Professor Michael J. Enright is a leading expert on competitiveness, regional economic development and international business strategy, became the Sun Hung Kai Professor of Business at the University of Hong Kong in 1996 after six years as a professor at Harvard Business School. He is also a director at Enright, Scott & Associates and a founder of The Competitiveness Institute. Professor Enright has consulted for companies, government and multilateral organizations in more than 30 countries on six continents on international business strategy, competitiveness, regional clustering, technology policy and economic development. He has also appeared in 40 countries as a featured speaker, and has authored numerous books and monographs on international competitiveness and China’s development.

Tom Mitchell is the Beijing bureau chief for the Financial Times. He was previously the FT’s Deputy News Editor based in London, where he edited the front pages of the newspaper’s four regional editions.

A graduate of Duke University and former Fulbright scholar, Tom began his journalism career in Hong Kong in 1996.
In 2000, Tom began a three-year posting as Guangzhou bureau chief for the South China Morning Post, becoming the first western newspaper correspondent to be based in South China since 1949. He returned to Hong Kong in January 2003 and served another three years as the Post’s deputy business editor before joining the FT in 2006.

While in Hong Kong, Tom has won two ‘Scoop of the Year’ awards from the Society of Publishers in Asia.

Timothy Stratford is managing partner in Covington & Burling LLP’s Beijing office and a member of the International Trade, Corporate and Government Affairs Practice Groups. Mr. Stratford’s practice is focused on advising international clients doing business in China and assisting Chinese companies seeking to expand their businesses globally. As a former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative, Mr. Stratford is the most senior former U.S. trade official working as a member of the U.S. business community in China. Except for the five years he spent in Washington, D.C. in government service (2005-2010), Mr. Stratford has lived and worked continuously in the greater China region since 1982.

While at USTR, Mr. Stratford was responsible for developing and implementing U.S. trade policy toward mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao and Mongolia. He worked closely with other senior U.S. and Chinese officials from numerous government departments and agencies to address problems encountered by companies engaged in bilateral trade and investment and co-chaired a number of important bilateral working groups and dialogues established under the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade and the U.S.-China Strategic & Economic Dialogue.

Prior to serving at USTR, Mr. Stratford was General Counsel for General Motors’ China operations, where he was a member of GM’s senior management team in China and oversaw the company’s legal and trade policy work. Mr. Stratford also served previously as Minister-Counselor for Commercial Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and as Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Brigham Young University, and is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese.

Stephen Olson is a Research Fellow at the Hinrich Foundation, where he undertakes research and provides thought leadership on international trade issues. He began his 25 year international career in Washington DC as an international trade negotiator, and served on the US negotiating team for the NAFTA negotiations. He subsequently became President of the Hong Kong-based Pacific Basin Economic Council, and Vice Chairman of Cairo-based ARTOC Group for Investment and Development. Currently, he is also a Visiting Scholar at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and a Visiting Professor at the International College of NIDA in Bangkok, Thailand. He has a Master’s Degree in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and has a B.A. from the State University of New York.

Alan Beebe was appointed President of the American Chamber of Commerce in China in March 2016. He has more than twenty years of industry and management consulting experience in Asia, including the past fourteen years in mainland China.

Prior to joining AmCham China in Beijing, Alan held various senior executive positions with EY, IBM, and management consulting firms AT Kearney and PRTM. He also led a Beijing based start-up for five years, the China Greentech Initiative, which merged in 2014 with the Paulson Institute, founded by Hank Paulson.

Alan has advised a wide range of corporations and global investors on investing and operating in China, including global private equity firms, U.S. high technology companies and major Chinese enterprises such as China Telecom and China Mobile.

He holds a Master’s degree from Yale University in International Relations and a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Computer Science from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the U.S. He is a Board of Advisor of the Yale Club of Beijing and in that capacity promotes academic and cultural exchanges between the U.S. and China. He is a fluent speaker of mandarin Chinese, and reads and writes Chinese.

Alan was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. He is married with two children.