Li Ling has served as Trustee of the Board of the Lingnan Foundation since December 2017. He is Senior Advisor - East Asia at the Open Society Foundations. From 2009 until September 2021, Ling directed the Luce Scholars Program, Henry Luce Foundation’s flagship fellowship program, and concurrently served in a grantmaking role for the Foundation’s Asia Program. Previously he served as the director of transnational initiatives at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and practiced law at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, both in New York. He also worked for the International Organization for Migration, a U.N. agency, as a program officer in its Geneva Headquarters and Washington, D.C. and Vienna Missions. A native of Wuhan, China, Ling studied at the Institute of International Relations in Beijing from 1988-1991 and returned to Beijing in 1996 to serve as the Special Assistant to the Bureau Chief of the New York Times. He has a B.A. in comparative literature from Brigham Young University, a master’s degree in international relations from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, and a J.D. from Columbia University Law School. Ling has translated books on art and literature for a Chinese audience, including The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa by Michael Kimmelman, and Confessions of a Young Novelist by Umberto Eco.
