Joan Kaufman’s varied and accomplished career in China is a prism through which we can view the arc of China’s transformation from “reform and opening up” to today. After two degrees in Chinese Studies, a masters in health and medical sciences and a thesis (and book) on China’s Population Policy, Joan moved to China in 1980 to work for the newly opened UN office, for the first of 4 extended work stints in China totaling over 15 years to date, including 5 years as a grant maker for the Ford Foundation’s China Office. She has taught, consulted, and published on China and global health, reproductive health, population, HIV/AIDS, women’s rights, and NGOs over her career. Joan will reflect on her early China days, her funniest China stories of the last 40 years, and the depressing state of US China relations. She continues to travel often to China in her current job as the Senior Director for Academics for Schwarzman Scholars and will also talk about the program and her hopes for the future.
Joan Kaufman, ScD, is the Senior Director for Academic Programs at Schwarzman Scholars, Lecturer in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Visiting Professor at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University. A public health and China expert, she has lived and worked in China for 15 years since 1980 for the United Nations, the Ford Foundation, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, and Columbia University. Prior to joining Schwarzman Scholars, she was the Director of Columbia University’s Global Center for East Asia (Beijing) and Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. In 2002, she founded and directed (for a decade) the AIDS Public Policy Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, working in both China and Vietnam. She was a Distinguished Scientist at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management from 2003-2012, Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard from 2001-2002 and a Soros Reproductive Health and Rights Fellow in 2005. Her publications cover global health policy, HIV/AIDS, women’s rights, reproductive health, population, emerging infectious diseases, and civil society with a focus on China. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
