Ms. Yan joined the Eurasia Foundation in June 2000. She serves as the Foundation's Executive Vice President and treasurer. Ms. Yan's responsibilities include the oversight of all Foundation financial and administrative functions in its corporate office as well as in its field offices across the former Soviet region.
Ms. Yan served on the management team of the Media Viability Fund, a project providing technical assistance and loan funds to media outlets in Russia and Ukraine. This program has since been restructured and is now part of the New Eurasia Foundation.
Ms. Yan manages the transformation of the Foundation's field offices and incubated projects into independent institutions. Two examples of this are the establishment of a new direct lending financing company in Armenia to continue the Foundation's small business loan program and the spin-off of the economic research & education program. These processes involve multi-year efforts to enhance the new institution infrastructure including delicate negotiations with international funding partners and local institutional partners.
From 1988 to 1992, Ms. Yan was program manager and financial officer of various international programs at the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine of the National Research Council. She worked on programs with China, Central Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. From 1992-2000, Ms. Yan held various senior management positions at the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) where she provided management oversight to the IREX field operations in 22 countries. Ms. Yan was instrumental in developing and implementing a strategy to expand IREX's programs beyond research and exchanges to include media and other technical assistance activities. She also launched its Asia program with Mongolia and China that included international conferences on regional cooperation, research projects on transition economy and international relations, and professional training programs.
Ms. Yan received her B.A. from Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington and her graduate degrees from the University of Hawaii. She serves as the co-chair of the Economic Education and Research Consortium (EERC).
