Finding the right speakers for you

Rowan Simons - China

35+ years at the forefront of PRC media and sports reform, working across major rights holders, broadcasters, brands, and government regulators — from the 1990 Beijing Asian Games preparatory committee to advising on all three Beijing Olympic bids (2000, 2008, 2022)
Founder of ClubFootball (2001), China’s first foreign-owned football club and now a leading grassroots network in Beijing, and author of the acclaimed book “Bamboo Goalposts” (2008, published in Chinese, French, and Portuguese)
A rare foreign voice inside Chinese football reform for two decades, whose advocacy directly influenced the 2016 Football Reform Plan separating the Chinese FA from government control

Former U.S. Ambassador to Singapore
Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution as well as a Trustee of the Asia Foundation and as a Director of the Asia Society of Northern California
Served as Under Secretary for International Trade at the U.S. Department of Commerce in the Bush (43) Administration
Author of Inside the Reagan White House (Post Hill Press 2025)

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter
Author of The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took over Big Government
Worked for over two decades as an investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal

Academic: Chinese speaking Dutch Professor of Innovation and Strategy with decade long China research
Author: Pioneers, Hidden Champions, Change Makers and Underdogs: Lessons from China’s Innovators (MIT Press, forthcoming); Business ecosystems in China: Alibaba and competing Baidu, Tencent, Xiaomi and LeEco (Routledge, 2018)
Thinker: Selected on the 2017 Thinkers50 Radar list of 30 next generation business gurus

Economics Professor at Renmin University’s School of Economics in Beijing
Senior Fellow of the Brooking Institution Foreign Policy program and Acting Director of Tsinghua-Brookings Center
Expert in Chinese agricultural development and economics