AMBASSADOR JULIA CHANG BLOCH

Julia Chang Bloch is President of the US-China Education Trust, a new non-profit organization working in China to promote US-China relations through education. She continues her affiliation with the University of Maryland as Ambassador-in-Residence of the Institute for Global Chinese Affairs; and with Fudan University in Shanghai, China, as Distinguished Adviser of the School of International and Public Affairs and Visiting Professor at the Center for American Studies.

Ambassador Bloch, the first Asian American to hold such rank in U.S. history, has had an extensive career in international affairs and government service, beginning as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sabah, Malaysia, in 1964, and culminating as U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Nepal in 1989. From 1981 to 1988, Ambassador Bloch served at the U.S. Agency for International Development as Assistant Administrator for Food for Peace and Voluntary Assistance and as Assistant Administrator for Asia and the Near East, positions appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. She also was the Chief Minority Counsel to a Senate Select Committee; a Senate professional staff member; the Deputy Director of the Office of African Affairs at the U.S. Information Agency; a Fellow of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and an Associate of the U.S. - Japan Relations Program of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard.

After 25 years in government service, Ambassador Bloch moved to the corporate sector in 1993, becoming Group Executive Vice President at the Bank of America, where she created the Corporate Relations Department, heading the bank’s Public Relations, Government Affairs, and Public Policy operations. From 1996 to 1998, Ambassador Bloch moved into philanthropy, serving as President and CEO of the United States-Japan Foundation, a private grant making institution, with $100 million in assets. Beginning in 1998, Ambassador Bloch shifted her focus to China, first becoming Visiting Professor at the Institute for International Relations and Executive Vice Chairman of the American Studies Center at Peking University, and subsequently affiliating with Fudan University in Shanghai.

A native of China who came to the U.S. at age nine, Ambassador Bloch grew up in San Francisco and earned a bachelor's degree in Communications and Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964, and a master's degree in Government and East Asia Regional Studies from Harvard University in 1967. She was awarded an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters from Northeastern University in 1986.

Her publications include “Commercial Diplomacy,” Living with China: U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-first Century. An American Assembly book. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995; and “Japanese Foreign Aid and the Politics of Burden Sharing.” Yen for Development. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1991.

Ambassador Bloch serves on a number of corporate and non-profit boards, including: American Academy of Diplomacy, the Atlantic Council, World Affairs Council, Council of American Ambassadors, the National Committee on US-China Relations, Women’s Foreign Policy Group and the Fund for Peace. She also has received numerous awards, including: the Hubert Humphrey Award for International Service (1979), the Woman of Distinction award of the National Conference of College Women (1987), the Distinguished Public Service award of the National Association of Professional Asian Pacific American Women (1989), and the Brotherhood and Sisterhood Award of the National Conference for Christians and Jews (1996).