By 2010, China and Japan will rank as the world’s second and third largest economies. To meet this challenge and compete in a global marketplace, Suffolk University and Barbara and Richard M. Rosenberg ’52 are pleased to announce the inauguration of a world-class Institute for East Asian Studies.

The Rosenberg Institute will serve as Suffolk’s lead platform for learning from and about East Asian history, economics, politics, and peoples. Each year, the Institute will promote exchanges among scholars, business leaders, analysts, faculty, and students through a series of two to three seminars addressing vital topics in the field.

We are proud to invite you to join us on Tuesday, April 8, for the first of these seminars, Competing in Beijing: China and the 2008 Olympics, for an intensive conversation about the risks, challenges, and opportunities presented to China and the world on the eve of this historic moment. Please scroll down to read the bios of our speakers and moderators.

The event takes place at The State Room, 60 State St., Boston. For questions and to register, please contact Andrea Kerr at 617-573-8451 or akerr@suffolk.edu.

11:30 a.m.
Registration and Poster Session

12:00 - 1:20 p.m.
Luncheon & Keynote
2008 Beijing Olympics: China’s Watershed and Beyond
Keynote Speaker: Robyn Meredith, Senior Editor, Asia, Forbes

Q & A
 
1:20 - 1:45 p.m.
Break

1:45 - 2:45 p.m.
Session I — Theme: Environment
Preparing for the Olympics: Will the Clean-up Last?
Moderator:  Michéle B. Corash, Partner, Morrison & Foerster

Q & A

2:45 - 3:00 p.m.
Break 
   
3:00 –  4:00 p.m.
Session II — Theme: Marketing/Consumerism 
Communicating in China: Lost in Translation?
Moderator: Anders Bengtsson, Assistant Professor of   Marketing, Sawyer Business School
Speaker: Sandy Posa, former Senior Vice President of New Products, The Gillette Company

4:00 – 4:15 p.m.
Break

4:15 – 5:15 p.m.
Session III — Economy
China’s Economy is not a Zero-Sum
Speaker: George Koo, Director, Chinese Services Group, Deloitte & Touche

Q & A

5:15 p.m.
Closing reception with attendees and speakers

Speaker and Moderator Biographies

Dr. Anders Bengtsson is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Suffolk University. He was previously on the faculty at University of Southern Denmark and was a post doctoral researcher at Lund University, Sweden. He has also taught at Hong Kong Baptist University. Dr. Bengtsson received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Marketing from Lund University. His research focuses on brands and consumer culture and has appeared in Consumption, Markets and Culture, Journal of Product and Brand Management, Advances in Consumer Research, and Industrial Marketing Management. Dr. Bengtsson is a leading expert on brands and consumer culture in China. He has conducted extensive fieldwork there, studying how Chinese consumers learn how to appreciate and socially construct brands. Dr. Bengtsson teaches Global Branding, Marketing Communication, and Consumer Behavior to both graduate and undergraduate students. He has been quoted widely in the Scandinavian media such as The National Danish Broadcasting and the Daily Media in Sweden. He has also consulted with leading companies such as Dunkin’ Brands, Orifarm and Scandinavian Tobacco Company on their branding strategies.

Michèle Corash is a partner in the firm’s environmental law practice group. She served as General Counsel of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 1979 to 1982 and previously as Deputy General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Energy and special assistant to the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.
Ms. Corash represents companies on a broad range of state, national, and international environmental issues and claims regarding exposure to toxic substances. She works regularly with government agencies and legislatures in the development and implementation of environmental laws and programs. She has defended clients in numerous enforcement and private actions brought under state and federal environmental and toxics laws and has also brought and defended cost recovery actions. She defended one of California’s largest environmental criminal actions. She helped draft the original Superfund statute in 1980, and many of the federal regulations under the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and Resources Conservation and Recovery Acts.
Another significant component of her practice has been actions brought under state consumer and competition protection statutes, including false advertising and false claims statutes. Ms. Corash is considered one of the nation’s leading experts on Proposition 65 and has defended hundreds of cases under that law, including Dowhal v. SmithKline that resulted is a unanimous California Supreme Court decision for her client.
Ms. Corash is again recommended by the 2007 Chambers USA and is selected annually for listing in Best Lawyers in America as a leader in the field of environmental law. She is named as the country’s #1 environmental lawyer on the “Top Ten Lawyers for Environmental Law,” US Lawyer Rankings 2007 . California Lawyer Magazine cited her as one of the “Best of the West” lawyers because of landmark wins in two environmental court decisions. She is listed among Northern California’s top 50 female Super Lawyers, as well as top 100 overall. For the last five years she has been named to the Top California Women Litigators List by the Daily Journal . Ms. Corash was listed in Euromoney Legal Media Group’s “The Best of the Best.” (Euromoney’s LMG identifies the world’s leading 20 practitioners across 10 areas of law based on peer nomination.)

George Koo has specialized since 1978 in helping American companies enter China and, later, helping Asian companies find strategic partners in the United States. He advises clients on strategic and tactical issues prior to establishing a local presence in China and assists them with cultural communications and negotiations.
He has presented many workshops on doing business in Asia and on cross-cultural communication and has written articles and addressed numerous public forums on these subjects. George was born in China and is fluent in Mandarin.
He earned an M.B.A. from Santa Clara University, an Sc.D. in Chemical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology and Bachelors and Masters degrees in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Robyn Meredith is Senior Editor, Asia for Forbes Magazine, based in Hong Kong. She has written cover stories on General Motors, Microsoft, Toyota, Li & Fung, and Infosys. Ms. Meredith joined Forbes as its Detroit Bureau Manager in April 2000 to write about the auto industry. One of her Forbes articles was included in the 2002 Edition of the book The Best Business Stories of the Year.
From January 1996 until April 2000, Ms. Meredith was a Detroit correspondent for The New York Times, where she covered the auto industry and other Midwestern news. She spent the 1998-1999 academic year as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan Business School. Ms. Meredith wrote for USA Today as a business reporter in 1995. She spent the previous two years as a reporter in the Washington bureau of the American Banker newspaper, where her reporting exposed a pattern of insider deals at savings and loans that led to four Congressional hearings and an overhaul of U.S. banking regulations governing initial public offerings.
Ms. Meredith, 39, received a B.A. degree, cum laude, from Boston University in 1990. She is the author of The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What it Means for All of Us, published by W.W. Norton, and available on Amazon.com.

Sandy Posa has over 25 years of strong domestic and international business leadership experience with a repeated record of success in growing revenue and profits.  This experience spans the areas of consumer packaged goods, digital imaging technology and financial software.  Sandy began his career with Quaker Oats Company where he was Vice President of Marketing for both the Golden Grain and Cereals Divisions.  At Kraft General Foods, after several marketing positions, he was President of the All American Gourmet Division and Executive Vice President for Corporate New Products.  After four years as COO and President of the Consumer Imaging Division at Polaroid Corporation, he led the successful turnaround of MediBank, Inc., a provider of debit card solutions for the employee benefits industry.  Most recently, Sandy was Vice President for New Product Development of the Blades and Razors Division of Gillette Company.  Sandy has a B.S. in Economics from Brown University and an M.B.A. in Marketing and Finance from the University of Chicago.

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