RSEA Alumni Panel event coming soon!

October 24, 2019

Planning is underway for the 2019 RSEA Alumni Panel to be held at Harvard on October 24. The annual event is an opportunity for current students and alumni to share career-related experiences and questions, and to enjoy informal conversations.

RSEA Alumni please watch for an email from GSAS with your invitation to attend the event.

This year's RSEA Alumni Panelists are Ms. Esther Hyun (AM '16), Mr. John Kamm (AM '75), Prof. Michael Kim (AM '92, PhD '04), Ms. Greer Meisels (AM '12), Prof. Akiko Walley (AM '04, PhD '09), and Prof. Don Wyatt (AM '78, PhD '84).

Esther Hyun (AM '16) is a Program Officer of Strategy Integration and Execution on the Postsecondary Success team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Her role focuses on integrating, operationalizing, and managing complex strategic priorities in order to improve outcomes for low-income students and students of color. She currently leads program development to build a marketplace that aims to improve the design and scaled delivery of student-centered services to higher-ed institutions. As a former management consultant at McKinsey & Company, Hyun gained experience across a range of industries including high tech, retail, energy, and banking. Prior to McKinsey, she was a 7th grade English Teacher in Richmond, California, and an alumna of Teach for America. Esther Hyun holds an M.A. in Regional Studies – East Asia from Harvard University, and a B.A. in Literature from Yale University.

John Kamm (AM ’75) is an American businessman and human rights campaigner active in China since 1972. Kamm received a B.A. (1972) from Princeton University and a M.A. (1975) from Harvard University. He was the Hong Kong correspondent and representative of the National Council for US-China Trade (1975-1981) and President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong in 1990. He managed Occidental Chemical Company’s business in China and the Far East from 1981 to 1991.  Currently Kamm is chairman of The Dui Hua Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco and Hong Kong that works through direct dialogue to encourage transparency, accountability, and the humanitarian treatment of at-risk detainees in China. Since he founded the organization in 1999, Kamm and Dui Hua have submitted requests for information on more than 6,000 prisoners and have helped hundreds gain early release and better treatment. In recognition of his innovative approach to rights advocacy, Kamm was awarded the Department of Commerce’s Best Global Practices Award by President Bill Clinton in 1997, the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights by President George W. Bush in 2001, and a MacArthur Fellowship in September 2004.

Michael Kim (AM '92, PhD '04) is Professor of Korean History at Yonsei's Graduate School of International Studies. He has served as the Associate Vice-President for International Affairs and Associate Dean of Underwood International College at Yonsei University. He received an A.B. in History from Dartmouth College and his Ph.D. in Korean history from Harvard University's East Asian Languages and Civilizations Department. His specialty is colonial Korean history, particularly in print culture, migration, wartime mobilization and everyday life. He is currently working on two monographs on the publishing industry in colonial Korea and Korean migration to Manchuria. His recent publications include: "The Han’gǔl Crisis and Language Standardization: Clashing Orthographic Identities and the Politics of Cultural Construction," Journal of Korean Studies, Vol. 22 no.1 (Spring 2017), and he is also the co-editor of Mass Dictatorship and Modernity (Palgrave 2013).  Prof. Kim is currently an Associate in Research at the Korea Institute at Harvard University.

Greer Meisels (AM '12) is the Chief of Staff to the President and CEO at the Institute of International Finance (IIF), the global association of the financial industry. Prior to joining IIF, Ms. Meisels held several positions in the International Affairs division of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, including as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of International Affairs. Her work at Treasury also focused on the U.S.-China economic relationship as well as on investment security issues on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. For her work at Treasury, she received the Meritorious Service Award from then Secretary Jacob J. Lew. Earlier in her career, Ms. Meisels worked at several think tanks in Washington, DC and New York and was also a visiting lecturer at the China Foreign Affairs University, in Beijing. She received her A.M. from Harvard University in Regional Studies – East Asia and her B.A. from Hunter College, City University of New York.

Akiko Walley (AM ’04, PhD ’09) is the Maude I. Kerns Associate Professor of Japanese Art, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Oregon. She received her AM in RSEA in 2004 and PhD in Art History in 2009 (both from Harvard University). Walley specializes in Buddhist art, but she has published and presented on diverse aspects of Japanese art. Her publications include Constructing the Dharma King: The Hōryūji Shaka Triad and the Birth of the Prince Shōtoku Cult, Japanese Visual Culture Series, vol. 15 (Brill, 2015) and articles in Ars Orientalis, Archives of Asian Art, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Artibus Asiae, and International Journal of Comic Art.

Don Wyatt (AM ’78, PhD ‘84) is the John M. McCardell, Jr. Distinguished Professor of history at Middlebury College. Having joined the faculty in 1986, he teaches both Chinese history and philosophy. His ongoing research includes the histories of traditional intellectualism, violence, and slavery. His recent scholarship includes the chapter essay “The Image of the Black in Chinese Art” in The Image of the Black in African and Asian Art (Belknap/Harvard University Press and Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, 2017). Forthcoming contributions will appear in the Dao Companion to Zhu Xi’s Philosophy, the medieval volumes of the Cambridge World History of Violence and the Cambridge World History of Slavery, and the Bloomsbury Academic volume A Cultural History of Slavery and Human Trafficking in the Pre-Modern Era (500-1450). His projects-in-progress include a book-length study of the history of foreign slaves in imperial China.