The Asia Foundation, the premier international development organization serving the Asia-Pacific region, today announced the election of five members to its Board of Trustees. Karl Eikenberry, Geoffrey Garrett, Sunder Ramaswamy, Masako Shinn, and Alice Young bring diverse international government, academic, and philanthropic perspectives to the Foundation’s initiatives and programs in 17 Asian countries.

“I am delighted to welcome this exceptional group of global leaders to our Board of Trustees,” said Michael H. Armacost, Chairman of the Board of The Asia Foundation. “Each new member brings deep-rooted expertise and unique accomplishments in their respective fields. We look forward to their active participation in guiding the Foundation’s work addressing governance and development needs in Asia.”

Karl Eikenberry is a retired U.S. Army General and former Ambassador to Afghanistan. Ambassador Eikenberry served two tours in Afghanistan, during which time he worked to forge a unified international effort to build a cohesive security sector, the Security Sector Reform (SSR) project. He retired from the diplomatic corps last year and is currently the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Ambassador Eikenberry serves as a Trustee for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the Council of American Ambassadors, and was previously the President of the Foreign Area Officers Association. He has published numerous articles on U.S. military training, tactics, and strategy, and on Chinese ancient military history and Asia-Pacific security issues. He graduated from West Point, received an M.A. in East Asian Studies from Harvard, where he would later return as National Security Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and an M.A. in political science from Stanford, where he was also a Ph.D candidate. In addition, Eikenberry has studied in Hong Kong at the UK Ministry of Defense Chinese Language School, earning the Foreign Office's Interpreter’s Certificate for Mandarin Chinese, and Nanjing University, earning an advanced degree in Chinese History.

Geoffrey Garrett is founding CEO of the United States Studies Centre and Dean of the University of Sydney Business School. He was previously President of the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles and before that Dean of the UCLA International Institute. Prof. Garrett is a frequent commentator on all aspects of U.S. politics, economics and foreign policy in Australian media, including The Australian, Australian Financial Review, Sydney Morning Herald, Sky TV and ABC radio and television programs. Prof. Garrett is author of Partisan Politics in the Global Economy, editor of The Global Diffusion of Markets and Democracy, both published by Cambridge University Press, and over fifty articles in the world's leading social science journals. A dual citizen of Australia and the U.S., Prof. Garrett was born and raised in Canberra and holds a bachelor of arts from the Australian National University. He earned his master’s and PhD at Duke University in North Carolina, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.

Sunder Ramaswamy is the President and Frederick C. Dirks Professor of International Economics at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a Graduate School of Middlebury College, in Monterey, California. His principal fields of specialization are Development Economics, International Economics, Issues in Applied Microeconomics, and Quantitative Methods. Over the past 20 years, he has held visiting positions at the Madras School of Economics (India, including a position as the Director of MSE from 2003-2005), Vanderbilt University, Institute of Financial Management and Research (India), Purdue University, and the World Bank (USA). Mr. Ramaswany has been involved with World Bank projects on various aspects of economic reforms in India. In the past, he has also been associated with USAID and INTSORMIL projects on agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2002, Mr. Ramaswany was appointed the Frederick C. Dirks Distinguished Professor of International Economics at Middlebury College. At Middlebury, he also served as the Vice Provost of the Middlebury, Dean for Faculty Development and Research, Acting Dean of the Faculty, and the Chair of the economics department for three terms from 1996 – 2003. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Purdue University in 1991, an M.A. in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics and B.A. (Honors) in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi.

Masako Shinn is the founder of Graphis Asia, a publisher of books and magazines on Asian design, and is one of The Asia Foundation’s Lotus Circle Advisors. Prior to Graphis Asia, she held senior positions at Apsara Group, Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc., Salomon Brothers, Inc., and Morgan Stanley, Inc. Mrs. Shinn is also a Trustee of the Japan Society, on the Board of the Sackler Gallery, and has served on the Kennedy Center’s President’s Advisory Council on the Arts. She is married to James Shinn, a prominent expert on Asia and the Pacific. She received her B.A. from the International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan; M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, and M.A. in East Asian Studies from Columbia University.

Alice Young is partner and chair of the Asia Pacific Practice Group of Kaye Scholer LLP international law firm. For over 30 years, she has advised clients on their international investments and other business activities, with a special focus on Asia. She has been based in New York, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. She lectures extensively on Asia-related legal and business issues and has appeared on programs such as CNN International, The News Hour, the Charlie Rose Show, ABC Nightline, Fuji TV, and China Television Network. Ms. Young was named by Crain's in their list of the "Top 100 Minority Executives" and by Avenue Asia magazine as one of the most influential Asian-American corporate lawyers in the United States. She is a director of Mizuho Trust & Banking (US) and the Deloitte Corporate Diversity Advisory Board and also serves on several non-profit boards, including the Aspen Institute and American Assembly. She was in the first class of women graduates of Yale College and received her law degree from Harvard Law School. Alice served as a Trustee of The Asia Foundation from 2003 to 2011 and is a current Asia Foundation-designated Trustee of Give2Asia.

About The Asia Foundation The Asia Foundation is a non-profit, non-governmental organization committed to the development of a peaceful, prosperous, just, and open Asia-Pacific region. The Foundation supports Asian initiatives to improve governance and law, economic development, women's empowerment, the environment, and regional cooperation. Drawing on nearly 60 years of experience in Asia, the Foundation collaborates with private and public partners to support leadership and institutional development, exchanges, and policy research.

With 17 offices throughout Asia, an office in Washington, DC, and its headquarters in San Francisco, the Foundation addresses these issues on both a country and regional level. In 2010, the Foundation provided more than $98 million in program support and distributed nearly one million books and journals valued at over $42 million.