March 2022

Elizabeth Wishnick is a Senior Research Scientist in the China and Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Division at CNA, on leave in 2022 from her position as Professor of Political Science at Montclair State University. She also is a Senior Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University, and an Affiliate Researcher at the Center for Arctic Resilience in the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

Wishnick is known for her research on Sino-Russian relations, Chinese foreign policy, and China’s Arctic strategy. Her book project, China’s Risk: Oil, Water, Food and Regional Security (Columbia University Press, forthcoming), addresses the security consequences of energy, water, and food risks in China for its Eurasian neighbors, a topic she explores in a related policy blog.

Wishnick received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University, an M.A. in Russian and East European Studies from Yale University, and a B.A. from Barnard College. She speaks Chinese, Russian, and French and spent five months in Vladivostok, Russia and Shanghai, China as a part of a Fulbright Global Scholar award in 2018-2019.

Yasheng Huang is the Epoch Foundation Professor of Global Economics and Management and Faculty Director of Action Learning at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. From 2013 to 2017, he served as an Associate Dean in charge of MIT Sloan’s global partnership programs and its action learning initiatives. His previous appointments include faculty positions at the University of Michigan and at Harvard Business School.

Huang is the author of 11 books in both English and Chinese and of academic papers and news commentaries. He is currently a co-PI in a large-scale cross disciplinary research project on food safety in China. His books, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and The Rise and the Fall of the EAST: Examination, Autocracy, Stability and Technology in Chinese History and Today (Yale University Press), will be published 2023.

At the MIT Sloan School, Huang founded and runs China Lab and India Lab, which have provided low-cost consulting services to hundreds of small and medium enterprises in China and India. From 2015 to 2018, he ran a program in Yunnan province to train women entrepreneurs (funded by Goldman Sachs Foundation). He has held or received prestigious fellowships such as the National Fellowship at Stanford University and the Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Fellowship. National Asia Research Program named him one of the most outstanding scholars in the United States conducting research on issues of policy importance to the United States. He has served as a consultant at World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and OECD, and serves on advisory and corporate boards of non-profit and for-profit organizations. He is a founding member and serves as the President of the Asian American Scholar Forum, a non-governmental organization dedicated to open science, protection of rights, and well-being of Asian American scholars.

Blake Berger is an Assistant Director at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) in New York. He serves as an assistant to ASPI’s Vice President of International Security and Diplomacy, Daniel Russel, and works on issues relating to East and Southeast Asia. Prior to joining ASPI, Berger was a Research Associate at the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. His research interests include The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Belt and Road Initiative, regional integration, international relations, political economy, United States foreign policy towards East and Southeast Asia, and international trade policy. He has an M.A. in Comparative Politics with a focus on Southeast Asia from American University’s School of International Service and a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts, Boston.