Educator and advocate for global education, President Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, joins Asia Society President Vishakha N. Desai for a wide-ranging discussion on her life and commitment to global learning and peace education.

A reception follows, signed copies of Soetoro-Ng's children’s book Ladder to the Moon,  will be available for purchase. The book is available on-site from AsiaStore and also online at AsiaStore.org

Maya Kassandra Soetoro-Ng is the maternal half-sister of President Barack Obama. Soetoro-Ng and Obama spent several years together in Indonesia and in Hawaii before her mother decided to return to Indonesia with her. Soetoro-Ng received an M.A. from New York University and a Ph.D. degree (in international comparative education) from the University of Hawaii. She is a professor at the University of Hawaii's College of Education, where she teaches Multicultural Education, Peace Education and Social Studies methods. The author of a children’s book, Ladder to the Moon, Soetoro-Ng is currently finishing a Young Adult novel as well as a book on Peace Education. In 2009 she helped bring her mother, Ann Dunham’s dissertation to publication in the form of the book Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia. Soetoro-Ng currently lives with her family in Hawaii.

President's Forum is a series of programs in which Asia Society President Vishakha N. Desai interviews prominent guests on a broad range of Asian and Asian American topics, including politics, economics, culture and the media. Past guests have included Sarah Sze and Siddhartha Mukherjee, Maya Lin, Mira Nair, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Tan Dun, Julie Taymor, Thich Nhat Hanh, and past U.S. Ambassadors to the UN Bill Richardson and the late Richard Holbrooke. 

President’s Forum programs are endowed by a grant from the Hazen Polsky Foundation.

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