Prof./Dr. Syaru Shirley Lin

Syaru Shirley Lin is Research Professor at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. She is also an Adjunct Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Professor Lin chairs the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation (CAPRI), a new policy think tank conducting interdisciplinary, comparative research on innovative policies that can strengthen resilience and improve governance in the Asia Pacific. Her book, Taiwan’s China Dilemma, was published in English by Stanford University Press and in Chinese by Business Weekly. She is currently working on the high income trap in East Asia. Professor Lin graduated cum laude from Harvard College and earned her masters and Ph.D. from the department of politics and public administration at the University of Hong Kong.  

Prof. Lin was the youngest woman partner as well as one of the first Asian partners of Goldman Sachs & Co., where she led the Principal Investment Area for Asia ex-Japan. In that capacity, she spearheaded the firm’s investments in many technology start-ups and was a founding board member of Alibaba Group and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. Prior to her work in private equity and venture capital, she specialized in the privatization of state-owned enterprises in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore. 

Professor Lin’s present board service includes Langham Hospitality Investments, Goldman Sachs Asia Bank, TE Connectivity and MediaTek. She is also a director of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, which supports the development and adoption of new therapeutic medical technologies, and an advisor to the O’Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism and Structural Discrimination and Global Health.