Staff and Advisors

Ting Shen

Dr. Ting Shen is Project Associate of CELIN at Asia Society. She is currently a Senior Director of Research Development at AIBE and has years of experience teaching Chinese in high schools (2006-2010) and university (2011-2016) in the United States. She works on curriculum and materials development, professional development, and international education exchange. She holds a BA from Peking University and a Ph.D. from the University of Florida.

Cleopatra Wise

Cleopatra Wise is the Director for Asia Society's Center for Global Education, China Learning Initiatives (CLI). She is responsible for managing the CLI team and executing programs that promote Chinese language learning among young people in the United States.

Before joining Asia Society, Cleopatra served as an International Program Manager at Peking University for seven years. During her time there, she spearheaded the school's global outreach and special initiatives.

Cleopatra holds a BA in International Relations from the University of Southern California. She also earned an MBA from the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University.

Cleopatra is a Florida native and speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese and Krio.

Anthony Jackson

Dr. Anthony Jackson leads Asia Society's work in global education, which strives to enable all students to graduate high school prepared for college, for work in the global economy, and for 21st century global citizenship.

Jackson oversees the Center for Global Education at Asia Society, a global platform for collaboratively advancing education for global competence for all. The Center’s multifaceted approach includes the International Studies Schools Network, a network of over 30 schools around the United States that systematically integrate a global focus within the curriculum; Global Learning Beyond School, which supports globalizing youth programs including afterschool and community programs; the Global Cities Education Network, a learning community of high performing Asian and North American urban school districts dedicated to solving common high priority problems of practice and policy; and China Learning Initiatives, which provide national leadership to support learning of Chinese language and culture.

Trained in both developmental psychology and education, Jackson is one of the nation’s leading experts on secondary school education reform and adolescent development. Jackson directed the Carnegie Corporation’s Task Force on the Education of Young Adolescents which produced the ground breaking report Turning Points: Educating Adolescents in the 21st Century, and co-authored the seminal follow-up blueprint Turning Points 2000, considered one of the most influential books on middle school reform. His most recent work is Educating for Global Competence: Preparing Our Youth to Engage the World.

Jackson holds a BA from the University of California at Berkeley, and MA and PhD in Education and Psychology from the University of Michigan.

Yang Guo

Yang Guo is the Assistant Director of Partner Schools for China Learning Initiatives at Asia Society's Center for Global Education, where she manages a nationwide school network and executes educational programs to make Mandarin language approachable for all. She is passionate about cross-cultural communication and education exchanges. She has organized dozens of nationwide and international conferences and student exchange programs.

Maquita Alexander

Maquita Alexander is the Head of School of Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School. She served as the Principal of the school from 2009–2012. She has led the school's development of its the immersion and International Baccalaureate program. She has successfully set and met both internal program goals and DC educational targets.

Michele Anciaux Aoki

Michele Anciaux Aoki is an International Education and World Languages Advocate, who recently retired as International Education Administrator for Seattle Public Schools, where she was responsible for developing and supporting the ten international schools in the district and their K-12 dual immersion programs in Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish. She was also Co-Director of the Confucius Institute of the State of Washington.

From 2008 to 2014, Michele served as World Languages Program Supervisor at the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), where she provided technical support on world language standards and assessment to 295 public school districts and professional development for world language teachers across the state. She also worked with the State Board of Education and Washington State School Directors Association on developing and implementing a model policy and procedure for Competency-Based Credits to award high school credits to students with demonstrated language proficiency and was project director on a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the Road Map World Language Credit Program. She was instrumental in introducing the Seal of Biliteracy in Washington State. Since 2011, Michele has partnered with the University of Washington on their Russian STARTALK Teacher and Student Program. Michele has a Ph.D. in Slavic Linguistics and taught Russian language and English as a Second Language at the University of Washington for a number of years and as a Fulbright lecturer in Romania. She has received two leadership awards from the Washington Association for Language Teaching (WAFLT) as well as the Consul General Award from the Consul General of Japan, and continues to volunteer as an advocate for languages.

Michael Bacon

Michael Bacon works as the Portland Public Schools (PPS) Assistant Director for Dual Language Immersion, which provides program, professional, and curriculum development for 15 immersion programs in Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, and Vietnamese in 24 K–12 schools.

Susan Berg

Sue Berg is CEO/Executive Director of Yinghua Academy, a full immersion Mandarin Chinese K–8 school in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The school opened in 2006, as the first public charter Chinese immersion school in the U.S. and the first Chinese immersion school in the Midwest.

Jeffrey W. Bissell

Dr. Jeffrey W. Bissell is Head of School at Chinese American International School (CAIS), where he has overseen the establishment of an innovative framework for curriculum development allowing for the effective integration of Chinese and English across multiple disciplines.

Tara Fortune

Dr. Tara W. Fortune is a teacher educator, researcher, and founder of Tara Fortune Consulting, LLC. She specializes in strategic planning and support for dual language and immersion (DLI) education. For over 20 years she served as Director of the Immersion Research and Professional Development Project at the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA), University of Minnesota. In this role she partnered with veteran practitioners and leading immersion researchers to offer professional learning experiences that bridge research and practice. Her work has involved a wide range of DLI program models and languages in schools, districts, state agencies, universities, and non-profit organizations throughout the U.S. and abroad. Fortune's publications include two co-edited research volumes on immersion education, a research-to-practice handbook on struggling immersion learners, and articles in journals such as Foreign Language Annals, Modern Language Journal, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, and the Journal of Content-Based and Immersion Education. In 2016, she received the U.S. Paul Pimsleur Award for Research in Foreign Language Education.

Ann Marie G. Gunter

Ann Marie Gunter is World Language Consultant at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, where she focuses on initiatives involving the professional development, support, and implementation of the proficiency-based North Carolina World Language Essential Standards.

Robin Harvey

Robin Harvey is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Foreign Language Education, TESOL, and Bilingual Education in New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, where she focuses on teaching foreign language in elementary school and early immersion education.

Sharon Huang

Sharon Huang is the founder and executive director of HudsonWay Immersion School, a Mandarin and Spanish immersion school for children ages 2 to grade 8, with campuses in New Jersey and New York City. She started HudsonWay in 2005 after being unable to find a Mandarin immersion preschool for her then-2-year-old twin sons.  The school has over 200 students across both campuses and has recently been accredited by the Middle States Association. The school is a pioneer in the greater NYC market and has grown to encompass preschool through middle school, with other programs such as summer camps and online after-school programs.

Janis Jensen

Janis Jensen is an independent consultant for world languages and global education. She also serves as Program Director for STARTALK Grant Projects at Kean University that includes oversight of Hindi and Urdu Student and Teacher Programs and the newly developed Master’s degree program in Hindi and Urdu Language Pedagogy.

She is program liaison to the Kean University Graduate School of Education and teaches several graduate courses. Janis previously served as Director of the School for Global Education and Innovation at Kean, responsible for professional development initiatives focusing on 21st century learning and teaching and global education. She has also served as Director of the Office of Academic Standards at the NJ Department of Education, where she oversaw the development and implementation of the NJ Core Curriculum Content Standards and educational technology. Prior to that appointment, she coordinated the implementation of world languages and international education policies, programs, and initiatives at the department. She is past president of NCSSFL, NNELL, and NJ ASCD. She co-authored the ASCD publication, The Essentials of World Languages, Grades K-12: Effective Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment.

Yu-Lan Lin

Dr. Yu-Lan Lin has been a teacher/administrator for 34 years. She recently retired as the Executive Director of the Chinese Language Association of Secondary-Elementary Schools (CLASS) and is also the former Senior Program Director of World Languages for Boston Public Schools.

Chris Livaccari

Christopher M. Livaccari is an educator, author, and former U.S. diplomat who held posts in Tokyo and Shanghai. He is the Head of Presidio Knolls School (PKS) in San Francisco and was the Senior Advisor for China Learning Initiatives in Asia Society’s Center for Global Education in New York.

Chris was formerly Principal and Chinese Program Director at International School of the Peninsula (now Silicon Valley International School) in Palo Alto, CA and the Director of Education and Chinese Language Initiatives at Asia Society, where he created a national network of almost 40,000 students in more than 100 U.S. schools in 28 states that teach Chinese, and their partner schools across 23 provinces in China. He has been a member of the board of trustees of Chinese American International School (CAIS) in San Francisco and was named an honorary lifetime member of the Chinese Language Teachers Association of Greater New York.

Chris is the author of New Ways of Seeing: How Multilingualism Opens Our Eyes and Trains Our Minds for a Complex World (Asia Society, 2017), and co-author of Structures of Mandarin Chinese for Speakers of English I & II (Peking University Press, 2012-2013), Chinese Language Learning in the Early Grades (Asia Society, 2012), and the Chinese for Tomorrow series (Cheng & Tsui, 2007-2009).

Chris has been a featured speaker at the Aspen Ideas Festival, has spoken on Chinese language education at the British Museum in London, and was the recipient of the U.S. State Department’s Meritorious Honor Award, citing outstanding speeches written for two U.S. ambassadors to Japan.

Tenured as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer in 2003, Chris served as a press officer for multiple visits to Asia by two U.S. presidents and two secretaries of state. He was the founding director of the High School for Language and Diplomacy and a founding member of the faculty at CSI High School for International Studies. Both schools were members of the Asia Society International Studies Schools Network (ISSN), a national initiative to create globally focused public schools with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Chris has been a teacher of Chinese, Japanese, English, and History and studied modern Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian literature at Columbia University; Classical Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Sanskrit literature at the University of Chicago; and applied linguistics at New York University. His essays and articles have appeared in Foreign Policy, AGNI, The Aspen Institute, Asia Society, and Education Week.

Tommy Lu

Dr. Tommy Lu has been actively developing and gathering information about Chinese community-based schools for over 20 years. He is interested in building a platform for all community-based schools using the community of practice approach, so that every community member can collaborate with others and share what they have learned.

Stacy Lyon

Stacy Lyon is the Utah Chinese Dual Language Immersion (DLI) Director, overseeing 16,000+ students in the growing K-12 program, since 2013. Her aim is to build a world-class Chinese immersion program that is accessible to all public school students. In this role she focuses on curriculum development; training and supporting nearly 250 native Chinese teachers in delivering high-quality, proficiency-based instruction to U.S. students; and supporting administrators in unified program implementation. In 2014, she initiated a collaboration that resulted in a widely used immersion-specific literacy curriculum for K-8 students, and she maintains a strong interest in pursuing research on Chinese literacy development with non-native learners.

Rita Oleksak

Rita A. Oleksak is the Director of World Languages/ELL for the Glastonbury Public Schools. She oversees a staff of 60 foreign language teachers and ELL tutors and is responsible for their hiring and direct supervision. Her work focuses on building target language proficiency across the modes of communication in a grade 1-12 articulated and sequential program.

In 2009, Glastonbury was named one of the first 20 Confucius Classroom cohorts. Glastonbury has also been funded for 13 STARTALK summer programs including Arabic, Chinese, and Russian teachers and students. Rita currently serves on the STARTALK task force. She is past president of the Joint National Committee for Languages-National Council for Languages and International Studies (JNCL-NCLIS), the language professional national lobbying organization. Rita also served on the K-16 Academic Alliances Committee for the Modern Language Association (MLA). She is past president of the National Network for Early Language Learning (NNELL) as well as the National Association of District Supervisors of Foreign Languages (NADSFL) and The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). As president of ACTFL, Rita had the honor of addressing a Senate Sub Committee to present ten legislative priorities for language learning in the United States. She is also the past president of the Massachusetts Foreign Language Association (MaFLA) and former co-chair of the K-16 Foreign Language Teachers of Western Massachusetts Collaborative.

Nancy Rhodes

Nancy C. Rhodes is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) and a specialist in foreign language education for children, with a focus on language education research, instructional program design, professional development, and program evaluation. As director of World Language Education at CAL, she conducted numerous language education studies, including a series of three federally funded national surveys of K–12 foreign language instruction that provide a portrait of language teaching across the country (Foreign Language Teaching in U.S. Schools: Results of a National Survey, Rhodes & Pufahl, 2010). She has also authored or co-authored Fostering Foreign Language Proficiency: What the U.S. Can Learn from Other Countries (2005), Elementary School Foreign Language Teaching: Lessons Learned Over Three Decades (Foreign Language Annals, 2014), and Language Immersion: Celebrating 40 Years of Growth (2012). She is a founding member and former Executive Secretary of the National Network for Early Language Learning.

Deborah W. Robinson

Dr. Deborah W. Robinson serves as K–12 strategist and consultant to The Language Flagship. She has extensive experience in the K–16 arena, having taught French and Spanish in elementary, immersion, afterschool, summer, and traditional secondary and postsecondary programs.

Paul Sandrock

Paul Sandrock, Director of Education at ACTFL, the national organization for language educators, directs ACTFL’s professional development and initiatives around standards, curriculum, instruction, and performance assessment. Previously, Paul was Assistant Director of Content and Learning at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, coordinating the areas of English language arts, mathematics, international education, and world languages. He earlier served as that agency’s state-wide consultant for world languages. Paul taught Spanish for 16 years in middle school and high school and authored The Keys to Assessing Language Performance and Planning Curriculum for Learning World Languages. Previously, he served ACTFL as a board member and president.

Eric Schneider

Eric Schneider is Superintendent for Instruction in Minnetonka Public Schools. As a suburban district in Minnesota with 10,000 students located west of Minneapolis, Minnetonka is committed to language immersion and offers a K–12 program in Spanish and Mandarin that serves over 2,000 students.

Duarte Silva

Dr. Duarte Silva is Executive Director of the California World Language Project (CWLP) in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Designed to strengthen and enhance professional development opportunities for California's language educators, CWLP has seven regional sites across California.

Madeline K. Spring

Dr. Madeline K. Spring is director of the UHM Chinese Language Flagship at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Before coming to UHM in the Fall 2014, she was at Arizona State University (ASU), where she served as director of both the Chinese Language Flagship and the Chinese Flagship/ROTC Pilot Program.

Jacque Bott Van Houten

Jacque Bott Van Houten is an independent language and international education consultant, specializing in intercultural communication and personalized learning. She retired in 2020 as language specialist for Jefferson County (Louisville, KY) Public Schools, where she oversaw curriculum design and professional development for language teachers in the state’s largest school district. She was also the world language supervisor for the Kentucky Department of Education for 15 years. She is a past president of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), the National Network for Early Language Learning (NNELL), the National Association of State Supervisors of Foreign Languages (NCSSFL), and the Kentucky World Language Association (KWLA). She is a board member of the Global Seal of Biliteracy, World Affairs Council of KY, and Southern IN and the University of Kentucky Confucius Institute. She was one of the early developers of LinguaFolio, co-project director for the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements, and led the ACTFL task force for the Can-Do Statements for Intercultural Communication. She was a lead teacher for the College Board Guest Teacher program at Stanford University and UCLA and served on the STARTALK Advisory Board. Her awards include the French government’s Ordre des Palmes Academiques, NCSSFL–Pearson Supervisor of the Year award, and ACTFL Florence Steiner award for Leadership in Foreign Language Education.

Elizabeth Weise

Elizabeth (Beth) Weise is author of A Parent’s Guide to Mandarin Immersion. Her children attend Mandarin immersion schools and both speak Chinese despite having grown up in an English-only household. She was on the committee that helped start the Mandarin immersion program in the San Francisco Unified School District in 2006.