Justin Finnegan
Honorary Senior Fellow, Global Public Health, Center for China Analysis
Justin Finnegan is an Honorary Senior Fellow on Global Public Health at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. Justin has built his career as an expression of deep commitment to individuals and society. He thrives in situations where he can leverage his unique international experience and network to find meaningful solutions to complex global challenges. He currently serves as the Senior Advisor to Bloomberg New Economy and as an advisor to a private investment group.
Justin has most recently served as Founding Managing Director and MD-APAC for Bloomberg New Economy (BNE), where he helped launch the media and event platform in 2017 in China, Singapore, and across Asia and was responsible for global strategy, thought leadership, and government relations. The Bloomberg New Economy Forum has become the highest-level annual convening of global business and government leaders hosted in Asia.
Prior to joining Bloomberg, Justin served as the Senior Deputy Assistant to the Administrator to the Bureau for Food Security at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). As a deputy for Feed the Future, President Obama’s largest international development program and the U.S. Government’s Global Food Security and Hunger Initiative, Justin co-led the design and implementation of a whole-of-government effort to reduce hunger, poverty, and malnutrition worldwide.
In 2013, Justin returned from nearly ten years of building and managing companies in Asia to take an appointment as a Fellow in the Obama White House. He later held a number of senior government positions including as lead negotiator of the pioneering MoU on international development cooperation between the U.S. and China.
Prior to joining the U.S. Government, Justin was managing director and a member of the founding team of the Mountain Hazelnuts Group (MH), Bhutan’s first 100% foreign direct investment. He helped build operations for the social venture, planting millions of hazelnut trees to provide income and livelihoods for endangered communities and restore degraded mountain ecosystems. Justin helped grow MH from a greenfield start-up to a company that continues to be one of Bhutan’s largest private employers.
He received a BA from Harvard College and an MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. He was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, and was awarded both Trustman and Fulbright scholarships, which funded years of immersed research in rural China.