The biographies of our 2021 distinguished summit speakers appear below in alphabetical order. We invite you to learn more about them.

BRYCE BARROS ’12

Bryce Barros ’12 is the China affairs analyst at the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund. He previously served as an analyst at Kharon, researching sanctioned actors and related commercial activities tied to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, strategic trade controls, supply chains, and human rights abuses in the Indo-Pacific. Prior to that, he interned at the Long Term Strategy Group, researching Sino-American Strategic Competition and the China Britain Business Council, looking at Chinese market entry for UK and EU companies. He is a National Committee on U.S.-China Relations member, Truman National Security Project fellow, Association of Certified Financial Crime Specialists member, Pacific Forum young leader, Aspen Security Forum scholar, and a National Security Education Program David L. Boren fellow & scholar. He holds a B.A. in political science from Norwich University, an M.A. in international affairs from Texas A&M University; he is also an honorary graduate of the Republic of China (Taiwan) Military Academy. Barros speaks Mandarin Chinese and Japanese, and spent nearly two decades specializing in the Indo-Pacific region.

CHERI CADDY ’90

Cheri Caddy ’90 is the senior advisor for Cybersecurity in the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security & Emergency Response (CESER) within the Department of Energy. In this role she leads strategy and execution of cybersecurity operations and technical mitigations to protect critical infrastructure, including leading the Department’s program for cyber vulnerability testing of digital components, CyTRICS™. She also serves as the executive director of the Securing Energy Infrastructure Executive Task Force. Previously, Caddy served in senior cybersecurity roles at the National Security Agency, the Obama Administration’s National Security Council, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Throughout these experiences, she shaped national cybersecurity policy and technology, with a successful record of convening broad stakeholder groups to develop technical, intelligence-driven cybersecurity protections. Caddy has been a non-resident Senior Cybersecurity Fellow at the McCrary Institute for Cybersecurity & Critical Infrastructure at Auburn University since 2017. She holds a B.A. in international studies from Norwich University, Military College of Vermont, an M.A. in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia, and an M.P.A. in public administration from the American University in Washington, D.C.

TAI MING CHEUNG

Tai Ming Cheung is director of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) located at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla. He leads the institute’s Study of Innovation and Technology in China project that examines China’s efforts to become a world-class science and technology power. Cheung is also a professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego, where he teaches courses on Chinese foreign and defense policy and Chinese security and technology policy. Cheung is a longtime analyst of Chinese and East Asian defense and national security affairs, especially defense economic, industrial and science and technological issues. He is the author of Fortifying China: The Struggle to Build a Modern Defense Economy (Cornell University Press, 2009), editor of Forging China’s Military Might: A New Framework for Assessing Innovation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), and co-editor of The Gathering Pacific Storm: Emerging US-China Strategic Competition in Defense Technological and Industrial Development (Cambria Press, 2018). He was based in Northeast Asia (Hong Kong, China, and Japan) from the mid-1980s to 2002 covering political, economic, and strategic developments in Greater China and East Asia, first as a journalist for the Far Eastern Economic Review from 1988 to 1993, and subsequently as a political and business risk consultant for a number of companies, including PricewaterhouseCoopers. Cheung holds a Ph.D. in war studies from King’s College, London.

LYLE J. GOLDSTEIN

Lyle J. Goldstein is research professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the Naval War College. The founding director of CMSI and author of dozens of articles on Chinese security policy, he focuses on Chinese undersea warfare. On the broader subject of US-China relations, Goldstein published the book Meeting China Halfway in 2015.

Over the last several years, Goldstein has focused on the North Korea crisis. He speaks Russian as well as Chinese and is an affiliate of NWC’s new Russia Maritime Studies Institute. He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton.

CHARLES W. HOOPER

Lieutenant General Charles Hooper, USA (Ret.) joined the Cohen Group as a senior counselor in October 2020 following a distinguished 41-year military career. He most recently served as the director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA). In this role, he led the agency responsible for the sale of all U.S. weapons, military equipment, support services, and training packages to foreign governments, which included oversight of 20,000 people globally and over $50 billion in annual sales. As DSCA’s leader, Lieutenant General Hooper built strong relations with officials from allied nations around the world — not just defense officials, but with leaders from foreign ministries and finance ministries as well, among others.

Over the course of his career, Lieutenant General Hooper has held senior level military-political positions around the world. Prior to his role at DSCA, Lieutenant General Hooper served as the senior U.S. Defense official/U.S. Defense attaché and chief of the Office of Military Cooperation at U.S. Embassy Cairo. He has also served as the director of Strategy, Plans, and Programs at U.S. Africa Command and deputy director for strategic planning and policy at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. He spent much of his career focused on U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific region, and specifically on the U.S.-China bilateral relationship. He completed two attaché assignments in Beijing, including as U.S. defense attaché to China, serving for a total of seven years in China. He also served as the senior country director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, in addition to teaching Chinese foreign policy to rising U.S. military leaders at the Naval Postgraduate School. In 1975, he became one of the first few West Point cadets selected to study the Mandarin dialect of the Chinese language, which he still speaks fluently. He also speaks Arabic.

Although Lieutenant General Hooper was commissioned as an infantry officer, he was later selected for the U.S. Army’s prestigious Foreign Area Officer (FAO) program following extensive training and additional education. FAOs—best described as the Army’s “Soldier Statesmen”—are unique officers who combine professional military skills with regional expertise, language competency, and military-political awareness. With 16 years of security cooperation, security assistance, and military attaché experience, Lieutenant General Hooper retired as the Army’s Senior Career Foreign Area Officer.

A native of Willingboro, New Jersey, Lieutenant General Hooper is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and holds a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is also a graduate of the U.S. Army War College and the U.K. Ministry of Defense Chinese Language School, Hong Kong. In addition to his work with The Cohen Group, he is affiliated with the National Bureau of Asian Research, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

VITALY KOZYREV

Vitaly Kozyrev is an expert in comparative politics, strategic studies and foreign policy in Eurasia. His major interest is great power politics, East-West relations, international conflict, and the Political Economy of regionalism and regional integration. From 2014 to 2019, he was an Asia Studies Fellow at the East West Center, Washington and a senior fellow at National University of Singapore, and served as a senior fellow at the Davis Center of Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University. He was a visiting professor at the European Studies Council at Yale University’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. He also taught at Amherst College, the University of Delaware, Moscow State University, and at a number of universities in China and Taiwan. At present he is professor of political science and international studies at Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts. He is also affiliated with the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University as associate in research.

PETER MARINO ’11

Peter Marino ’11 began his professional engagement with China starting in the 2000s, living in Shanghai, and conducting qualitative and political risk due diligence on industrial and infrastructural investments.

He is currently working on his Ph.D. in politics at New York City’s New School.

DAWN MURPHY

Dawn Murphy is an assistant professor of international security studies at the U.S. Air War College, where she specializes in Chinese foreign policy and domestic politics, U.S.-China relations, Northeast Asia, international relations, and comparative politics. Her current research analyzes China’s interests and behavior as a rising global power towards the existing international order. Specifically, Murphy examines China’s relations with the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa and is currently completing a book tentatively titled Great Power Competitor? China’s Evolving Relations with the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. In the book, she analyzes China’s foreign policy approach toward the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa regionally (e.g. political, economic, military, and foreign aid) and through detailed case studies of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF), the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), the China-Middle East Issues Special Envoy, the China-Africa Issues Special Envoy, China’s Special Envoy for Syria, China’s naval logistics presence in Djibouti, and China’s Belt and Road initiative. This project is based on extensive field work conducted as a visiting scholar with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, China, a visiting research fellow with the American University in Cairo, Egypt, a visiting researcher at Stellenbosch University’s Centre for Chinese Studies in South Africa, and research trips to Beijing, Washington, D.C., Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium and France.

Murphy holds a B.S. in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University, a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a Ph.D. in political science from George Washington University. Murphy’s previous academic appointments include postdoctoral research fellow with the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program at Princeton University, and visiting assistant professor of Political Science at George Washington University. She also has private-sector manufacturing experience in China and the U.S.

HAYOUN (JESSIE) RYOU-ELLISON

Hayoun (Jessie) Ryou-Ellison is a senior non-resident research fellow at Indian Military Review. She received her Ph.D. in political science with a joint M.S. in statistics from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2020. She earned an M.A. in political science from George Washington University, an M.A. in China Area Studies from Seoul National University, and a B.A. in Mandarin from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (Seoul). She also holds a diploma from the Yeosu Academy of the Law of the Sea and a National Security Law certificate from the University of Virginia. She is interested in maritime and territorial disputes worldwide and especially in Asia, maritime security in the Indo-Pacific, and modern warfare in Asia. She has particular expertise on politics in China, India, and on the Korean Peninsula.  

CHRISTOPHER WHYTE

Christopher Whyte is an assistant professor in the Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness program at Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government & Public Affairs. Whyte’s research focuses on issues of cyber conflict strategy—specifically the contours of decision-making and public opinion in cyber operations, with a particular interest in information operations and the emerging impact of artificial intelligence. He is author of numerous scholarly articles on issues of digital insecurity, and co-author of Understanding Cyber Warfare (Routledge), a primer on cyber conflict issues. He was also lead editor of the recent volume, Information Warfare in the Age of Cyber Conflict (Routledge) and co-author of a monograph on artificial intelligence and military innovation forthcoming in 2021 from Georgetown University Press. He holds a Ph.D. from George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy & Government, with undergraduate degrees in economics and international relations from the College of William & Mary.

KRISTA E. WIEGAND

Krista E. Wiegand is an associate professor of political science, director of the Global Security Program at the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, and chair of Middle East Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Wiegand specializes in international conflict management and political violence, specifically conflict resolution, territorial and maritime disputes, mediation, rebel and terrorist group violence, and East Asian and Middle East security. She has written two books: Enduring Territorial Disputes: Strategies of Bargaining, Coercive Diplomacy, & Settlement (University of Georgia Press 2011), and Bombs and Ballots: Governance by Islamic Terrorist and Guerrilla Groups (Routledge 2010). She also edited The China-Japan Border Dispute: Islands of Contention in a Multidisciplinary Perspective (Routledge 2015), is currently writing a third book, and has authored 40 articles and book chapters. She is co-editor-in-chief of International Studies Quarterly, the flagship journal of the International Studies Association. Wiegand was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in the Philippines in 2017, and presently serves as a principal investigator on two federally funded grants from the Department of Defense Minerva Initiative and the National Science Foundation. She holds a Ph.D. from Duke University.

JOEL WUTHNOW

Joel Wuthnow is a senior research fellow in the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs within the Institute for National for Strategic Studies (INSS) at National Defense University (NDU). His research areas include Chinese foreign and security policy, Chinese military affairs, U.S.-China relations, and strategic developments in East Asia. In addition to his duties in INSS, he also serves as an adjunct professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. His recent books and monographs include The PLA Beyond Borders (NDU 2021, co-editor), Chairman Xi Remakes the PLA (NDU 2019, co-editor), System Overload: Can China Be Distracted in a War Over Taiwan? (NDU 2020), and China’s Other Army: The People’s Armed Police in an Era of Reform (NDU 2019). Prior to joining NDU, he was a China analyst at CNA and a post-doctoral fellow in the China and the World Program at Princeton University. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University and is proficient in Mandarin.

MIN YE 

Min Ye is associate professor of international relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. Her research situates in the nexus between domestic and global politics and the intersection of economics and foreign policy, with a focus on China, Asia, and the Pacific relations. Her books include The Belt, Road and Beyond: State-Mobilized Globalization in China 1998–2018 (Cambridge University Press 2020), Diasporas and Foreign Direct Investment in China and India (Cambridge University Press 2014), and The Making of Northeast Asia (Stanford University Press 2010, with Kent Calder). She has received grants and fellowship in the U.S and Asia, including a Smith Richardson Foundation grant (2016–2018), East Asia Peace, Prosperity, and Governance Fellowship (2013), Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program post-doctoral fellowship (2009–2010), and Millennium Education Scholarship in Japan (2006). In 2014–2016, she served as a public intellectual program fellow for the National Committee on the U.S-China Relations.

ZHIQUN ZHU

Zhiqun Zhu is professor of political science and international relations and chair of the Department of International Relations at Bucknell University. He was Bucknell’s inaugural director of the China Institute (2013–2017) and MacArthur Chair in East Asian politics (2008–2014). He has also taught at the University of Bridgeport, Hamilton College, the University of South Carolina, and Shanghai International Studies University. In the early 1990s, he was senior assistant to consul for press and cultural affairs at the American Consulate General in Shanghai. Zhu is a member of the National Committee on United States-China Relations and is frequently quoted by international media to comment on Chinese and East Asian affairs. Zhu’s teaching and research interests include Chinese politics and foreign policy, East Asian political economy, and U.S.-Asian relations. He is the author and editor of a dozen books, including A Critical Decade: China’s Foreign Policy 2008–2018 (World Scientific 2019), China’s New Diplomacy: Rationale, Strategies and Significance (Ashgate 2013), New Dynamics in East Asian Politics: Security, Political Economy, and Society (Bloomsbury 2012), The People’s Republic of China: Internal and External Challenges (World Scientific 2010), and U.S.-China Relations in the 21st Century: Power Transition and Peace (Routledge 2005).  

Zhu has received many research fellowships and grants, including two POSCO fellowships at the East-West Center in Hawaii, a Korea Foundation/Freeman Foundation grant to do research in Korea, three senior visiting fellowships at the East Asian Institute of National University of Singapore, visiting professorships at Doshisha University in Japan, Shanghai University in China, and Kyungpook National University in Korea, as well as a research grant from the American Political Science Association.   

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