Asia Programs Staff
Julian Chang
Executive Director, Asia Programs
Julian Chang has served as the executive director of Asia Programs at the Ash Institute since July 2001 and director of the Kansai Keizai Doyukai Program since 2002. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the Department of Government at Harvard University. At Harvard, Chang served as residential dean of Cabot House from 1993 to 1996, and worked in the University Development Office. He received his B.A. from Yale University and received a Yale-China fellowship to teach at Wuhan University, China.
In 1996, Chang went west to Stanford to become assistant director of the Center for East Asian Studies. In 1997, he helped to establish the Stanford Asia/Pacific Scholars Program, a university-wide fellowship program for graduate students from Asia. He joined Stanford’s Asia Pacific Research Center (A/PARC) as deputy director in the fall of 1998. His research interests include Sino-Soviet/Russian relations, communications, and mass media in China.
e: julian_chang@hks.harvard.edu
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Amy Koh
Program Administrator, Vietnam Program
Amy Koh, program administrator for the Vietnam Program, is responsible for the Program’s overall financial management; she also participates with the program director, senior program officer, and associate director in the planning and implementation of new programmatic activities. Prior to joining the Vietnam Program, Koh worked as an accountant for nonprofit clients at State Street Bank. She earned a B.A. from Smith College, with a major in French Literature and a minor in economics. She spent her junior year studying at La Sorbonne in Paris and still enjoys traveling and studying other cultures, as well as listening to music, hiking, playing tennis, and dancing.
e: amy_koh@hks.harvard.edu
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Brenda Costello Williamson
Associate Director for Finance and Personnel
Brenda Costello Williamson is Asia Programs’ associate director for Finance and Personnel. In this position, she works with the various programs and initiatives of the Asia Programs to assist them with budget preparations and monitoring. She has been an employee of Harvard for over 20 years; her most recent position was financial analyst in Harvard Kennedy School’s Office of Financial Services. She attended Boston Business School and earned an A.S. in accounting. Williamson lives in Natick where she spends her spare time with her husband and two children.
e: brenda_costello_williamson@hks.harvard.edu
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David Dapice
Economist, Vietnam Program
David Dapice has served as the Vietnam Program’s principal Cambridge-based economist for nearly 20 years. He is also an associate professor of economics at Tufts University and a former department chair. Professor Dapice is an authority on the Vietnamese economy and has traveled to the country at least once a year since 1989. In recent years his research has examined an array of topics including provincial development; public investment and infrastructure development; and urbanization and the creation of affordable housing markets. Professor Dapice teaches regularly at the Fulbright School in Ho Chi Minh City and is actively involved in the continued development of its teaching programs.
Earlier in his career, Professor Dapice served as advisor to the Indonesian Ministry of Finance, and in the 1980s he advised the Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) as it grew to become the country’s largest financial institution. He has also worked in Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar/Burma, Mongolia, Cuba, and Ukraine.
Professor Dapice holds a B.A. in political economy from Williams College and a M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard.
e: david_dapice@hks.harvard.edu
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Anne Doyle
Senior Program Officer, Vietnam Program
Anne Doyle is the Vietnam Program’s senior program officer. She is responsible for general management of all aspects of the Vietnam Program Cambridge-based operation and supports the management of the Fulbright School in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in the development of institutional policies. From 2000 to 2003, Doyle served as the Vietnam Program’s country coordinator and executive director of the Fulbright School. International development is a long standing interest of Doyle’s. Prior to joining the Vietnam Program in 1992, Doyle taught high school math for two years at the Lycee du Sacre-Coeur in N’Djamena, Chad, as a volunteer. She earned her B.A. in management and her graduate degree in corporate tax management at the University of Paris IX-Dauphine.
e: anne_doyle@hks.harvard.edu
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Jessica Eykholt
Program Coordinator, Asia Programs & China Programs; Assistant to Director Saich and Executive Director Chang
Jessica Eykholt is the program coordinator for Asia Programs and China Programs at the Ash Institute. She also provides administrative support to Anthony Saich, Julian Chang, and Jay Rosengard. She received her M.A. in linguistics from the University of Iowa and her B.A. in English from Tamkang University in Taiwan. Prior to joining Asia Programs, Eykholt worked as a faculty assistant-specialist at HKS and spent seven years as the administrative coordinator at the Harvard- Yenching Library. She has taught English in Taiwan and Japan and Chinese at UC San Diego. Away from the office, Eykholt enjoys her home life with her family, which includes her two dogs and two cats.
e: jessica_eykholt@hks.harvard.edu
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Tony Gomez-Ibanez
Derek C. Bok Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy
Jose A. Gomez-Ibanez is the Derek C. Bok Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at Harvard University, where he holds a joint appointment at the Graduate School of Design and Harvard Kennedy School. He teaches courses in economics, infrastructure, and transportation policy in both schools.
e: jose_gomez-ibanez@harvard.edu
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Arnold Howitt
Executive Director
Arnold M. Howitt is executive director of the Ash Institute with responsibility for coordinating its executive education and research programs. As a faculty member at HKS, he teaches in a number of executive education programs for both the U.S. and international officials. His research focuses on intergovernmental policy and management, including crisis management and emergency preparedness and transportation policy. Howitt is the author of Managing Federalism: Studies in Intergovernmental Relations, and is co-author and co-editor of Managing Crises: Responses to Large-Scale Emergencies, Countering Terrorism: Dimensions of Preparedness, and Perspectives on Management Capacity Building. As an administrator and faculty member at Harvard since 1976, Howitt was executive director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government prior to joining the Ash Institute. He received his B.A. from Columbia University and both his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University.
e: arnold_howitt@hks.harvard.edu
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Stephane Lamour
Financial Assistant, Vietnam Program
Stéphane Lamour is the financial assistant for the Vietnam Program. His role entails processing and analyzing the program’s financial data, which includes field reporting and budgeting support. He earned a B.A. in accounting information systems from Bentley College. Before joining the Vietnam Program, Lamour worked as an accountant and Office Manager for the Women of Color AIDS Council, Inc. Apart from his current duties in the Vietnam Program, Lamour is active as a treasurer for the Forgotten Angels Foundation and is a business developer for a striving online community site Haitianconnection.com. Originally from Haiti, Lamour is passionate about learning and discovering other cultures and languages. Currently he is studying Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Portuguese, and Tagalog. In addition, he loves culinary arts, martial arts, dancing, philanthropy, and entrepreneurship.
e: stephane_lamour@hks.harvard.edu
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Laura Ma
Associate Director, China Programs
Laura Ma is the associate director for China Programs at Asia Programs of the Ash Institute. She received her Ph.D. in Assyriology from Northeast Normal University in Changchun, China in 1994. She then served as an associate professor at the University for International Business and Economics in Beijing. Prior to joining Asia Programs in 2005, she worked at Harvard University’s LASPAU: Academic and Professional Programs for the Americas. Away from the office, she enjoys time with her two daughters.
e: laura_ma@hks.harvard.edu
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Malcolm McPherson
Senior Research Associate, Vietnam Program
Malcolm F. McPherson, who earned his PhD in economics from Harvard in 1980, is a senior research associate with the Vietnam Program at the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation. McPherson joined Harvard Kennedy School in 2000 after having worked for Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) for 18 years. His research interests include international development, monetary policy, and exchange rate management, macroeconomic reform, and the relationships between education and economic growth. For HIID, he served as resident advisor in The Gambia (1985-89) and Zambia (1992-96). He co-edited with Steven Radelet a book on economic recovery in The Gambia (Harvard University Press, 1995) and, with Catharine Hill, a volume on economic reform in Zambia (Harvard University Press 2004). As a member of the Belfer Center, Center for Business and Government, and now the Ash Institute, McPherson’s research has dealt with public-private partnerships, capacity building in developing countries, post-conflict recovery, agricultural development, and poverty reduction. His most recent assignments include work in Georgia, Armenia, Liberia, Zambia, Timor Leste, and Chile.
e: malcolm_mcpherson@hks.harvard.edu
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William Overholt
Senior Research Fellow
William Overholt joined Asia Programs in July 2008 and conducts research on development and governance issues. Previously, he served as a visiting scholar with Asia Programs and continues to be a frequent visitor and speaker at Harvard University. As the former director of RAND’s Center for Asia Pacific Policy, Overholt held a distinguished chair at the Center. He has long been an important analyst of Asia. Dr. Overholt is the author of America and Asia: The Coming Transformation of Asian Geopolitics (RAND, 2007), as well as The Rise of China (W.W. Norton, 1993), which won the Mainichi News/Asian Affairs Research Center Special Book Prize. He has also written or co-written, Political Risk (Euromoney, 1982), Strategic Planning and Forecasting, with William Ascher (John Wiley, 1983), and Asia’s Nuclear Future (Westview Press, 1976). In 1976, he founded the semi-annual Global Assessment, with Zbigniew Brzezinski, and edited it until 1988. He has also spent 21 years running research teams for investment banks, including Nomura Securities, Bankers Trust, and BankBoston, mostly in Hong Kong or Singapore. Prior to his banking career, he was at the Hudson Institute, directing planning studies.
e: william_overholt@hks.harvard.edu
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Dwight Perkins
Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy
Professor Perkins is former Chair of the Economics Department at Harvard University. He led the Harvard Institute for International Development for fifteen years (1980-1995). He is a leading expert on the industrialization of East Asia and has authored or edited twelve books on the region’s economic history and development. Professor Perkins has served as an advisor or consultant on economic policy and reform to the governments of Korea, China, Malaysia, and Vietnam. At his initiative Harvard began its engagement with Vietnam in the late 1980s. He has been a contributing aurthor of several Harvard studies of the Vietnamese economy including In Search of the Dragon’s Trail (1994) and Choosing Success (2008).
e: dwight_perkins@hks.harvard.edu
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Jonathan Pincus
Resident Curriculum Advisor, Vietnam Program
Jonathan Pincus is the Academic Dean of the Fulbright School in Ho Chi Minh City and is a development economist specializing in Southeast Asia. His research has focused on issues of agrarian change, poverty, inequality and labor markets. Prior to joining the Vietnam Program, Pincus was Senior Country Economist, UNDP Vietnam, where he designed and implemented UNDP's policy advisory and dialogue projects with the Vietnamese government. Before his UNDP assignment he was a lecturer in economics and faculty chair of the masters program in economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He received a BA from Oberlin College and his masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Cambridge. Pincus has lived and worked in Southeast Asia for two decades, including extended assignments in Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.
e: jonathan_pincus@harvard.edu
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Jay Rosengard
Lecturer in Public Policy
Jay Rosengard, lecturer in Public Policy, has 30 years of international experience designing, implementing, and evaluating development policies in public finance and fiscal strategy, tax reform, municipal finance and management, intergovernmental fiscal relations, banking and financial institutions development, microfinance, management information systems, monitoring and evaluation, human resource development, and public administration. He has worked for a wide variety of multilateral and bilateral donors, as well as directly for host governments and private sector clients.
Rosengard is director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government's Financial Sector Program, which focuses on the development of bank and nonbank financial institutions and alternative financing instruments. This includes microfinance (small-scale lending and local savings mobilization), mainstream commercial banking (general and special-purpose banks), and wholesale financial intermediation (municipal development funds, venture capital funds, pooled financing, secondary mortgage facilities, and securitization). In addition, Rosengard is a faculty affiliate of both the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Center for International Development. He also serves as faculty chair of three executive programs: FIPED (Financial Institutions for Private Enterprise Development), which focuses on sustainable and effective microfinance and SME (small and medium enterprise) finance; COMTAX (Comparative Tax Policy and Administration), which addresses key strategic and tactical issues in tax design and implementation; and VELP (Vietnam Executive Leadership Program), which is an innovative policy dialogue with senior Vietnamese leadership.
e: jay_rosengard@hks.harvard.edu
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Anthony Saich
Director, Ash Institute
member of the Trustees of the China Medical Board of New York and International Bridges to Justice. His current research focuses on the interplay between state and society in Asia and the respective roles they play in the provision of public goods and services at the local level. He has written several books on developments in China, including China’s Science Policy in the 80s (1989); Revolutionary Discourse in Mao’s China (1994, with David E. Apter); The Rise to Power of the Chinese Communist
Party (1996); The Governance and Politics of China (2004); Providing Public Goods in Transitional China (2008); and recently edited a book on China’s urbanization (2008, with Shahid Yusuf). He studied political science in the U.K. and has taught at universities in China, England, Holland, and the U.S.
Away from the office, he enjoys time with his two children, movies, and soccer.
e: anthony_saich@hks.harvard.edu
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Jay Siegel
Senior Research Fellow
Jay Siegel is a senior research fellow at Asia Programs presently focusing on policy analysis in China in the areas of labor relations and dispute resolution in the workplace. As a labor relations senior advisor to the U.S. Department of Labor- Chinese Ministry of Labor and Social Security joint Labor Law Cooperative Project from 2004 to 2005, Siegel presented seminars in China on U.S. labor relations practices and assisted in a review and analysis of Chinese labor laws. Earlier, as an adjunct lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School, he taught labor management policy analysis and dispute resolution (negotiation, mediation, and arbitration) skills. While at Harvard, he also did research in Japan on lifetime employment policy as a Fulbright scholar in the ‘Japan Today’ Program. Prior to Harvard, he was in private law practice and was elected national chairman of the Labor & Employment Section of the American Bar Association. During this time, he also served as special labor counsel to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. A member of the Fulbright Senior Specialists Roster, he has lectured on labor and employment matters in China, Japan, Korea, and Russia as well as written book chapters and presented research papers at international conferences on various subjects in the labor and employment field. He holds a B.A. in political science and a J.D. in law from New York University.
e: jsiegel@hks.harvard.edu
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Thomas Vallely
Director of the Vietnam Program
Thomas J. Vallely is the director of the Vietnam Program, a position he has held since its inception in 1989. Vallely uses the Program’s research to engage in a candid and constructively critical dialogue with the Vietnamese government about the strategic challenges confronting the country. Under Valley’s leadership the Fulbright School has emerged as a center of excellence in public policy research and teaching and a pioneer in the development of new modes of institutional governance in Vietnam.
A primary focus of Vallely’s current work is institutional innovation in Vietnamese higher education and science. He draws on the Program’s experience designing and developing innovative educational initiatives in Vietnam to pursue a dialogue about higher education reform with Vietnamese and international stakeholders. Vallely highlights the central importance of governance to achieving better outcomes in higher education and believes that international universities must revise current paradigms of academic exchange in order to effectively support institutional innovation in Vietnam.
Vallely has also worked in Cambodia, Myanmar/Burma, Mongolia, and the Ukraine. In these countries he has focused on the political economy of reform. Prior to becoming director of the Vietnam Program, Vallely was a senior research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, where he worked on strategic and military issues in East and Southeast Asia. He has worked as a political consultant and was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1980, serving until 1987. Vallely received a B.S. from the University of Massachusetts/Boston and an M.P.A. from the Kennedy School. Vallely served with the United States Marine Corps in Vietnam.
e: thomas_vallely@hks.harvard.edu
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Ben Wilkinson
Associate Director, Vietnam Program
Ben Wilkinson is the Vietnam Program’s associate director and resident representative. He is based in Ho Chi Minh City, where he oversees the Fulbright School, Vietnam’s leading independent center of policy research and teaching. Wilkinson directs the Program’s policy dialogue activities with the Vietnamese government and has helped to expand this effort through the development of a regular policy discussion paper series and innovative executive programs in Vietnam and Cambridge. He supports the Vietnam Program’s participation in a dialogue about institutional innovation in Vietnamese higher education and science.
Wilkinson’s work extends to Cambodia, where he has participated in a series of policy research efforts for the Cambodian government under the auspices of the United Nations. Wilkinson studied Vietnamese history and language at Harvard College and Vietnam National University and law at Harvard Law School.
e: ben_wilkinson@hks.harvard.edu
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