The 1990 Institute is a San Francisco-based not-for-profit organization with a mission to champion fair and equal treatment for Asian Americans and a constructive U.S.-China relationship through leadership, education, and collaboration.
The institute has had three decades of impact with programs that promote cross-cultural understanding both within the United States and China and is currently managed by academic, business, and community leaders.
[1] Known for contributions to China's modernization and fostering stronger U.S.-China relations, the 1990 Institute was officially founded in 1990 by a volunteer group of prominent leaders in the community, education, and business sectors.
Other notable early co-founders include Senator Adlai Stevenson III; James Luce; Robert Scalpino, the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations' first chairman; the former U.S.
Ambassador to the Asian Development Bank Linda Tsao Yang; Roz Koo, founding President of Self-Help for the Elderly; and architect Billy Lee.
Previous speakers included Hank Paulson, former Secretary of the Treasury and CEO of Goldman Sachs; Brian Wong, Vice President of the Alibaba Group; leading equity analyst Ming Zhao from 86Research, and actor Hudson Yang from Fresh Off the Boat.
The Youth Voices on China online video contest was launched in 2014 and was one of the 1990 Institute's signature education initiatives to foster better global awareness among young people and inspire them to think deeply about U.S.-China relations.
With a star judging panel led by actress/filmmaker Joan Chen and 30+ prominent Hollywood filmmakers and U.S.-China executives, Youth Voices on China aimed to be engine of media-inspired change and cross-cultural collaboration.
The 2016 contest focused on sending "Videograms to the White House," where students proposed a cultural exchange idea and urged the President to build a more positive relationship with China.
The Institute partnered with the Jiangyin Qiaoqi Primary School, and 120 U.S. and China students and teachers attended yearly to teach English and participate in cross-cultural activities.
To replace two schools destroyed by the Sichuan earthquake in Zhang Jia Yin Township, PaoJi City, a group of skilled volunteers from the U.S. and China worked together to build a green campus.
[2] The program aimed to improve educational opportunities by providing scholarships to girls in rural villages in Gansu and Shaanxi Provinces over a 13-year period, from fourth grade to college.