Working Group Report Launch: America’s China Talent Challenge: Investing in Deeper American Understanding of China

Ambassador Nicholas Burns is the Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He is the Founder and Faculty Chair of the Future of Diplomacy Project. He is also a Faculty Affiliate at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. 

Burns served as the U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China from 2021-2025, leading public servants from forty-eight U.S. government agencies at the U.S. mission to China in overseeing one of America’s most important and challenging bilateral relationships. During his tenure, he helped to stabilize relations with Beijing while competing with China on military, technology, economic, and human rights issues.

Burns holds numerous awards and honorary degrees, including the Presidential Distinguished Service Award and the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award.

David M. Lampton is Hyman Professor Emeritus and former Director of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He currently is Senior Research Fellow at the SAIS Foreign Policy Institute. He also served as Dean of SAIS Faculty from 2004-2012. Formerly President of the National Committee on United States-China Relations, he is the author of many books including, Living U.S.-China Relations: From Cold War to Cold War (2024), with publications appearing in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The American Political Science Review, The China Quarterly, New York Times, Washington Post, and many other venues popular and academic in both the western world and in Chinese speaking societies. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University. Dr. Lampton was the founding director of the China Studies programs at the American Enterprise Institute and at The Nixon Center (now The Center for National Interest), having previously worked at the National Academy of Sciences and having started his teaching career at The Ohio State University.

Madelyn Ross has worked in China-related positions in higher education and non-profit organizations for more than 30 years. She served as president of the US-China Education Trust from 2022-2024 and was previously executive director of SAIS China and associate director of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. She worked at George Mason University from 2003 to 2015 as director of China Initiatives across the university. She spent nine years at the US-China Business Council, where she was editor of The China Business Review and executive director of The China Business Forum. One of the first American students to study in China following normalization of US-China relations, Ross earned a graduate certificate in modern Chinese literature at Fudan University in Shanghai in 1979-1980. She holds an M.A. in International Affairs from Columbia University and a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Princeton University.

Mark B. Lambert served as State Department China Coordinator and Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs until January 2025, overseeing the Offices of China and Taiwan Coordination. A career diplomat with extensive experience in Asia-Pacific affairs, he previously managed portfolios covering Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands, and earlier served as Special Envoy for North Korean Affairs, Director of the Office of Korean Affairs, and Political Counselor in Hanoi. Lambert has held multiple assignments in Beijing, Bangkok, Tokyo, and Bogotá, and earlier worked as a weapons inspector in Iraq. Recognized with a Meritorious Presidential Rank Award and numerous commendations, he is noted for his work on human rights, crisis response, and strengthening U.S. relations in the region. 

Neysun A. Mahboubi is Director of the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches on Chinese law, history, and policy and hosts the China Studies podcast. He is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a Research Affiliate of the Penn Program on Regulation, and affiliated with Penn’s Center for the Study of Contemporary China. His work focuses on administrative, comparative, and Chinese law, with recent writing on modern Chinese administrative law. A frequent commentator on Chinese law and U.S.-China relations for outlets such as Bloomberg TV, NPR, and the Sinica Podcast, he has taught at Princeton, Yale, and UConn, and earlier served at the U.S. Department of Justice and clerked for Judge Douglas P. Woodlock. He holds a J.D. from Columbia Law School and an A.B. from Princeton University.

Jean C. Oi is the inaugural Goh Keng Swee Professor in China Studies at the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore (2025-2026).  She is on leave from Stanford where she is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. She directs the China Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and was the founding Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University. Before joining Stanford, she taught at Lehigh University and Harvard University. A scholar of China’s political economy, Oi’s research focuses on central-local relations and the institutional dynamics of reform. Her work has examined how distribution of grain and taxes offer insights into China’s governance and economic development.  She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan. In 2023-24 she served as President of the Association for Asian Studies.

Moderator

Rosie Levine is the Executive Director of the US-China Education Trust (USCET). She previously worked on the China program at the U.S. Institute of Peace and was named a 2024 Project Fellow with the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations. Earlier, she spent four years at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, where she managed the Public Intellectuals Program and oversaw a major study on American research on China, with findings featured in outlets such as The Guardian, The Atlantic, and the Financial Times. From 2014 to 2018, Levine lived in Beijing, completing her master’s at the Yenching Academy of Peking University and serving as Program Director at the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan, head of Young China Watchers–DC, a Pacific Forum Young Leader, and grew up partly in Beijing.