Michael Hart is President of the American Chamber of Commerce in China based in Beijing. He has over twenty-five years of business experience in Asia, including nineteen years in mainland China.

As President, Michael oversees all advocacy, programs, partnerships, and insights provided by the Chamber to support the business growth of nearly 900 foreign corporations operating in China, including most of the U.S. Fortune 500. The chamber’s advocacy includes the impressive American Business in China White Paper and Business Climate Survey each published annually as well as numerous interactions with both the US and Chinese governments on behalf of our members.

Prior to joining AmCham China, Michael spent most of his career in commercial real estate in Taipei, Shanghai and Tianjin including almost 20 years for a NYSE listed property services firm. He started in the research division briefing real estate owners, occupiers and investors on transactions and macro trends, he then opened, built, and led a branch office for the company in one of China’s largest Tier 1.5 cities for over a decade. Following this, Michael opened a private consulting and investment firm that among other projects invested in quick service restaurants.

In addition to this work, Michael was a long-term AmCham member and served on the Tianjin chapter’s Executive Committee for nearly 15 years including several terms as the local Chairman.

Michael holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with a focus on finance and banking from the University of Missouri-Columbia in the U.S. He is a fluent speaker of mandarin Chinese. Michael was born and raised near Kansas City, Missouri.

Chad Futrell is an Assistant Dean at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University where his current duties include teaching the Deep Dive course and overseeing the language programs. He has worked with business and government leaders to run study tours in 20 provincial-level administrative regions throughout China. He was previously the Center Director of the CIEE Study Center at Peking University and Minzu University of China. He graduated from Cornell University and UNC-Chapel Hill and earned certificates in Asian Studies, Chinese language, and Korean language from Cornell, IUP-Tsinghua, and Sogang Universities, respectively. He was a Fulbright-Hays, FLAS, and Korea Foundation fellow in China and South Korea.

Dr Lu Zheng (郑路)serves as an Associate Professor of Sociology with tenure, holds the Volkswagen-sustainability Chair at Schwarzman College, and is the founding director of the Center for Society and Finance, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University. His research spans inequality and mobility, the sociology of finance, and social policy and governance in China. Zheng's prolific work includes over 50 academic papers featured in prestigious journals like the Strategic Management Journal, British Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Social Science Research, China Quarterly, 《社会学研究》 (Sociological Studies), and 《金融研究》 (Journal of Financial Research), among others. His contributions to the field have been recognized with multiple best paper awards, including two from 《社会学研究》 in 2004 and 2024, a 2012 award from the International Association of Chinese Management Research (IACMR) Biennial Conference, and a 2018 award from the Chinese Journalism and Communication Association.