Asia Society Board Welcomes Four New Trustees at Hong Kong Meeting | Asia Society

Asia Society Board Welcomes Four New Trustees at Hong Kong Meeting

HONG KONG, March 21, 2016—At its spring meeting in Hong Kong, the Asia Society Board of Trustees announced the election of four new members: Joseph Y. Bae, Piyush Gupta, Adrian Keller and David Nazarian. Keller also chairs Asia Society’s Switzerland Center in Zurich, launched last December. The four join a global board of nearly 60 leaders who are committed to strengthening Asia Society’s work in the key areas of policy and business, arts and culture, and education.

"Asia Society is thrilled to welcome four outstanding new board members,” said Asia Society President and CEO Josette Sheeran. “These new trustees each bring tremendous experience to Asia Society and its mission, established 60 years ago by John D Rockefeller 3rd, of building bridges of understanding between Asia and the West across the arts, policy and education.”

Biographies of the newest Trustees follow.

Joseph Y. Bae
Managing Partner, KKR Asia

"As someone who has lived and worked in the U.S. and in Asia for many years, Joseph Bae is uniquely positioned to build bridges between businesses globally,” said Sheeran. “He is also a strong supporter of nonprofit cultural institutions, and his commitment to both the arts and business is invaluable.”

Joseph Y. Bae has been with KKR for over 19 years and is the Managing Partner of KKR Asia and the Chairman of the Asia Private Equity Investment Committee and China Growth Fund Investment Committee and a member of the Americas Private Equity Investment Committee and European Private Equity Investment Committee.

Bae also serves as a member of KKR’s Global Management Committee, Risk Management Committee and Asia Portfolio Management Committee. During his tenure with KKR he has played a significant role in the investments in Oriental Brewery, Panasonic Healthcare, Intelligence, BIS Cleanaway, Alliance Tire Group, Borden, Elmers, Inc., MMI, Unisteel, PanAmSat, PRIMEDIA, Seven Media Group, Shoppers Drug Mart, Visant, World Color Press and Yellow Pages Group. Bae, who had been located in the New York office, moved to Hong Kong in late 2005 to establish KKR’s Asian operations and recently moved back to New York in the summer of 2015.

Prior to KKR, Bae worked for Goldman, Sachs & Co. in its Principal Investment Area, where he was involved in a broad range of merchant banking transactions. He has a B.A., Magna Cum Laude, from Harvard College.

Bae serves on the boards of a number of non-profit and cultural institutions including, as a Trustee for Phillips Andover Academy, the Global Advisory Council at Harvard University, a Board member of Lincoln Center and the Asia Art Archives as well as the Asia Pacific Council for The Nature Conservancy.

Piyush Gupta
Chief Executive Office and Director, DBS Group

"Piyush Gupta brings a profound understanding of Southeast Asia and its meteoric rise on the global stage that will be of great import to our work in this region and globally,” Sheeran said.

Piyush Gupta is Chief Executive Officer and Director of DBS Group. DBS is a leading financial services group in Asia, with assets of approximately USD 350 billion, and with over 280 branches across 18 markets. Headquartered and listed in Singapore, DBS is a market leader in Singapore with over four million customers and has a growing presence in Greater China, Southeast Asia and South Asia. DBS was named “Bank of the Year, Asia” in 2012 by The Banker, “Best Bank, Asia-Pacific” in 2014 by Global Finance, and "Safest Bank in Asia" from 2009 to 2015 also by Global Finance.

Prior to joining DBS, Gupta was Citigroup’s Chief Executive Officer for South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. His external appointments include serving as the Deputy Chairman of SPRING Singapore and on the boards of Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, the Institute of International Finance, Washington, The Institute of Banking and Finance, Dr. Goh Keng Swee Scholarship Fund, and the MasterCard Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa Regional Advisory Board. He is also Chairman of Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics Advisory Board, a council member of The Association of Banks in Singapore, the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research, and Managing Council member of Indian Business-leaders’ Roundtable (under SINDA).

Gupta has an undergraduate degree in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM, Ahmedabad. He is married with two children. His personal interests include nature/birdwatching, reading, golf and crosswords.

Adrian T. Keller
Chairman, DKSH Holding Ltd.

"Europe is critical to building bridges of deeper understanding between the West and Asia,” said Sheeran. “We are grateful to Adrian Keller, the leader of a business that has been active in Asia for 150 years, for being the champion of Asia Society Switzerland, our first center in Europe.”

Adrian T. Keller has been a member of the Board of Directors of DKSH Holding Ltd., a leading Market Expansion Services company in Asia, since its formation and Chairman of the Board from 2003 on. Since 1991, he has been Vice Chairman of Diethelm Keller Holding Ltd., formerly Eduard Keller Ltd., a Family Holding company and anchor shareholder of DKSH. During his earlier career, Adrian T. Keller worked on Wall Street where he first was employed as broker at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. He then became a partner at Hoguet, Keller, Wittmann & Co., a registered investment advisor and subsequently co-founded Global Reach, a private investment advisory firm. He returned to Switzerland in 1998 to initiate the merger of the Diethelm and Keller companies.

Keller is also a member of the Board of Directors of Berenberg Bank (Switzerland) Ltd. as well as representing family interests on the Boards of several related companies. Pro bono he serves on the Board of the Tonhalle Gesellschaft, Zurich as well as on the on the Executive Committee of the Swiss Advisory Council of the American Swiss Foundation. He is strongly committed to supporting children’s education and development through active engagement in several foundations.

Keller studied economics at the University of St. Gallen's School of Business Administration, where he graduated with a lic. oec. HSG cum laude in 1976. In 1971, he received his baccalaureate at the Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz, Switzerland.

David Nazarian

"David Nazarian is a business leader with one foot in the U.S. and the other in Asia. He is also an outstanding civic leader with a range of interests that speak to Asia Society’s work in the arts, education, and policy,” said Sheeran.

Over his 30-year career, David Nazarian has established a consistent track record of identifying opportunities ahead of the pack, actively managing those investments and executing effective monetization strategies across a diverse range of investment classes and underlying industries. Nazarian's history as a visionary investor and business builder began with his active involvement in his family's early identification of the potential for wireless communications technology that ultimately became part of Qualcomm, Inc., one of the most successful corporations in the history of the telecommunications industry.

Capitalizing on the success of Qualcomm, Nazarian focused on investment opportunities that could be utilized to diversify his family's holdings. Nazarian displayed his acumen and investment vision by orchestrating the roll up of aerospace equipment manufacturers during a trough period in a highly cyclical industry; acquiring vast holdings of real estate from the Resolution Trust Corporation in the early 1990s; and strategically investing in the hotel industry following the economic downturn in the early 2000s. Nazarian started three early-stage venture funds concentrated on wireless communication and broadband infrastructure businesses and backed highly-innovative clean technology companies.

Most recently, Nazarian has acquired a portfolio of mid-sized operating companies and vast real estate holdings focused on multi-family and student housing assets. These efforts have resulted in control of an asset base of operating businesses and real estate that stretch across the Southern and Western United States.

In addition to his business activities, Nazarian is extremely active in the greater Los Angeles community through a variety of civic and charitable activities. He is most proud of being honored by California State University, Northridge in 2014 with the renaming of its business school as the David Nazarian College of Business and Economics. Additionally, Nazarian has served as Chair of the Investment Committee and a member of the Board of Directors of the UCLA Foundation; is actively involved with the Board of Governors and Investment Committee for the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Nazarian received his BS from CSUN and his MBA from the University of Southern California.


About Asia Society

Asia Society is the leading educational organization dedicated to promoting mutual understanding and strengthening partnerships among peoples, leaders and institutions of Asia and the United States in a global context. Across the fields of arts, business, culture, education, and policy, the Society provides insight, generates ideas, and promotes collaboration to address present challenges and create a shared future. Founded in 1956, Asia Society is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, educational institution headquartered in New York with new state-of-the-art cultural centers and gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Houston, and offices in Los Angeles, Manila, Mumbai, San Francisco, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Washington, D.C. and Zurich.