【5/27/2021】CAPA-NoVA Distinguished Chinese American Project
Julia Chang Bloch (张之香) (1942 -) is a Chinese American businessperson and diplomat, who was the first U.S. ambassador of Asian descent. She is the founder and president of the US-China Education Trust.
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. From 1981-1988, Ambassador Bloch served at the US Agency for International Development as Assistant Administrator for Food for Peace and Voluntary Assistance and as Assistant Administrator for Asia and the Near East. She also was the Chief Minority Counsel to a Senate Select Committee; a Senate professional staff member; the Deputy Director of the Office of African Affairs at the US Information Agency; a Fellow of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government; and, an Associate of the US-Japan Relations Program of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard.
After 25 years in government service, she moved to the corporate sector in 1993, becoming Group Executive Vice President at the Bank of America. From 1996-1998, she moved into philanthropy, serving as President and CEO of the United States-Japan Foundation. Beginning in 1998, she shifted her focus to China, first becoming Visiting Professor at the Institute for International Relations and Executive Vice Chairman of the American Studies Center at Peking University, and subsequently affiliating with Fudan University in Shanghai. A native of China, she grew up in San Francisco and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Communications and Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964, and a Masters degree in Government and East Asia Regional Studies from Harvard in 1967.
Julia is listed in World’s Who’s Who and in Donna Langston’s A to Z of American Women Leaders and Activists – she is one of only 147 women from U.S. history to make the list – and she was selected in 2011 by the American magazine Women of Wealth as “one of the nation’s top women mentoring leaders”.
For additional reading:
English:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Chang_Bloch
Chinese:
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BC%A0%E4%B9%8B%E9%A6%99
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