and with the collections at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum.

2019 Teachers Workshop Speaker

Screen Shot 2015-08-02 at 11.34.39 PM John Kamm is the founder of the Dui Hua Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing human rights in China.  He is a past president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong and has served as a director of the National Committee on U.S. – China Relations.  Since he began his advocacy work on behalf of prisoners in 1990, he has made over 100 trips to China to engage the Chinese government in a dialogue on human rights.  For his work in the area of corporate responsibility, Mr. Kamm was awarded the Best Global Practices Award by former President Bill Clinton in 1997.  He was granted the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award by former President George W. Bush in 2001 and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2004.

2013 Teachers Workshop Speaker

 Screen Shot 2015-07-26 at 10.32.17 PM Thomas Klitgaard is a practicing lawyer, mediator, and arbitrator in San Francisco.  He is one of the founding directors of the San Francisco ­Shanghai Friendship City Committee, appointed by Senator (then Mayor) Dianne Feinstein in 1982. Since 1980, he has been to China many times on business and City matters. His work has taken him to both heavily populated and remote areas in diverse parts of China where the environment is critical. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco, where he teaches a course on Asian Legal Systems.

2014, 2015 Teachers Workshop Speaker

 

 Screen Shot 2015-07-26 at 10.32.26 PM Dr. George Koo, a retired consultant to Deloitte, has given many talks, workshops and interviews explaining today’s China and offering views ofU.S.-China bilateral relations in contrast to that of the western mainstream.  He has been a cross-border business advisor to high tech companies based in the U.S., China, Japan and Taiwan for over 30 years.   Dr. Koo serves on the board of New America Media, a non-profit ethnic media organization and writes for Pacific News Service on issues relating to Chinese Americans and to U.S. – China relations. He is a member of Committee of 100, a national organization of prominent Chinese Americans and a member of the China Committee of the Pacific Council for International Policy.

2013, 2015 Teachers Workshop Speaker

   

Kaiser Kuo is the founder and host of the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, and editor-at-large of SupChina.com. He recently repatriated to the U.S. after 20 years in Beijing, where he worked as Director of International Communications for Baidu. He was previously a technology reporter in China.  Kuo is also a guitarist and co-founder of the band Chunqiu (Spring & Autumn), and founded China’s first heavy metal band, Tang Dynasty. He is a graduate of the UC Berkeley, and holds an M.A. from the University of Arizona.

2017 Teachers Workshop Speaker

Screen Shot 2015-07-26 at 10.27.48 PM Nicole Kwan coordinated and taught the course “Doing Business in China” at the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University and more recently at the Beijing Center University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. She is based in Hong Kong and has over 20 years of international banking experience in China and Asia Pacific Professor Kwan received her B.A. in Government from Smith College, M.A. in International Relations from Yale University, and Master of Journalism from University of Hong Kong.

2015 Teachers Workshop Interviewee

Screen Shot 2015-08-02 at 11.24.14 PM Wei-Tai Kwok is an international business executive and public speaker focused on solar power and the renewable energy industry. He is the COO of Amber Kinetics and was the VP Operations at the residential solar division of NRG Energy and VP Strategic Marketing for Suntech Power, the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. He helped establish the non-profit U.S. China Green Energy Council in 2008, and also was past President and Chairman of The 1990 Institute. A native of Washington DC, Wei-Tai holds a degree in economics and political science from Yale and speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese.

2014, 2016 Teachers Workshop Speaker


Eve Wen-Jing Lee is a special adviser for Asian Health Programs at Health Research for Action at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.  Trained as a health educator, she has been working on women’t health and rights issues for three decades.  She is a senior adviser for Pathfinder International and was a grant maker for Ford Foundation’s Beijing office.  Prior to the Ford Foundation, she was vice president of the Public Media Center, a public interest communication and technical assistance agency based in San Francisco, and a health educator and counselor in the Women Health Clinic at San Francisco General Hospital.2019 Teachers Workshop Speaker

Francis Lee is currently on the Board of Synaptics, a leading supplier of human interface solutions, and a director of Adesto Technologies, a provider of innovative semiconductors and embedded systems for the Internet of Things. Mr. Lee was previously CEO and President of Synaptics,  general manager of NSM in Hong Kong, and has held a variety of executive positions with National Semiconductor. Mr. Lee is also a regular guest lecturer on leadership skills and innovative thinking.2019 Teachers Workshop Speaker
QinQin Li was one of the recipients of the 1990 Institute’s Spring Bud Scholarship Project which provided all expenses paid support for 1000 poverty stricken rural girls to continue their education from the 3rd grade through college, if they are able.  Upon graduating from college in 2014, QinQin was recruited by a prominent private law firm as an intern. She passed the bar exam in 2016 and is now the youngest law partner at the Shaanxi Zhongzhi Law Firm where she specializes in economic disputes. She continues to assist disadvantaged people in rural areas and offers her services pro bono to other Spring Bud participants.

2018 Teachers Workshop Presenter

Dr. Richard Madsen is Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus, adjunct professor of the Graduate School of Global Policy and Strategy, and director of the UC-Fudan Center for Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He is a co-author (with Robert Bellah et al.) of the The Good Society and Habits of the Heart which received the Los Angeles Times Book Award and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He has authored or co-authored seven books on China, including Morality and Power in a Chinese Village for which he received the C. Wright Mills Award. He received his A.B. at Maryknoll College, B.D. at Maryknoll Seminary, and M.A. Ph.D. from Harvard University.

2018 Teachers Workshop Speaker

Screen Shot 2015-07-26 at 10.28.26 PM Mary Kay Magistad is the creator and host of the “Whose Century Is It?” podcast, a co-production with PRI’s “The World.” She had been a foreign correspondent who lived in and reported on East Asia for almost a quarter century, reporting from some 40 countries in Asia and beyond. She started in Southeast Asia in 1988, reporting for NPR, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, before becoming NPR’s full-time Southeast Asia correspondent. In 1996, she opened NPR’s first China bureau. Mary Kay has an MA in international relations from the University of Sussex in England, completed as a Rotary Scholar, and a BS from Northwestern in journalism and history.

2015, 2016 Teachers Workshop Speaker

Screen Shot 2015-08-02 at 11.24.21 PM Dr. Kristen McDonald is Pacific Environment’s China Program Director.  She is the founder and former director of China Rivers Project, an organization that worked to expand the river eco-tourism and river conservation in China.  She has worked both internationally and within the U.S. as a river conservation advocate, and she has lived and worked in China over five years, particularly in Southwest China.  She received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in Environmental Science, Policy and Management.  She holds a B.A. from Yale University in Literature and Environmental Studies.

2014 Teachers Workshop Speaker

barry Naughton -cropped Dr. Barry Naughton is Professor at the University of California, San Diego specializing in the Chinese economy and economic policy. He spent fall 2012 and 2013 as a visiting scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing, which allowed him to closely follow the new Xi Jinping administration and its economic reform initiative. Naughton’s most recent book, co-edited with Kellee Tsai, is State Capitalism, Institutional Adaptation and the Chinese Miracle. Naughton received his PhD in Economics from Yale in 1986, and was named the So Kwanlok Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies of UC San Diego in 1998.2016

2016  Teachers Workshop Speaker


Dr. Linda Neuhauser is Clinical Professor of Community Health and Human Development at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health and the co-principal investigator at its Health Research for Action.  Her research and teaching are focused on interdisciplinary models for improving health policies.  Her programs are tailored to people’s literacy levels, culture, access, functional needs and social context. She is an advisor to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Academy of Science.

2019  Teachers Workshop Speaker

Stanley Rosen is a professor of political science at USC specializing in Chinese politics and society.  He has written numerous articles and books on topics such as the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese legal system, public opinion, youth, gender, human rights, Sino-American relations, film and the media. His most recent books include Chinese Politics:  State, Society and the Market [2010] (co-edited with Peter Hays Gries) and Art, Politics and Commerce in Chinese Cinema [2010] (co-edited with Ying Zhu).  He is currently co-editing a book on Chinese Soft Power.  Professor Rosen has escorted 13 delegations to China for the National Committee on US-China Relations.  He is an affiliated research scholar at Beijing Normal University’s Research Institute for Chinese Culture and International Communications and an international advisory board member of Shanghai University’s Center for Media Studies and the Humanities Studies Center of Zhongshan University (Taiwan).

2017  Teachers Workshop Speaker

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Dr. Scott Rozelle  holds the Helen Farnsworth Endowed Professorship at Stanford University and is Senior Fellow and Professor in the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) for International Studies. His research focuses on the economics of poverty—with an emphasis on the economics of education
and health. He is the co-director of the Rural Education Action Project (REAP) in China and has been an adjunct professor in 8 Chinese universities. In 2008, he was awarded the Friendship Award—the highest honor that can be endowed on a foreign citizen—by Premier Wen Jiabao.2013, 2018 Teachers Workshop Speaker
Rob Schmitz is the Shanghai Correspondent for NPR and author of Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road. From 2010 to 2016, he was the China Correspondent for the public radio business program Marketplace. He has won numerous awards for his reporting on China and other East Asia countries, including two national Edward R. Murrow awards, Education Writers Association award, and Investigative Reporters and Editors Award. He has a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor’s degree in Spanish from the University of Minnesota-Duluth. He speaks Spanish and Chinese, and is currently residing in Shanghai.

2018 Teachers Workshop Speaker


Matt Sheehan lived in China as a journalist between 2010 and 2016, working, studying, and reporting throughout the country. In 2014, he became the first China correspondent for The Huffington Post, reporting on issues ranging from democracy protests in Hong Kong to down-and-out coal towns in Shaanxi. Fluent in written and spoken Mandarin, he also produces Chinese-language internet TV shows on ultimate Frisbee and California culture. Having returned to the Bay Area in 2016, Sheehan is researching a book on the China-California relationship, and is consulting on cross-border business projects. He grew up in Palo Alto and received his B.A. in Political Science from Stanford University.

2017 Teachers Workshop Speaker

 Victor Shih - cropped Dr. Victor Shih is a political economist at the University of California at San Diego specializing in China. An immigrant to the United States from Hong Kong, Dr. Shih received his doctorate in Government from Harvard, where he researched banking sector reform in China with the support of the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship and the Fulbright Fellowship. He is the author of Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation. It is the first book to inquire the linkages between elite politics and banking policies in China. His current research concerns elite coalition building and factional politics in China.

2016 Teachers Workshop Speaker

  Dr. Susan Shirk is Research Professor and Chair of the 21st Century China Center at UC San Diego. Her book China: Fragile Superpower helped frame the policy debate on China in the U.S. and other countries. Dr. Shirk’s articles have appeared in leading academic publications in international relations and China studies, and her views on modern Chinese politics are highly sought after. She has also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, responsible for U.S. policy towards China and Taiwan.  Dr. Shirk earned her B.A. in Political Science from Mount Holyoke, M.A. in Asian Studies from UC Berkeley and her Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT.

2017 Teachers Workshop Speaker

Tobias Smith is a researcher specializing in the development of criminal law in China. His writing focuses on capital punishment and its alternatives. Before becoming an academic, he was a program officer at the Dui Hua Foundation, where he promoted criminal justice reform and dialogue between the U.S. and China. He grew up in Asia and the U.S., and has been spending time in China regularly since 2000. He holds a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley and is a Ph.D. candidate in UC Berkeley’s Jurisprudence & Social Policy Program.

2018 Teachers Workshop Speaker


Dr. Samuel So is recognized worldwide for his expertise in chronic hepatitis B and primary liver cancer prevention, research, treatment and health policy.  He is the Lui Hac Minh Professor of Surgery at Stanford University and is the founder of the multidisciplinary liver cancer program at the Stanford Cancer Center and the founder and executive director of the Asian Liver Center at Stanford University School of Medicine. He has been an adviser for the Food and Drugs Administration and World Health Organization, and have received many awards from the Center for Disease Control and Asia Society Northern California.2019 Teachers Workshop Speaker
Christopher Twomey cropped Dr. Christopher Twomey is an associate professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, where he focuses on Chinese foreign policy and East Asian security. He works with the Departments of Defense and State on a range of strategic and Asian security issues and authored The Military Lens: Doctrinal Differences and Deterrence Failure in Sino-American Relations. He has been the lead organizer of the US-China Strategic Dialogue, a track 1.5 diplomatic meeting on strategic nuclear issues, since its inception in 2005. He received his BA and MPIA from the University of California San Diego and his PhD in Political Science from MIT.

2016 Teachers Workshop Speaker

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Helen H. Wang is an expert on China’s middle class and the author of the award winning book, The Chinese Dream: The Rise of the World’s Largest Middle Class and What It Means to You.  After finishing her master degree at Stanford University, she joined Institute for the Future, consulted for Fortune 500 companies and became an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley Internet start-ups. In 2004, she returned to Stanford University as a Reuters Fellow, developing technology solutions for underserved communities.  She founded a social venture, e-Mobilizer, to help women micro-entrepreneurs in developing countries using a mobile phone to access online markets.

2013 Teachers Workshop Speaker

Screen Shot 2015-08-02 at 11.35.04 PM Ling-Chi Wang, Associate Professor Emeritus at UC-Berkeley, helped establish UC’s Asian American Studies program in 1969.  He is a founder of Chinese for Affirmative Action and the recipient of the Association for Asian American Studies Lifetime Achievement Award.  He co-founded the International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas (ISSCO) in 1992, which sponsors conferences at Chinese diaspora communities around the world.  Professor Wang has advocated for language education rights, such as inclusion of Asian languages by Educational Testing Services, and fought for the building of a Chinatown San Francisco Community College branch, where restaurant and garment workers can take ESL classes.  He has been a visiting professor for universities in Beijing, Jinan, and Xiamen.

2013 Teachers Workshop Speaker

Jeff Wasserstrom-cropped Dr. Jeffrey Wasserstrom is the Chancellor’s Professor of History at UC Irvine, where he also holds a courtesy appointment in Law and is the Historical Writing Mentor for the Literary Journalism Program. Educated at UC Santa Cruz (BA), Harvard (MA), and Berkeley (PhD), he has been traveling to China since the mid-1980s. He has published widely on Chinese history and contemporary affairs in scholarly and general interest forums. His books include, as author, China in the 21st
Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (2010 and 2013 editions), and, as editor, The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China (2016). He is the Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies and the China adviser for the Los Angeles Review of Books.2016 Teachers Workshop Speaker
Screen Shot 2015-07-26 at 10.28.07 PM David Wertime is a Senior Editor at the Washington D.C.-based Foreign Policy magazine, where he focuses on China. He is also the co-founder and co-editor of Tea Leaf Nation, an independent media analysis company focused on China. He has discussed Chinese media and U.S.-China relations on outlets including BBC Television, Al Jazeera English Television, Public Radio International, and Voice of America. A former Peace Corps Volunteer serving the suburbs of Chongqing. David has spent a total of four years in China. He holds a law degree from Harvard and an English degree from Yale.

2015, 2016 Teachers Workshop Speaker

 Screen Shot 2015-07-26 at 10.27.39 PM Joshua Wong Chi­fung is a Hong Kong student activist who is the convener and founder of the Hong Kong student activist group Scholarism. He is now a college student at the Open University of Hong Kong. Wong is most notable for leading fellow Hong Kong students in a massive protest in 2014 that demanded genuine universal suffrage. Due to his influence in Hong Kong’s pro­democracy movement, he was named one of TIME’s Most Influential Teens of 2014 and nominated for TIME’s Person of the Year 2014.

2015 Teachers Workshop Interviewee

 

 victoria Wu Victoria Wu is the Partner at Tencent Exploration Team. Prior to joining Tencent, Victoria worked for the Boston Consulting Group. She also worked at The Nature Conservancy, the largest environmental
non-profit in the world. She was the head of TNC’s fundraising in North Asia region. She also worked in corporate engineering at Genentech. Before her life in the technology industry, she served as a TV news anchorwoman and journalist in the Greater China region. Victoria has fifteen years of experience in internet technologies, entrepreneurship and management in China and the U.S. She holds a MS in Management Science from Stanford and a BS in Chemistry from the University of Science & Technology of China.2016 Teachers Workshop Reception Presenter
Screen Shot 2015-07-26 at 10.27.56 PM Yidi Wu is a history Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Irvine. She studies modern Chinese history, especially student activism, social movement and political campaigns under Mao. Her dissertation focuses on college students during the Hundred Flowers and the Anti­Rightist Campaign of 1957. She has received fellowships from the National Academy of Education, American Council of Learned Society and Association of Asian Studies. Originally from Beijing, she holds a B.A. from Oberlin College in history

2015 Teachers Workshop Speaker

Janet Yang is a prominent Hollywood film producer and consultant who has worked with Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone. With deep roots in the U.S. and China, she has produced a number of award-winning films, including The Joy Luck Club (Disney); The People vs. Larry Flynt, a Chinese adaptation of High School Musical, and Shanghai Calling. Ms. Yang has been named one of the “50 Most Powerful Women in Hollywood” by the Hollywood Reporter. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures, the Committee of 100, and an advisory board member of Asia Society Southern California. She holds a B.A. from Brown University and an M.B.A. from Columbia University.

2016 and 2018 Teachers Workshop Speaker

Screen Shot 2015-08-02 at 11.24.27 PM Ambassador Yuan Nansheng was China’s Counsel General at San Francisco in 2014. Ambassador Yuan Nansheng has had an atypical and multi-varied career. He holds a Master of Laws and Doctor of Philosophy in Law from the School of International Studies, Peking University.  He has worked at various enterprises, taught at the university level, and produced extensive studies and essays on leaders and leadership, diplomats and diplomacy, economics, secret agents, poetry and travel, along with many other topics.  He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and became a diplomat himself after a career of 30+ years in other capacities.  As a foreign affairs official representing China, he has been Chinese Ambassador to India, Zimbabwe and Surinam and Minister- Counselor to Egypt.

2014 Teachers Workshop Invited Guest