USCET -

Ambassador Julia Chang Bloch is president of the US-China Education Trust. She is also distinguished adviser of the School of International and Public Affairs and visiting professor at the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. Ambassador Bloch, the first Asian American to hold such rank in US history, has had an extensive career in international affairs and government service, beginning as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sabah, Malaysia, in 1964, and culminating as US Ambassador to the Kingdom of Nepal in 1989. After a 25-year government career, she moved to the private sector, where she headed Corporate Relations as group executive vice president at Bank of America and subsequently served as president and CEO of the United States-Japan Foundation, a private grant making institution with $100 million in assets.

Nicholas Platt serves as chair of the USCET Advisory Council. He is president emeritus of the Asia Society and has spent most of his life working on relations between the US and Asia. His involvement with Asia began as a student of the Chinese language in Taiwan in the early sixties, and continued with Foreign Service assignments in Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo. In 1972 he accompanied President Nixon on the historic trip to Beijing that signaled the resumption of relations between the United States and China. He was one of the first members of the US Liaison Office in Beijing when the United States established a mission there in 1973. His thirty four-year career as an American diplomat in Asia culminated in service as US Ambassador to the Philippines and Pakistan.

Doug Bereuter became the president of The Asia Foundation on September 1, 2004, immediately upon his resignation from U.S. Congress after 26 years of service. During his congressional career, he was a leading member of the House International Relations Committee, where he served as vice chairman for six years, chaired the Asia-Pacific Subcommittee and the Europe Subcommittee, and had a long tenure on its Subcommittee on Economic Policy & Trade.

Ta Chun “TC” Hsu joined the staff of The STARR Foundation in 1964, and then served as president for thirty years, until his retirement in 1999. Prior to that time, he worked for the American International companies, in Hong Kong and San Francisco. He began his career as a journalist, first with the Chinese Information Service and then at The Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury.

Marlene Johnson, executive director and chief executive officer of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, runs the world's largest membership organization of professionals (8,500) in the field of international educational exchange. Entrepreneur and administrator, she has three decades of leadership experience in government, business and nonprofit management. As Lieutenant Governor of the State of Minnesota for eight years, she was an outspoken advocate for international education.

David Michael Lampton, director of China Studies at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University and director of the China Studies Program of The Nixon Center, is one of America's foremost China experts. He served nearly ten years as president of the National Committee on US-China Relations. Author of numerous publications, his book Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing United States-China Relations 1989-2000 has won critical acclaim.

Susan V. Lawrence worked as a journalist in China for 11 years, first as Beijing Bureau Chief for US News & World Report, then as senior China correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal. She also reported on US foreign policy for all three publications from Washington, DC. Before starting her journalism career, she spent two years in the mid-1980s studying in the history department at Peking University.

Peter McPherson is president of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. Previously he served as president of Michigan State University for more than 10 years, retiring in 2004. His career prior to MSU spanned both the public and private sectors, including positions at the Bank of America; the US Treasury Department; the Agency for International Development; the Overseas Private Investment Corporation; Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease; the White House and the Internal Revenue Service.

Kathryn Mohrman is executive director of the Washington Program Office of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, a collaboration between SAIS and Nanjing University. Formerly President of Colorado College, she also served as dean for Undergraduate Studies at the University of Maryland at College Park and associate dean at Brown University. She has taught at five universities, most recently at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, where she was a visiting scholar in the American Studies program of the College of Foreign Languages.

Tom Pickering, vice chairman at Hills & Company and consultant to The Boeing Company, is one of this country's most distinguished diplomats. He joined Boeing upon his retirement as US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. In a diplomatic career spanning five decades, he has served as US ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, as well as Ambassador and Representative to the United Nations in New York, achieving the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the US Foreign Service.

Ko-Yung Tung practices law at Morrison & Foerster in New York City. From 1999 to 2003, he was Vice President and General Counsel of the World Bank and Secretary General of the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He also serves on boards including Transparency International-USA and the London Forum of International Economic Law and Development of the University of London.