The Future of U.S. & China: Moving Towards the Edge

Online ticket sales has now ended! 

Walk-in tickets will be available for purchase at the event at a higher $300 per person rate, subject to availability.

Register here to join Asia Society Northern California on Thursday, January 12, 2023 from 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Pacific for our fifth annual all-day Future of U.S. and China Conference. 

This will be an in-person event with limited discussions available virtually, and will take place at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. The event will be on-the-record, recorded, and posted to our YouTube channel. 

Ticket sales will close at noon on January 11. Walk-in tickets ($300 per person) will be subject to availability. Virtual participants interested in upgrading to an in-person ticket for an additional $50, please contact asncc@asiasociety.org.

All guests are encouraged to bring a mask.

AGENDA

Continue checking this event page for additional speakers and agenda details.

This conference is the final event in our popular Seeking Truth Through Facts U.S.-China Program Series.

This year's series covered topics including U.S.-China Business Relations and Political Relations, Semiconductor Value Chain, Supply Chains in Asia, Political Relations between the U.S.-China, Research Collaboration, China's 20th Party Congress, and the Belt and Road Initiative. 

Watch videos from our past four annual conferences: 2022 Future of U.S. and China Conference, 2021 Future of U.S. and China Conference, 2020 Future of U.S. and China Conference, and 2019 Made in China 2025: The Policy Behind the Rhetoric.

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS

Sponsorship opportunities are available for this conference. If you or your company would like to support us by making a contribution, please email Mackenzie Jakoubek, Director of Partnerships and Memberships.

SPEAKER BIOS

Jesse Appell is a comedian and Internet creator who creates cross-cultural comedic works in Mandarin and English. With over 3 million followers across Chinese and Western platforms, Jesse’s original comedy aim to bridge cultural gaps through comedy. Jesse lived in China for nine years, where he apprenticed to Master Ding Guangquan to study traditional “Xiangsheng” comedy. He was a founding member of the Chinese-language standup comedy scene in China, founded Beijing’s first Western-style comedy club, and has appeared on numerous TV shows, such as Chinese versions of Saturday Night Live and Last Comic Standing. In 2020, Jesse held a Covid-fundraiser comedy show that garnered over 400 million views online across all platforms and was featured by parties as disparate as NPR and the Chinese Police Official Weibo. Based in America since the pandemic, Jesse has since refocused his work onto the Internet, focusing on developing people-to-people relations online. He also is the founder of Jesse’s Teahouse, one of America’s largest high-quality Chinese tea online stores. 

Asia Society Northern California Advisory (ASNC) Council Member Mark Cohen joined Berkeley Law in 2017 as a Senior Fellow and Director of BCLT’s Asia IP Project. With over 30 years’ experience as a law firm attorney, in-house counsel, government official, and adjunct and visiting professor of law, Cohen was previously Senior Counsel and Senior Advisor to the Undersecretary of Commerce/Director of the USPTO.

He is widely recognized as the leading expert in the U.S. on intellectual property law in China.  As Director of the BCLT Asia IP Project, Cohen is working with BCLT sponsors and faculty directors to develop collaborative relationships with academic institutions and other partners in Asia, including organizing workshops, conferences, and other events that bring data-driven insight to the complex IP landscape in China and other Asian fora.  Mark hosts the popular blog www.chinaipr.com, serves as an advisor to the IP database iphouse.cn, and has published books and articles on China’s IP system, antitrust law in China, civil and administrative enforcement of IP, and foreign law firms practicing law in China.

Wendy Cutler is Vice President at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) and the managing director of the Washington, D.C. office. In these roles, she focuses on leading initiatives that address challenges related to trade, investment, and innovation, as well as women’s empowerment in Asia. She joined ASPI following an illustrious career of nearly three decades as a diplomat and negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), where she also served as Acting Deputy U.S. Trade Representative. During her USTR career, she worked on a range of bilateral, regional, and multilateral trade negotiations and initiatives, including the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, U.S.-China negotiations, and the WTO Financial Services negotiations. She has published a series of ASPI papers on the Asian trade landscape and serves as a regular media commentator on trade and investment developments in Asia and the world. 

Kenneth Fong is the founder and chairman of Kenson Ventures, LLC, a company that specializes in investing and cultivating the growth of biomedical companies. Over the past 20 years, a number of companies were acquired or went public. Prior to establishing Kenson, Ken founded and served as CEO of Clontech Laboratories (1984-1999), which was acquired by Becton Dickinson in 1999.

Ken has held a number of leadership positions over the years. He served as the president of the Society of Chinese Bioscientists in North America (2005-2006) and President of the Bay Area AAMA (1987). He was also a member of the Board of Trustees of California State University (2006-2013), the Advisory Board of the College of Science and Engineering at San Francisco State University, Board of Associates at the Whitehead Biomedical Institute at MIT, Board member of UCSD China Center (2018-present) and a Regional Chair and board member of the Committee of 100 (US 2016-2022).

Ken has many other philanthropic interests. He was one of the lead supporters for the San Jose Tech Museum, the Chinese Historical Society in San Francisco, the Bioengineering Auditorium at UC San Diego and the Indiana University graduate Seminar Programs. He has provided a number of scholarships to San Francisco State University, Peking University and the CSU students (KennethFong - Hearst endowed Scholarships). He has established a Translational Research Award program at San Francisco State University (2016-present), an annual CABS K. Fong Award to the Best Biotech Entrepreneurs of the year (2015-present) in addition to the establishment of the Fong Optometry and Medical Library at UC Berkeley (2002), a research grant to the Stanford Eye Institute (2019) and an endowed professorship to Stanford University (2012).

Clay Garner is a civic technologist who most recently served as Chief Innovation Officer to the Mayor of San José – America’s tenth largest city. As the top tech policy unit in the City, Clay’s team spearheaded San José’s first digital privacy policy, developed a new data science capacity-building initiative to improve city services, accelerated the rollout of free community wi-fi for 300,000 residents, and deployed transportation pilots in traffic safety and autonomous vehicles. San José was named the nation’s most innovative local government in 2020 and 2021. Prior to his time at San José City Hall, Clay worked for Google in product marketing. He has also consulted on mobile health projects for the United Nations Population Fund. Clay holds a Master of Global Affairs from Tsinghua University in China, where he was a Schwarzman Scholar, and a B.A. from Stanford University. He speaks fluent Chinese and Spanish.

ASNC Council Member James Green is a Director of Government Affairs and Public Policy at Google, where he covers international policy for the company’s hardware business.  He has worked for over two decades on U.S.-Asia relations for the U.S. Government and in the private sector. From 2013-2018, he served as the Minister Counselor for Trade Affairs (USTR) at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing where he addressed market access barriers, technology policy, and investment restrictions. In addition to his government service on the National Security Council and on the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, James ran the government relations department at the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and was a senior vice president at an international consultancy in Washington, DC.  A graduate of Brown University and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), James speaks proficient Mandarin and passable Italian.  After his most recent government service, James started a podcast at Georgetown University, speaking with former officials on how to handle a rising China – former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s episode may be the most charming.

Kirti Gupta is a seasoned economist, engineer, and industry expert with around 20 years of Fortune 500 industry experience in diverse roles spanning engineering, litigation, and policy. She serves as vice president and chief economist at Qualcomm, providing economic analysis and thought leadership on global technology, intellectual property (IP), and antitrust economic policy issues in collaboration with business stakeholders and a global network of experts, economists, lawyers, and policymakers. She has been involved in various antitrust and IP litigation cases and in various strategic IP management initiatives. She is a co-founder and executive director of the IPLeadershIP platform, which convenes timely dialogues on IP and antitrust policy issues on a regular basis. Previously, she spent over a decade as a wireless engineering and R&D expert with experience in various standards bodies focused on the 3G and 4G technologies that power billions of mobile devices today. She is a co‐inventor of over 40 patents in the field of wireless communications and has published in various policy, law, and economics journals. Dr. Gupta holds an M.S. in electrical engineering from Purdue University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, San Diego. 

Edlyn Levine is the Chief Science Officer and co-founder of America’s Frontier Fund. She is responsible for leading all of the organization’s scientific and technical-focused efforts to accelerate advanced technologies critical to U.S. leadership.

She also serves as a faculty member for the executive education program at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government where she teaches on hardware security, artificial intelligence, and the intersection of technology and national security. Dr. Levine has served as a special government employee for the Defense Science Board and is a research associate in the Department of Physics at Harvard University, and a visiting research scientist at the University of Maryland. 

She was formerly the Chief Technologist for the MITRE Corporation’s Acceleration Office where she was responsible for advancing technologies including semiconductors, 5G, and quantum sensing in partnership with the private sector. Dr. Levine additionally led several research efforts on emerging technologies spanning C3 capabilities, quantum information science, ionospheric plasma modification, and semiconductor supply chain assurance. Her research has led to technology transfer to the U.S. government, and multiple peer-reviewed publications and patents. 

Her scientific accomplishments have been recognized externally by the AFCEA 40 under 40 Award, the National Defense Science and Engineering Research Fellowship, and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Harvard University, and her B.S. in Physics from the University of Pittsburgh.

Bob T. Li, MD, PhD, MPH, FRACP, is a Senior Fellow on Global Public Health at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis. Dr. Li is an Australian medical oncologist and physician-scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and tenure-track associate professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell University, who specializes in novel drug development for lung cancers and solid tumors. He is Chief Scientific Officer, MSK Direct, responsible for scientific innovation in MSK’s digital outreach strategy. He is also Co-Director of MSK’s multidisciplinary Thoracic Liquid Biopsy Program. Dr. Li is international principal investigator of multiple pivotal clinical trials of precision medicines including “drugging the undruggable” KRAS - and targeting HER2 across multiple cancer types. These international trials have resulted in historic FDA approvals of Lumakras and Enhertu as the first KRAS and HER2 targeted therapies for patients with lung cancers. Dr. Li has received numerous awards for his practice changing research, including the competitive NIH R01 grant and has published over a hundred original articles in prestigious scientific journals including first and senior author manuscripts in the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Nature Medicine, Cancer Discovery, and Journal of Clinical Oncology. As MSK’s Physician Ambassador to China and Asia-Pacific, Dr. Li provides administrative leadership to advance MSK’s mission abroad with transparency and impact. In this role, he has helped launch the multi-stakeholder Bloomberg New Economy International Cancer Coalition, and his work on patient-centric international clinical trials as part of a growing global movement is frequently featured on Forbes.com. Through compassionate patient-centric care and by leveraging technology and collaboration, his career is dedicated to bringing the world together to accelerate the cure of cancer in this lifetime.

Roberta Lipson

Roberta Lipson is the founder of United Family Healthcare (UFH) and the Vice Chair of New Frontier Health. She has over 40 years of experience as a pioneer in the healthcare industry in China. She originally co-founded United Family Healthcare’s predecessor company Chindex in 1981, expanding the business from China’s top medical equipment distribution company into China’s first and largest foreign-invested healthcare system. After over two decades, UFH’s healthcare platform includes 11 hospitals and almost 20 clinics in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Qingdao, Hainan and Shenzhen, as well as an internet hospital serving patients nationally. As founder and CEO Ms. Lipson took her company public on NASDQ in 1994, merged with a NYSE:NFH in 2019, and in 2021 was part of the buying consortium to again privatize the company. 

Ms. Lipson is an active leader in the business community in Beijing. Because of her outstanding contribution in China, she received “The Great Wall Friendship Award” in 2009. In 2017 she received a Foreign Permanent Resident Card. She holds a BA from Brandeis University and an MBA from Columbia University.  

Alina Luk, Product Manager at Figma. Alina founded 3 ventures and has international work experience in the Bay Area, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Berlin, and Hamburg. She is a Schwarzman Scholar, Global Innovation Fellow, and Roland Longevity Fellow and holds a Master of Science in Global Affairs from Tsinghua University, and a Bachelor of Science in Science, Technology and Society from Stanford University. She graduated with Chinese and English Bilingual International Baccalaureate Diploma from the Chinese International School of Hong Kong. 

Guonan Ma is Senior Fellow on Chinese Economy at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis. He is an economist with four decades of experience conducting policy, market, and academic research, specializing in Chinese economic issues. He was a senior economist at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) for 15 years, before becoming visiting scholars and professors in recent years at various central banks, universities and thinktanks. Before his BIS career, he worked as a market economist on Asia at different investment banks, including Bankers Trust, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup, and he has been a lecturer in economics at both the Australian National University and Beijing University. Dr. Ma received his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Pittsburgh and holds a bachelor degree in economics from Beijing University. Over the years, he has published many research papers, including those in Comparative Economic Studies, the Journal of Development Economics, Pacific Economic Review, International Economics, and the Journal of International Money and Finance.

Mary Kay Magistad is Deputy Director of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations, and an award-winning journalist who lived and reported in East Asia for more than two decades, including in China for NPR (1995-99) and PRI/BBC's The World (2003-13), and in Southeast Asia for NPR, The Washington Post, and others (1988-95). She has created two critically acclaimed podcasts, On China’s New Silk Road (2020) and Whose Century Is It? (2015-18), and has taught international reporting and audio journalism at UC Berkeley.

Jim Messina is the CEO of The Messina Group, and a successful political and corporate advisor. He is the mastermind behind President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, and served as his Deputy Chief of Staff. In 2013, Messina launched The Messina Group, where he advises and provides strategic consulting to tech companies and world leaders around the world, including 8 Presidents and Prime Ministers on five continents. Corporate clients include Uber, Pillpack, Airbnb, Google, Delta Air Lines, Hutchison Whampoa, and over 300 others. In this role, Jim continues to advise Democratic organizations on domestic political issues in the U.S.

For over twenty years, Jim served as Chief of Staff for various Senate and House offices on Capitol Hill where he worked to pass key legislation such as multiple tax cut bills, the Medicare prescription drug bill, and several trade agreements. He also served as Senior Advisor and Chief of Staff to former Senator and Ambassador to China Max Baucus when he was chair of the powerful Senate Finance Committee.
 

Alex Ng is Vice President of Tencent Healthcare. Alex is currently leading Tencent’s healthcare business. Tencent has developed platform products such as the Weixin Mini Program “Tencent Healthcare”, electronic health insurance certificate and healthcare card; the medical content platform “Medipedia”; and clinical products such as AIMIS (AI enabled clinical decision support system for medical images).

Alex first started his career as a medical doctor where he was the chief resident at Middlemore Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand. He then moved to the U.S. to become a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company after completing the Master of Public Health at Harvard. After 9 years at McKinsey between U.S. and China, where he co-led the Greater China Healthcare Practice, he joined the Gates Foundation as the deputy director of the China Country Office, responsible for the health and innovation portfolio.

He is currently an honorary associate professor at University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Medicine, and was a member of WHO’s inaugural Digital Health Technical Advisory Group.

Tom Orlik is Bloomberg’s Chief Economist, based in Washington DC. Previously, Tom was the Chief Asia economist for Bloomberg and China economics correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, based in Beijing. Prior to a decade in China, he worked at the British Treasury, European Commission, and International Monetary Fund. He is the author of Understanding China’s Economic Indicators (FT Press) and China: The Bubble that Never Pops (OUP). 

Danny Quah, is Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics and Dean at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS. His research on inequality and income mobility characterises the range of experiences across economies to suggest that a single narrative on inequality is unlikely to be correct or helpful. His work on world order takes an economic approach to international systems, studying the supply and demand of world order: what international system do the world’s superpowers wish to provide; what world order does the global community need? 
 
Quah is a Commissioner on the Spence-Stiglitz Commission on Global Economic Transformation and on LSE's Global Economic Governance Commission. He serves on the Executive Committee, International Economic Association; the Advisory Board, LSE IDEAS; the Eminent Advisory Council of the UNDP Bureau for Asia-Pacific; and the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council for Geopolitics.  He is Vice President at the Economic Society of Singapore.
 
He is the author of The Global Economy’s Shifting Centre of Gravity.

Gary Rieschel is Chair of the Asia Society Northern California Board and has over 25 years of successful operating and investing experience as a senior executive, entrepreneur, investor, and global business strategist. He is Founding Managing Partner of Qiming, a firm with over $3 billion focused on early stage investments in China and one of China’s premier venture capital firms. Gary’s personal investment areas are Healthcare and Cleantech. He advised the China Greentech Initiative, and the Rocky Mountain Institute in its move to China. He actively supports the U.S. China Clean Energy Forum, PERC (Property and Environmental Research), The Nature Conservancy, the Climate Leadership Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the U.S. Olympic Foundation. He served on the joint venture boards of Blackrock and Bank of China and Silicon Valley Bank and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. Gary holds a BA in Biology from Reed College in Portland, OR, and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. He lived in Japan for five years in the late 1980s and lived in Shanghai from 2005 through 2016. He now lives in Seattle, WA.  

ASNC Council Member Andy Rothman is an Investment Strategist at Matthews International Capital Management, LLC. He is principally responsible for developing research focused on China’s ongoing economic and political developments while also complementing the broader investment team with in-depth analysis on Asia. In addition, Andy plays a key role in communicating to clients and the media the firm’s perspectives and latest insights into China and the greater Asia region. Prior to joining Matthews in 2014, Andy spent 14 years as CLSA’s China macroeconomic strategist where he conducted analysis into China and delivered his insights to their clients. Previously, Andy spent 17 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, with a diplomatic career focused on China, including as head of the macroeconomics and domestic policy office of the U.S. embassy in Beijing. In total, Andy has lived and worked in China for more than 20 years. He earned an M.A. in public administration from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and a B.A. from Colgate University. He is a proficient Mandarin speaker. 

Jacob Rothman is originally from Santa Barbara, California and is a graduate of Bowdoin College where he double majored in Religious Studies and Psychology. Post-graduation, he ran his family manufacturing business located in San Francisco, California. He went to China in 2006 and established a design focused trading company based in Shanghai. Since then, he merged this company with Velong Enterprises, located in Yang Jiang, Guangdong Province. Velong is currently one of the largest manufacturers of grilling and kitchen tools in the world, and has offices in Shanghai, Ningbo, Shenzhen, Cambodia, the Philippines, Australia, Canada, and the United States. In addition to manufacturing consumer products, Velong has also developed an industry leading product accelerator, Platform88, an award-winning design Agency, Puzzle, and operates a global distribution company, Brand Factory. Jacob speaks Mandarin fluently, is married to Cao Yu Shu, and is the proud father of Jesse Rothman who currently attends the Shanghai American School. 

The Honorable Kevin Rudd is President and CEO of the Asia Society, and inaugural President of the Asia Society Policy Institute. He served as 26th Prime Minister of Australia (2007 to 2010, 2013) and as Foreign Minister (2010 to 2012). He is Chair of the Board of the International Peace Institute in New York, and Chair of Sanitation and Water for All – a global partnership of government and non-governmental organizations dedicated to the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 6. He is a Distinguished Fellow at Chatham House and the Paulson Institute, and a Distinguished Statesman with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also a member of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization’s Group of Eminent Persons. 

Mr. Rudd is a regular contributor to global media on international relations, climate change and China. He has been featured in the Financial Times, The New York Times and Le Monde, and regularly appears on the BBC, CNN, CNBC, Fox and Bloomberg. He is proficient in Mandarin Chinese. 

Danny (Daniel) Russel is Vice President for International Security and Diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI). Previously he served as a Diplomat-in-Residence and Senior Fellow with ASPI for a one year term. A career member of the Senior Foreign Service at the U.S. Department of State, he most recently served as the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He served at the White House as Special Assistant to the President and National Security Council Senior Director for Asian Affairs, where he helped formulate President Obama’s strategic rebalance to the Asia Pacific region, including efforts to strengthen alliances, deepen U.S. engagement with multilateral organizations, and expand cooperation with emerging powers in the region. Among many roles at the Department of State, he served as Director of the Office of Japanese Affairs and U.S. Consul General in Osaka-Kobe.

ASNC Council Member Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Vice President of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York. He is a former professor and Dean at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.  Schell is the author of 15 books, 10 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 magazine and newspapers, including The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Time, The New Republic, Harpers, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Wired, Foreign Affairs, The China Quarterly, 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 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.

Victor Wang is the Founder and Managing Partner of AimTop Ventures and a lead investor of several portfolio companies. Before he founded AimTop Ventures, he worked in high-tech companies for 30 years, and has been an entrepreneur for 20 years. He is an expert in Artificial Intelligence, mobile communications and signal processing, and holds 12 U.S. patents in mobile communications and wearable computing. Victor Wang holds B.A. and M.S. degrees from the University of Science and Technology of China, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He is the author of the best-selling Chinese book Dark Knowledge - How AI will Disrupt Business and Society.

Lingling Wei is the chief China correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and co-author of Superpower Showdown. She covers China's political economy, focusing on the intersection of business and politics. Born and raised in China, she has a M.A. in journalism from N.Y.U., got her start covering U.S. real estate, and has won many awards for her China coverage. In 2021, she's among a team of reporters and editors whose work was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

H.-S. Philip Wong is the Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University. He joined Stanford University as Professor of Electrical Engineering in 2004. From 1988 to 2004, he was with the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. From 2018 to 2020, he was on leave from Stanford and was the Vice President of Corporate Research at TSMC, the largest semiconductor foundry in the world, and since 2020 remains the Chief Scientist of TSMC in a consulting, advisory role. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and received the IEEE Electron Devices Society J.J. Ebers Award, the society’s highest honor to recognize outstanding technical contributions to the field of electron devices that have made a lasting impact, as well as the IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award, the IEEE Technical Field Award to honor individuals for outstanding contributions to solid-state devices and technology. He is the founding Faculty Co-Director of the Stanford SystemX Alliance – an industrial affiliate program focused on building systems, the faculty director of the Stanford Non-Volatile Memory Technology Research Initiative (NMTRI), and the faculty director of the Stanford Nanofabrication Facility.

Jerry Yang co-founded Yahoo! In 1995 with fellow Stanford graduate student David Filo and served on its board and as a member of its executive team until 2012, including as CEO from 2007 to 2009. In 2021, he founded AME Cloud Ventures, a venture innovation firm that invests in seed-stage to later-stage tech companies. Yang is also a director of the boards of Workday Inc., Lenovo Group, and Alibaba Group, and serves on a number of his portfolio boards, including Docker and Didi. In addition to his work in the tech industry, Yang is also a member of the Stanford University Board of Trustees, where he currently serves as Chair of the Board. He is also a member of the National Committee of U.S.-China Relations, the Brookings China Advisory Council, the Committee of 100, and the Council on Foreign Relations, and the board of the Asian American Foundation (TAAF). Yang and his wife, Akiko Yamazaki, are active philanthropists and support a wide range of programs at Stanford. They are also the lead donors to the San Francisco Asian Art Museum expansion. Yang holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University.. 

Edith Yeung selected as one of the 10 Most Powerful Investors in Crypto by The Information, Edith is a General Partner at Race Capital - an early-stage Silicon Valley venture capital fund investing in all things infrastructure. Edith is the seed investor in Solana (has been dubbed one of the best venture investments of all time), FTX, Lightning Network, Agora.io, Placer.ai, RapidAPI, and 60 other amazing startups. Prior to Race Capital, Edith was a partner at 500 Startups, the world's most active early-stage fund and incubator which invested in Twilio, Credit Karma, Grab, and 2000 more companies. Before 500, Edith was the general manager at Dolphin Browser, a Sequoia Capital - backed mobile browser with over 150 million installs worldwide. Edith also worked with many Fortune 500 companies such as Siebel, AMS, AT&T Wireless, and Autodesk. She frequently speaks on Crypto, China and Silicon Valley technology and investment landscape. She is also a frequent guest lecturer at Berkeley and Stanford and commentator on BBC, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, SCMP, Techcrunch, etc

Marrian Zhou is a journalist covering U.S.-China relations and Asian America at Nikkei Asia. Born and raised in Beijing and Los Angeles, Zhou aspires to tell the stories of the people navigating the ever-changing currents between the two great nations. Before Nikkei, Zhou was a tech reporter at CNET and graduated from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Margaret Conley, a Bay Area native, is the Executive Director of Asia Society Northern California. She is Chair of the global Asia Society task force "Asian Americans Building America". Margaret was based in Asia for several years as a television news correspondent with ABC News in Jakarta and Tokyo, and with Bloomberg Television in Shanghai. She was part of the global ABC team that won a News and Documentary Emmy Award for presidential inauguration coverage. Her interviews include Howard Schultz, Richard Branson, Ban Ki-Moon, LeBron James and Beyoncé. She has a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a master’s in journalism from the University of Hong Kong, which specializes in coverage of Asia. Margaret was selected as one of the Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business by the San Francisco Business Times in 2019. She is a member of the International Women's Forum. She is on the Advisory Committee of TiE, and is a member of the board of the International Women's Forum.