Ms. Lakshmanan began her career on the foreign desk at National Public Radio and as a freelance reporter in Latin America, and has since covered coups, campaigns, and revolutions in 80 countries for The Boston Globe, Bloomberg, The International New York Times, and others.  She also wrote a “Letter from Washington” column for the international edition of The New York Times, and has contributed to PBS Newshour and Politico Magazine. She has guest-hosted national public radio programs including “1A,” “The Diane Rehm Show,” “Here and Now,” “On Point,” “Weekend Edition,” and “The Takeaway,” and is a frequent TV contributor. 

Ms. Lakshmanan spent a dozen years as an international correspondent for The Boston Globe, from the Balkans and Latin America to Afghanistan and China. She covered the Bosnian War and the fall of the Taliban, and interviewed and profiled leaders including Benazir Bhutto, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chavez. She embedded with sea pirates in the Philippines, Maoist rebels in Nepal, and Khmer Rouge holdouts in Cambodia. Her reporting exposed child labor in Bolivia, illegal logging in Brazil, corruption in China, and helped end the incarceration of innocent children in Nepal.

At the Poynter Institute, Ms. Lakshmanan spurred thought leadership on restoring trust in journalism across the political spectrum through transparency and accountability. She commissioned the Poynter Media Trust Surveys, and convened leading journalists and media critics to discuss truth-telling and trust at a time when the White House has tried to discredit the press.

Ms. Lakshmanan graduated from Harvard University and did graduate studies at Oxford University. Her awards include a Nieman journalism fellowship.

An award-winning journalist, Dr Jacques has been an editor, columnist or essayist for more than 30 leading publications in the United States, Europe and Asia.  He has made numerous programmes for the BBC. Dr Jacques is a senior fellow in Cambridge University’s Department of Politics and International Studies and a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing and Fudan University, Shanghai.  He has previously been a visiting professor at Aichi University in Nagoya, Japan, Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Lee Kuan Yew School, National University of Singapore and Renmin University in Beijing and a senior research fellow at IDEAS, London School of Economics.

From 1977 to 1991, Dr Jacques was editor of Marxism Today.  He transformed what was once an obscure journal into what became the most influential political publication in Britain; it was famous for its pioneering analysis of Thatcherism – a term that the journal coined. 

He took a first class honours degree and a master’s degree at Manchester University, then earned a PhD at Cambridge University, where he also taught. Later he held a lectureship in the Department of Economic and Social History at Bristol University.

He is chair of the Harinder Veriah Trust, which he founded in memory of his wife and which gives financial support for the education of very under-privileged girls at his wife’s former schools in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. He lives in London with his son Ravi who is a student at Stanford University.

Thornton was the architect of the diplomatic pressure campaign on the North Korean regime, structured the administration’s initial approach to China and developed the administration’s trademark Indo-Pacific Strategy.

Her expertise on China lies in the economy, bureaucratic politics, adaptation within the party-state, corruption, and the nation’s growing role in international development. 

Her book How China Escaped the Poverty Trap won the 2017 Peter Katzenstein Book Prize and was selected by Foreign Affairs as a “Best of Books 2017.”  She has written op-eds and blogs for Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, Project Syndicate, World Bank Governance Blog, and other outlets. She has spoken at global development forums sponsored by the World Bank, United Nations, and other international organizations in Europe and China.

In 2018, she will be writing a second book on corruption and capitalism.  This project will feature a new cross-national survey that “unbundles” corruption.

A native of Singapore, Dr. Ang is a graduate of Colorado College and received a PhD from Stanford University.  Prior to joining the University of Michigan, she was on the faculty of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

He has been an interpreter for Chinese and American leaders, including President Carter, Secretary of State Kissinger, and President Jiang Zemin.  While living in China for eleven years, he also worked on television and theater projects as a host, actor, and writer, helping to produce Chinese-language versions of Sesame Street and other Children’s Television Workshop programs.  He began his career in U.S.-China relations as a Cultural Exchanges Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in the late 80s and early 90s. In 2000-2001, he was American Director of the U.S.-China Housing Initiative at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  He comments frequently on U.S.-China relations in media and forums in both countries.

Her most recent book, The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State (2018), analyzes the contradictory nature of reform under President Xi Jinping. She is also the author of By All Means Necessary: How China’s Resource Quest is Changing the World with Michael Levi, and The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future (editions in English, Chinese and Japanese). She also coedited, with Michel Oksenberg, China Joins the World: Progress and Prospects and, with Miranda Schreurs, The Internationalization of Environmental Protection. Her articles and op-eds appear in Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Foreign Policy, the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, among others.   In June 2018, Dr. Economy was named one of the “10 Names That Matter on China Policy” by Politico Magazine. 

Dr. Economy serves on the board of managers of Swarthmore College and the board of trustees of the Asia Foundation and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.  She has taught at Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Washington.  Dr. Economy received her BA from Swarthmore College, her MA from Stanford University, and her PhD from the University of Michigan. In 2008, she received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Vermont Law School.

In collaboration with other scholars, Dr. Huang is conducting research on human capital formation in China and India, entrepreneurship, and ethnic and labor-intensive foreign direct investment (FDI).  His research has been profiled in many publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Businessworld, Le Monde, The Economic Times, and numerous Chinese publications. He also has contributed to The Financial Times, The New York Times, and Foreign Policy. His published books include Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, which was selected by The Economist as a best book of 2008, and Financial Reform in China (co-edited with Tony Saich and Edward Steinfeld).  His publications in Chinese include MIT and Innovations, The Transformation of the Chinese Private Sector, Exactly What is the China Model? (winner of the Blue Lion Prize for the best book published in 2011), and The Path of Big Enterprises.

Prior to MIT Sloan, Dr. Huang held faculty positions at the University of Michigan and at Harvard Business School.  He also served as a consultant to the World Bank. He is a member of the Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, a Fellow at the Center for Chinese Economic Research and the Center for China in the World Economy at Tsinghua University, a Fellow at the William Davidson Institute at Michigan Business School, and a World Economic Forum Fellow. In 2010, he was named by National Asia Research Program as one of the most outstanding scholars in the United States conducting research on issues of policy importance to the United States.  Dr. Huang holds a BA in government from Harvard College and a PhD in government from Harvard University.

The second largest search engine in the world, Baidu holds a 76% share of China’s search engine market.  Baidu also has one of the world’s leading autonomous driving programs. 

In 2010, Mr. Kuo started Sinica, a current affairs podcast based in Beijing that invites prominent China journalists and China-watchers to participate in uncensored discussions about Chinese political and economic affairs.

Before taking a job with Baidu, Mr. Kuo was a technology correspondent for Red Herring magazine.  He also worked as director of digital strategy, China, for Ogilvy & Mather in Beijing.   From 2001 to 2011, he wrote a column for the foreigner-focused English-language magazine The Beijinger. 

Mr. Kuo is also a guitarist and co-founder of the band Chunqiu (Spring & Autumn).  He founded China’s first heavy metal band, Tang Dynasty. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and holds an MA from the University of Arizona.

Committed to promoting transparency around pollution issues in China, IPE developed the China Water Pollution Map, the first public database of water pollution information in China. “Water pollution is the most serious environmental issue facing China,” says Mr. Ma. “It has a huge impact on people’s health and economic development.” 

In the 1990s, Mr. Ma became known as an investigative journalist, working at the South China Morning Post (SCMP) from 1993 to 2000. There, he began to specialize in articles on environmental subjects. He eventually became the newspaper’s chief representative in Beijing.

Mr. Ma’s 1999 book China’s Water Crisis was China’s first major book on that nation’s environmental crisis and has been compared to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.  In 2006, Time magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential persons in the world.

In 2012, Mr. Ma received the Goldman Environmental Prize and was on the list of Foreign Policy Top 100 Global Thinkers. In 2015, he became the first Chinese to win the Skoll Award.  for social entrepreneurship.  He is currently a Wilson Center Global Fellow (2013-2019).  In 2016, Mr. Ma appeared in “Before the Flood,” the 2016 National Geographic film on climate change.

IPE has created the Green Choice Alliance, a coalition of Chinese NGO organizations that promote a global green supply chain by pushing large corporations to concentrate on procurement and the environmental performance of their suppliers. It has also developed the Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI), China’s first index to evaluate environmental information transparency in 113 cities

Dr. Wu is the author of The New Landscape in Sino-U.S. Relations in the early 21st Century, Managing Crisis and Sustaining Peace between China and the United States, Turbulent Water: US Asia-Pacific Security Strategy in the post-Cold War Era, and Dollar Diplomacy and Major Powers in China, 1909-1913.

He has published numerous articles and book chapters in China, the United States, Japan, Germany, South Korea, Singapore and India.  Dr. Wu is on the editorial board of The Washington Quarterly published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies

He has been a visiting scholar or fellow at George Washington University;  the Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University; the Henry Stimson Center in Washington DC; the Brookings Institution: and the United States Institute of Peace.  

Dr. Wu graduated with a B.A. in history from Fudan University in 1986.  In 1992, he received his Ph. D. in international relations from Fudan, and in the same year he joined the university’s Center for American Studies. 

Her most recent publications include Balancing Between Nuclear Deterrence and Disarmament: Views from the Next Generation and Lost in Translation? U.S. Defense Innovation and Northeast Asia.  She was also the editor of four earlier volumes of the Views from the Next Generation series: Peacebuilding and Japan, Japan as a Peace Enabler, Japan’s Global Diplomacy, and Japan’s Foreign Policy Challenges in East Asia.  She is the author of Opportunity Out of Necessity: The Impact of U.S. Defense Budget Cuts on the U.S.-Japan Alliance, co-author of Global Security Watch: Japan; author of Japan’s National Security Policy Infrastructure: Can Tokyo Meet Washington’s Expectations?; editor/contributing author of U.S.-Japan-Australia Security Cooperation: Prospects and Challenges; The New Nuclear Agenda: Prospects for US-Japan Cooperation; and North Korea: Challenge for the US-Japan Alliance.  She was a recipient of the 2009 Yasuhiro Nakasone Incentive Award.  In 2012 she was awarded the Letter of Appreciation from the Ministry of National Policy of Japan for her contribution in advancing mutual understanding between the United States and Japan. A native of Tokyo, Ms.Tatsumi holds a B.A. in liberal arts from the International Christian University in Tokyo and an M.A. in international economics and Asian studies from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Yip has also held numerous positions in business, including Vice President and Director of Research & Innovation at Capgemini Consulting; senior manager at Price Waterhouse (USA); manager at Unilever; and a member of various corporate boards.

His most recent book is China’s Next Strategic Advantage: From Imitation to Innovation (2016), coauthored with Bruce McKern.    He also published Strategic Transformation (2013), Managing Global Customers (2007), Asian Advantage: Key Strategies for Winning in the Asia-Pacific Region (1998), and Total Global Strategy (1992 and 2012).  Dr. Yip has contributed over 100 articles to leading journals.

Dr. Yip was educated at Cambridge University and holds an MBA and a Doctorate in Business Administration from Harvard Business School.