| Two man take a break to watch the snowstorm, Hungnam, South Hamgyong Province, DPRK. |
The Coalition
East West Coalition is, quite literally, a coalition of individuals and institutions—from both East and West—committed to promoting knowledge exchange and development to generate lasting social impact. |
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| Matthew Reichel, Director and Co-founder, received his BA from Brown University with degrees in International Relations and East Asian Studies, with a focus on Chinese-Korean relations. Before co-founding EWC, Matthew served as the coordinating director for the Strait Talk Symposium, a consensus-building forum involving scholars from Mainland China, Taiwan and the US. Matthew directed a Freeman Foundation funded project in China, Kyrgyzstan and Korea. He has also worked on human rights and youth development projects in Central Africa. Matthew speaks English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and French. |
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| Nicholas Young, Director and Co-founder, received his BA from Brown University in East Asian Studies and Economics. Nicholas also spent a year taking classes at Peking University in Beijing. Prior to co-founding EWC, Nick launched Chuan1Chuan, a social enterprise that sold local handicraft to raise money for Sichuan earthquake victims with financial support from the Clinton Global Initiative. Nicholas has also interned in investment banking with China’s CITIC Securities in Beijing and worked with Bosera Mutual Funds in Shenzhen. Nick speaks English, Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese Chinese. |
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| Michael Spavor, Interim Projects Coordinator, is from Calgary, Alberta, Canada and completed his BA in International Relations focusing on Korea and East Asian Studies at the University of Calgary. In 2005, he became the managing director of the Global Aid Network (GAiN), a Canadian NGO, instructing and overseeing graphic Design and English courses at the Korea Computer Center (KCC) in Pyongyang, DPRK. He joined the EWC team in 2011. Michael speaks in English, Korean and French. |
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| Jane Kim, Academic Coordinator, received her BA from University of California, Los Angeles with a double major in East Asian Studies and Psychology, and MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced and International Studies. Prior to joining EWC, Jane worked at the Inter Media Survey Institute in Washington DC conducting research of Korean and English literature related to the media environment of North Korea. Jane has also worked extensively on social welfare issues in Daegu, South Korea. |
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| Mengtong Guan, China Outreach Assistant, is currently a Masters student at Peking University in English Translation and graduated from Peking University with an undergraduate degree in English literature. Mengtong has assisted with office management of EWC's Beijing office and has played a major role in assisting with educational programs in both East Asia and North America. Mengtong has also assisted in leading a course for Lafayette College in China and the DPRK. Mengtong speaks Mandarin and English. |
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| Aaron Kaiser-Chen, Program Assistant, is a Chicago native, but is currently studying at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Aaron has worked with EWC during the summer months since 2010 assisting with project management and logistics. Previously, Aaron lived in Beijing, China where he attended high school. Aaron is also a talented linguist; he speaks fluent English, Mandarin, French, and Hebrew and is learning another ten languages, give or take a few. |
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| Moosung Kim, Logistics Assistant, is from Shenyang, China, but he can trace his family two generations back to Chongju, Korea (in today's North Pyong'an Province, DPRK). Moosung has worked in North and South Korea for the better part of the last fifteen years and is an expert travel and logistics coordinator, not to mention a talented project negotiator. Moosung has been working for EWC from its conception. He is fluent in Mandarin and Korean. |
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| James Pearson, Member of the Board, is from London, UK and received his MA from the University of Cambridge in East Asian Studies and his BA from the University of London's School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). James has overseen EWC's DPRK student exchange program at Cambridge and has been a member of our board of directors since January 2012. He speaks English, Chinese, French and Korean. |
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| Grégoire Legault, Member of the Board,is a Montreal native and received his BA in International Relations from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He assists with organizational outreach for EWC in eastern Canada and has been a member of our board of directors since January 2012. Greg speaks French, English and Chinese. |
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| Thomas Gold, Adviser, is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2000, he has also served as Executive Director of the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies (IUP), a consortium of 14 universities that administers an advanced Chinese language program at Tsinghua University in Beijing. At Berkeley, Professor Gold has also served as Associate Dean of International and Areas Studies, Founding Director of the Berkeley China Initiative, and Chair of the Center for Chinese Studies. He currently sits on the board of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and the Asia Society of Northern California. |
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| John Delury, Adviser, is an assistant professor at Yonsei University Graduate School of International Studies and Underwood International College in Seoul, South Korea. He was previously Associate Director of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations, and taught Chinese history and politics at Brown, Columbia, and Peking Universities, receiving his BA and PhD in history at Yale. He is a senior fellow of Asia Society’s US-China Center, member of the National Committee on North Korea, term member of the Council of Foreign Relations, and sits on the 21st Century Leadership Council of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. |
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| Victor Hsu, Adviser, is the Director of International Aid and Development Education, Adjunct Adviser for North Korea Studies and International Development Affairs to the KDI Center for International Development, and Researcher for the Knowledge Sharing Programme. Up until 2010, Victor served as World Vision International's National Director for North Korea. Victor was instrumental in setting up the Food Aid Liaison Unit of the World Food Programme in Pyongyang and was the first convener of the Steering Committee. He was also a board member of the USA PVOC-Consortium that provided monitoring of USA’s contribution to the WFP Programme. |
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| David Ben Kay, Adviser, has been in Beijing for the past twenty years and was in Hong Kong for the three years immediately prior to that. During his fifteen years as a corporate lawyer, David assisted over 250 companies in setting up businesses in China and managed issues from a wide range of industries. From 2003 to 2005 David was Microsoft China’s General Counsel, heading up the Law and Corporate Affairs Group. In 2008, he converted his loft in Beijing 798 Art District into a new media art gallery: Yuanfen Flow, a business incubator focused on launching globally minded companies in China through the fusion of art, technology and sustainability. |
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Objectives
We aim to promote comprehensive academic analysis as a base for building long-term cooperation between individuals, institutions and governments across the North Pacific. |
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Who We Are
Meet members of EWC's management team, staff and academic advisers who play an immeasurable role in guiding our organization. |
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Challenges
EWC faces sensitive political challenges in the work that we undertake. Read a macro and micro analysis of these challenges and our method for working through potential setbacks. |
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News
EWC is constantly on the road, developing new initiatives and working on projects all over the world. Read EWC's internal news to see what we are up to. |
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