BOARD OF ADVISORS

Yvonne Chiu
Director, The Panopticon Foundation

Yvonne Chiu has been an assistant professor of politics at the University of Hong Kong, and a Member and Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ), and a post-doctoral fellow with the Political Theory Project at Brown University.  Her research interests include Asia-Pacific geopolitics, international justice and law, transitional justice, civil-military relations and democratic theory, Western and Chinese just war theory and military ethics, contemporary moral and political philosophy, and the history of modern political thought.  She has published in top political science and philosophy journals, has completed a book manuscript on cooperation in modern warfare, and is currently studying authoritarianism in East Asia.  She contributes to major media outlets, including Agence France-Presse, BBC, CNN, Forbes, and Time, among others.  She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley, and holds an A.B. in International Relations from Stanford University.

Paul LeMahieu
Senior Vice President, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

Paul LeMahieu is Senior Vice President of the Carnegie Foundation, where he manages the programs and administration of the Foundation.  Previously at Carnegie, he directed the work of the Carnegie Hub, which supports the networks the Foundation will convene to engage problems of education practice in the field.  Prior to that, LeMahieu was Director of Research and Evaluation at the National Writing Project (NWP) in Berkeley, California, USA.  He has also served as Superintendent of Education for the State of Hawai’i, and has held the top educational research position for the State of Delaware and the Pittsburgh Public Schools.  He has a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh, a M.A from Harvard University and B.A. from Yale University.

Richard Sterling
Director of Professional Programs and Adjunct Professor of Education, University of California at Berkeley

Richard Sterling is the Director of Professional Programs and Adjunct Professor in Language, Literacy, Society & Culture at the Graduate School of Education, University of California at Berkeley.  He is also the Executive Director Emeritus of the National Writing Project (NWP).  Formerly he was a faculty member at Lehman College, where he was also director and founder of the Institute for Literacy Studies, a research unit of CUNY.  He also directed and founded the New York City Writing Project and the New York City Mathematics Project.  His publication highlights include co-authoring “The National Writing Project: Scaling up and Scaling Down,” in Expanding the Reach of Reform: Perspectives from Leaders in the Scale-Up of Educational Reform (RAND, 2004).  Sterling currently chairs the advisory group to the College Board’s National Commission on Writing in America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges.

Chauwei Yak
Managing Director, GAO Capital
Managing Partner, GAO Advisors

Chauwei Yak is the Founding Partner of GAO Capital and Managing Partner of GAO Advisors, where she is primarily responsible for sourcing and researching new investment opportunities.  Prior to that, she was Director of Research for a family office / fund-of-funds for a European family with significant businesses in Asia.  She was responsible for building the firm’s research and portfolio management systems, and headed selection and due diligence of hedge funds.  She has also worked in the Strategic Business Development Group (Internal M&A) at JPMorgan Chase and at the Financial Institutions Group of UBS Investment Bank, in New York and Tokyo.  Yak graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, with a B.S. in Economics from The Wharton School and a B.A. in Asian & Middle Eastern Studies and a minor in Mathematics from the College of Arts & Sciences.  She is on the Family Office Council of NYU Stern School of Business and Princeton University Bendheim Center of Finance, the Advisory Board of the University of Florida, Department of Astronomy, and Advisory Board of the Family Office Association.  She was awarded the Chartered Alternative Investments Analyst designation, completed Level I of the Chartered Financial Analyst program, and is fluent in English, Mandarin, and Japanese.