Schell is the author of fifteen books, ten of them about China, and a contributor to numerous edited volumes. His most recent books are: Wealth and Power, China’s Long March to the 21st Century; Virtual Tibet; The China Reader: The Reform Years; and Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square and the Next Generation of China’s Leaders. He has written widely for many magazines and newspapers, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Time, The New Republic, Harpers, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Wired, Foreign Affairs, the China Quarterly, and The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.

Schell was born in New York City, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University in Far Eastern History, was an exchange student at National Taiwan University in the 1960s and earned a Ph.D. (Abd) at the University of California, Berkeley in Chinese History. He worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, and has traveled widely in China since the mid-70s.

He is a Fellow at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University, a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg School of Communications at USC, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Schell is also the recipient of many prizes and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Overseas Press Club Award, and the Harvard-Stanford Shorenstein Prize in Asian Journalism.

Prior to joining Asia Society, Ms. Kim worked as the Manager of Special Events in Columbia University’s Office of the President for 3 years, where she developed and produced programs and VIP events for over 20,000 guests each academic year, including the World Leaders Forum and Heads of State visits during the United Nations General Assembly, with esteemed guests such as His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, President Jalal Talabani of Iraq, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz of Pakistan, President Václav Havel of the Czech Republic, Zhang Yimou, Tan Dun, and the Honorable David Dinkins. Ms. Kim also held varying roles at Columbia University's financial management and administrative departments from 1998-2007, including the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Office of Administrative Planning and Financial Management, and the Graduate School of Journalism.

Ms. Kim is also noted for her contributions to news media. She has worked for Newsweek; WZRC-NY Radio Korea; and New York’s WMBC-TV Channel 63. Ms. Kim was born in Seoul, Korea, and was educated in Hong Kong and in the United States. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University in East Asian Studies.