A professional speaker who specializes in China's business, politics and society, he regularly appears in the media to discuss China-related topics.

He is the author of the books No Ancient Wisdom, No Followers: The Challenges of Chinese Authoritarian Capitalism (Prospecta Press, 2012) and One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China (Simon & Schuster, 2005).

After returning from Vietnam, McGregor graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in journalism, and began his career as a police reporter in Los Angeles for Copley Newspapers.

He then convinced his wife Catherine Grady McGregor that Taiwan was very similar to Hawaii and they sold most of their possessions and moved to Taipei with two suitcases each in 1987.

Their relationship survived McGregor's Taiwan "Hawaiian analogy" by virtue of his proven record of maintaining a cool head under fire and his steadfast repetition that all he really was trying to say is they were both places that were indeed islands surrounded by ocean.