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Time: April 25, 2024, 9:00PM-10:30PM (New York) | April 26, 2024, 9:00AM-10:30AM (Beijing)

Location: Zoom & Beijing Global Center's WeChat Channels

Language: English

Embark on a journey to the East without leaving the comfort of your home! Columbia Global Center Beijing cordially invites you to an inspiring virtual event designed to showcase the transformative experiences of Columbia members who have embraced China's academic and professional landscape. This event is your digital passageway to understanding the vast opportunities in one of the world's most dynamic countries, from cultural immersion to career development.

You'll hear powerful stories of personal growth, navigate the nuances of cross-cultural engagement, and learn about the resources Beijing Global Center offers to support your journey abroad.

Join us and let the experiences of those who have walked the path inform and excite your own academic and professional aspirations.

This event is co-sponsored by the Global China Connection - Columbia, the Greater China Society at Columbia Business School, and the Greater China Initiative at Columbia SIPA.

Speakers

Geoff Newman (CC '79, GSAS '82) has been active in Asia-Pacific since 1980, when he became Columbia University's first exchange student at Peking University. He established the Collins Aerospace (Hamilton Standard) business office in Hong Kong in 1985, marketing aerospace products in China and Asia Pacific. In 1991, he expanded to Japan, opening their business office in Tokyo, and has been working in Japan and the region since.

Most recently, he was working for Silicon Sensing, which is a Collins Aerospace (UK) joint venture with SPP (Sumitomo Precision Products) for sensors and inertial measurement.

A speaker of both Chinese and Japanese, he has experience working and living in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, India, and the Middle East.

Geoff has a bachelor's degree in international relations and a master's in Chinese sociology, both from Columbia University. He has attended several strategic leadership and professional development programs at Oxford University and Wharton. He currently resides in New England with his family.

Lening Liu was born and raised in Xi’an, China. In 1977, right after the Cultural Revolution, he entered college as part of an extremely select group of students to finally end years of disruption of higher learning in China. He came to the United States in 1990 and studied linguistics at the University of Florida. He joined Columbia’s faculty in 1995 and received his Ph.D. in 1996. He has published a number of articles on the evolution of Chinese conjunctive adverbs, the rhetorical structures of Chinese, the history and innovation of Chinese pedagogy, etc. Courses he has taught include Introduction to Classical Chinese, Readings in Classical Chinese, History of Chinese Language, Educational Chinese Linguistics, Chinese Language Pedagogy, and all levels of Modern Chinese. Currently, Liu is a professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the co-director of the Certificate Program for Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages. He directed the Chinese Language Program for over 20 years.

Moderator

Koen Smeets is a scholar-practitioner of US-China academic relations. As a Yenching Scholar at Peking University, he leads a team of over 20 students preserving an oral history of the re-establishment and contemporary state of US-China through the China Hands podcast. Based on these interviews, he is currently finishing a book which he aims to publish in English and Mandarin on both sides of the Pacific. Throughout his work focused on each continent, Koen was an organiser, mentor, and speaker in the MIT ecosystem, interviewed over 60 world leaders on US-China relations and technology, and was a Young Ambassador at Carnegie China. Koen is from the Netherlands.