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21st Century China Center Senior Fellows

The center’s Senior Fellows Program connects leading professionals and experts on China—based in San Diego and around the world—with our students, alumni, faculty, and community. The program brings fresh perspectives from academia, business, government, military, media and civil society into dialogue with research and teaching at the 21st Century China Center.

Senior Fellows enrich the center’s work by:

  • Partnering with faculty on projects related to China and U.S.-China relations
  • Mentoring students, both in and outside the classroom
  • Sharing expertise through public programs and community events
  • Engaging with UC San Diego and regional stakeholders on issues of mutual concern

Current Fellows

  • Sarah Beran

    Sarah Beran

    Sarah Beran is a partner at Macro Advisory Partners (MAP). Prior to her position at MAP, Beran had a distinguished 23-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service, most recently serving as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and as Senior Director for China and Taiwan Affairs at the White House National Security Council. As the principal advisor to the President and National Security Advisor on China and Taiwan (2022-2024), her portfolio encompassed technology export controls, investment screening, trade policy, counternarcotics, Russia sanctions and Taiwan contingency planning. She led strategic preparations for multiple heads-of-state summits, negotiated the reopening of senior diplomatic channels with Beijing, and helped forge the first U.S.-China understanding on AI safety in the context of nuclear command and control. Over the course of her career in the U.S. Foreign Service, Beran also served as former U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s Deputy Executive Secretary for the Indo-Pacific, led the office responsible for U.S. engagement in APEC and served as former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Director of the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs. She speaks Mandarin, Spanish and Arabic.
  • Rick Waters

    Rick Waters

    Rick Waters is senior director for the Indo-Pacific at Exxon Mobil. He joined the corporation after a 27-year career that culminated in his role as the U.S. State Department’s top China policy official. In that role, he oversaw the creation of the Office of China Coordination, informally known as the China House, and concurrently served as deputy assistant secretary of state for China and Taiwan. He also held multiple roles at the U.S. embassy in Beijing, including during the period between the accidental U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade (1999) and the Hainan Island incident (2001). After retiring from government service, Waters served as managing director for Northeast Asia at the Eurasia Group, a global geopolitical risk practice, and as director of Carnegie China.

Past Fellows

  • Loren Brandt

    Loren Brandt

    Loren Brandt is the Noranda Chair Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto specializing in the Chinese economy. He is also a research fellow at The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. He has published widely on the Chinese economy in leading economic journals and been involved in extensive household and enterprise survey work in both China and Vietnam. With Thomas Rawski, he co-edited "Policy, Regulation, and Innovation in China’s Electricity and Telecom Industries" (Cambridge University Press, 2019), an interdisciplinary effort analyzing the effect of government policy on the power and telecom sectors in China. He was also co-editor and major contributor to "China’s Great Economic Transformation" (Cambridge University Press, 2008), which provides an integrated analysis of China’s unexpected economic boom during the first three decades of economic reform. His current research focuses on issues of industrial upgrading and innovation, economic growth and structural change, and inequality dynamics.