Bi-khim Hsiao

Asia 21 Class of 2006
Vice President of Republic of China (Taiwan)

Hsiao Bi-khim is the vice president of Taiwan following the 2024 Taiwanese presidential election and will become Taiwan's first biracial vice president.  Previously, a Taiwanese politician and diplomat, Hsiao was a member of the Legislative Yuan from 2002 to 2008 and between 2012 and 2020. She served as the Taiwanese representative to the United States from 2020 to 2023.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Asia 21 Class of 2011
Journalist, Filmmaker and Activist 

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy may be best known for winning an Oscar — Pakistan’s first — for her 2012 documentary Saving Face, a gripping look at the survivors of acid violence. But the journalist and filmmaker has been telling the stories of marginalized communities since the age of 14.

A star of Asia Society’s Asia 21 young leaders network, Obaid-Chinoy’s work often centers on human rights and women’s issues. She has worked with refugees and the disenfranchised from Saudi Arabia to Syria to Timor Leste to the Philippines. By bringing typically unheard voices to the forefront, she has often helped bring critical change to these communities. Obaid-Chinoy has made award-winning films in more than 10 countries around the world, winning several Emmys and other awards along the way.

Bing Chen

Asia 21 Class of 2019
CEO & Co-Founder, AU Holdings & Gold House

Bing Chen is an impact founder and investor. He is the Executive Chairman and Founder of AU Holdings, a new world builder: a family of companies that incubate and invest in multicultural creators and communities to rebalance socioeconomic equity. As well, he is Executive Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and Co-founder of Gold House, the premier collective of multicultural leaders dedicated to systemically unlocking socioeconomic equity for multicultural communities through unity, investments, and promotion.

He is also General Partner and Co-founder of Aum Group, a multicultural film fund; and serves as a Board Director and Advisor to several leading digital media companies including Google's Global Marketing Board, Omnicom’s Sparks & Honey, Titan, Baobab Studios, Oura Health, Musely, and more. 

Durreen Shahnaz

Asia 21 Class of 2009
CEO & Founder,  Impact Investment Exchange

Durreen Shahnaz is a Bangladeshi-American entrepreneur, CEO and Founder of Impact Investment Exchange (IIX), and a member of Asia Society's Asia 21 Young Leaders program. A global leader of sustainable finance and impact investing, she is a 2017 Oslo Business for Peace Award Honoree (often referred to as the ‘Nobel Prize for Business’), a financial rainmaker in Forbes 50 over 50, and an Asia Society Game Changer Awardee.

Drawing from a rich career through which she broke down walls and built bridges to connect the backstreets of underserved communities to the Wall Streets of the world, her work has helped millions of women, thousands of entrepreneurs, investors, governments, and impact stakeholders around the world play a role in sustainable development and women’s empowerment. She continues her mission to build a more inclusive and sustainable world by bringing the intersection of climate action and gender equality to the forefront of capital markets.

Rajiv J. Shah

Asia 21 Class of 2006
President of the Rockefeller Foundation

Rajiv Shah is President of The Rockefeller Foundation, a global institution with a mission to promote the well-being of humanity around the world. The Foundation applies data, science, and innovation to improve health for women and children, create nutritious and sustainable food systems, end energy poverty for more than a billion people worldwide, and enable meaningful economic mobility in the United States and around the world.

In 2009, he was appointed USAID Administrator by President Obama and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Dr. Shah reshaped the $20 billion agency’s operations in more than 70 countries around the world by elevating the role of innovation, creating high-impact public-private partnerships, and focusing U.S. investments to deliver stronger results. Shah secured bipartisan support that included the passage of two significant laws – the Global Food Security Act and the Electrify Africa Act. He led the U.S. response to the Haiti earthquake and the West African Ebola pandemic, served on the National Security Council, and elevated the role of development as part of our nation’s foreign policy. Prior to his appointment at USAID, Shah served as Chief Scientist and Undersecretary for Research, Education, and Economics at the United States Department of Agriculture where he created the National Institute for Food and Agriculture.

Serey Chea

Asia 21 Class of 2017
Governor of the National Bank of Cambodia

Serey Chea is a Cambodian economist making the country’s financial system more inclusive and fair.  In 2023 she was appointed the Governor of the National Bank of Cambodia, the first woman to hold this position.

She was previously the Deputy Governor-general of the National Bank of Cambodia, which is equivalent to the Minister of Cambodia. She also serves as the chairwoman of the Credit Bureau Cambodia Ltd., which is the first and only privately run credit sharing system in Cambodia.  In addition, she is a member of various policy-driven committees within the bank and at the national level. Under her leadership, the retail payment infrastructure has undergone modernization with the introduction of a national shared switch for card transactions and the FAST payment system, which enables real-time fund transfers between bank accounts in Cambodia. As the chairwoman of the Clearing House Operation Committee, she has spearheaded the Bakong Project, an initiative of the National Bank of Cambodia that explores and introduces a new generation of payment systems using Blockchain technology. 

Menaka Guruswamy

Asia 21 Class of 2008
Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India

Menaka Guruswamy is a Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court of India. Through her litigation practice, she has successfully sought reform of the bureaucracy in the country through fixed tenure, defended federal legislation that mandates that all private schools admit disadvantaged children, and overturned section 377, the 150-year-old colonial-era law that criminalizes consensual same-sex relations. She has also litigated the case for marriage-equality before the Supreme Court of India. In her private law practice, she litigates in the areas of civil law, commercial law, and white-collar crime. 

Tim Watts

Asia 21 Class  of 2017
Australia’s Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs 

Tim Watts is the Federal Member for Gellibrand and has served as the Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Albanese Government since 2022. Tim was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2013 and, for a decade, has served one of the most diverse electorates in Australia.

Before entering Parliament, Tim worked in the technology sector, as a Senior Manager at Telstra and a Solicitor at Mallesons Stephen Jaques (now King & Wood Mallesons). Tim worked on critical tech issues, including the rollout of the National Broadband Network, the auction and distribution of sections of the radio communications spectrum, and network pricing regulation. He also worked as the Deputy Chief of Staff for the Minister for Communications and a Senior Adviser to the Victorian Premier.

Mitsuru Claire Chino

Asia 21 Class of 2006
Managing Executive Officer, General Manager, Corporate Communications Division, ITOCHU Corporation 

Mitsuru Claire Chino is a bilingual and bicultural (U.S. and Japan) senior business executive with a Fortune Global 500 company and an international lawyer with 30+ years’ experience. She was a partner of an international law firm prior to joining ITOCHU, a diversified industrials. With ITOCHU over the years, she has served as Global General Counsel, CEO of its North American operations and an Audit & Supervisory Board member. Since April, Claire is Managing Executive Officer in charge of corporate communications.

She is a graduate of Smith College (B.A. cum laude) and Cornell Law School (J.D.), where she serves on the advisory board.  She is also a classically trained singer who has studied voice at the Juilliard School of Music (Evening Division).

Eric Garcetti

Asia 21 Class of 2006
26th United States Ambassador to India

Eric Garcetti is a committed public servant, educator, and diplomat. Before being sworn in as the U.S. Ambassador to India, he was the 42nd Mayor of the City of Los Angeles and was LA’s youngest mayor in history. He was re-elected in 2017 with the widest margin ever recorded in his city.

During his mayoralty, Garcetti led Los Angeles through crisis, charted a bold green future, and launched record investments in infrastructure. Under his watch, Los Angeles was named the best run city in America by the What Works Cities initiative of Bloomberg Philanthropies and Garcetti was named Public Official of the Year in 2019 by Governing Magazine.  Garcetti oversaw a period of record economic growth and opportunity, won the Olympic and Paralympic Games for Los Angeles in 2028 and left the city with a record budget surplus. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Garcetti was praised for leading Los Angeles’ aggressive response, building the largest testing and vaccination sites in the world and adopting many of the earliest public health protections while keeping critical sectors of the economy going.