Sheryl WuDunn

Sheryl WuDunn, the first Asian American reporter to win a Pulitzer Prize, is the best-selling author of Half the Sky, a business executive, and a lecturer. Currently, she is a senior managing director at Mid-Market Securities, an investment banking boutique serving growth companies in the middle market, including companies founded and run by women. She is also president of TripleEdge, a social investing consultancy, and – as of Fall 2011 – will be a Senior Fellow at Yale University, co-teaching a course on global affairs with a specific focus on China's economic development and its global role.

Previously, WuDunn worked in the investment management division at Goldman, Sachs & Co., where she was a vice president in the role of investment advisor for private clients. In that role, she advised clients on all asset classes, including hedge funds, private equity, and real estate, as well as in philanthropy. WuDunn also has been a commercial loan officer at Bankers Trust. She currently holds her securities licenses (Series 7 and 63), as well as her investment banking license (Series 79), through Mid-Market Securities, a FINRA broker-dealer and SIPC Member.

WuDunn also worked at The New York Times as both an executive and journalist: in business management roles in two departments, Strategic Planning and Circulation; as editor for international markets, energy, and industry; as The Times' first anchor of an evening news headlines program for a digital cable television channel, the Discovery-Times; and as a foreign correspondent for The Times in Tokyo and Beijing, where she covered news in the realms of economy, finance, and politics.

WuDunn also is co-author of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a New York Times best-selling book about the challenges facing women around the globe. It has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Colbert Report, and many other network television shows. WuDunn also helped launch the Half the Sky multimedia effort to create a thoughtful, effective philanthropic strategy that includes an online social action campaign, a documentary series, and a television special.

With her husband, Nicholas D. Kristof, she has co-authored two other best-selling books about Asia: Thunder from the East and China Wakes. WuDunn won a Pulitzer Prize with her husband for covering China, along with the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Lifetime Achievement. She has also won other journalism prizes, including the George Polk Award and Overseas Press Club Awards. WuDunn was honored for Half the Sky in 2010 with the Beacon Award from the White House Project, a nonpartisan organization that seeks to advance women's leadership in all communities and sectors. And she is a judge for the US Department "Secretary's Innovation Award for Women's and Girls' Empowerment."

WuDunn graduated from Cornell University, where she is a member of the Board of Trustees, has co-chaired the Academic Affairs Committee, is a former member of the university endowment's investment committee, and is a member of the Board's Finance Committee. She earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MPA from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, where she was a member of its Advisory Council. She speaks Chinese and some Japanese and lectures around the United States and abroad on economic, political, and social topics related to women in the developing world, China, and the emerging markets. Recently, she spoke about China to Al Gore and his group of colleagues including Sir David King, the chief science advisor to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. WuDunn has discussed China economic issues on television programs, such as Fox Business News, The Colbert Report, and Charlie Rose, and she has discussed philanthropic issues on programs such as NBC's Dateline.