Description

The Asia Program is pleased to recommend a special grant of $48,000 to the American Mandarin Society for the African-American China Leadership Fellows Program.    Now a decade old, the American Mandarin Society (AMS) was established to assist Americans who have returned from study and work in Greater China to maintain and develop their Mandarin Chinese language skills, keep in touch with the region, and build the professional networks that will allow them to contribute to U.S. efforts to engage with the Asia-Pacific. Its 3,000-plus members include federal, state, and city government employees, businesspeople, scholars, employees of civil society groups, and other professionals. AMS is highly respected for its programming, attracting funding from the Ford Foundation-Beijing office, among others.    AMS has been in conversation (as have we) with the Black China Caucus (BCC) ( https://www.blackchinacaucus.org/ ), a collaborative effort that curates resources aimed at encouraging the professional development and advancement of Black professionals who specialize on China. BCC is an organization-in-formation; it is in the process of incorporating as a non-profit and applying for 501(c)(3) status. In recognition of the significant underrepresentation of African Americans in work on China and U.S.-China relations, AMS and BCC have teamed up to design a mentorship program to cultivate talent and strengthen the pipeline of African American professionals with deep China knowledge. The program is designed to address invisible barriers, such as lack of awareness about professional opportunities and lack of targeted support structures, and widen the paths of career advancement for participating African American fellows.   AMS requests a grant from HLF to complete the funding required for a pilot phase of this program. It has secured the balance through support from the Carnegie Corporation, the Albright Stonebridge Group and the Rhodium Group.   During the eight-month program, fellows will be paired with African American mentors from academia, business and government for the range of one-on-one and group activities listed in the proposal. Competitive candidates will have already had some exposure to Mandarin and personal experience in China or demonstrated interest in a China-focused career. As an intergenerational project, senior mentors will serve as role-models and share their experiences and networks with younger colleagues. Activities will include professional development seminars, skills building workshops, and a trip to Washington DC if pandemic travel restrictions are lifted.   The pilot will involve five mentors and five fellows and serve a proof-of-concept for an envisioned multi-year program that will be scaled up over time. Our grant would cover the honorarium for a fifth mentor (Carnegie funds are covering the other four), speakers fees, compensation for part-time program assistants, and indirects.   Nat Ahrens, AMS executive director, and Mark Akpaninyie, a co-founder of BCC who will serve as one of the program assistants, write, “The goal of this program is to attract, develop, and retain a cohort of up-and-coming African-American professionals that can enhance the China space, improve U.S. national security and competitiveness, and better reflect the diversity of the United States.” The project aligns with the Asia Program’s goals and objectives to contribute to knowledge about China and the improvement of U.S.-China relations, prepare the next generation to engage with Asia, and support efforts to build a pipeline in Asia-focused work for Black and Indigenous persons and and Persons of Color.   Submitted by Helena Kolenda