Our Team
Claire Zhou 周海祺
Claire Zhou (周海祺) is a Washington D.C.-based teacher trainer and language consultant, focusing on executive education. She has worked as a member of the Mandarin faculty for the U.S. Department of Commerce and as a member of the cross-cultural communication faculty for the Department of State in China.
Lu Li 李璐
Based on input from a number of Chinese language experts, lessons were developed and drafted by Professor Lu Li (李璐), Chinese language professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Professor Li was born in Nanjing, China and moved to the United States in 2009. She previously taught Chinese at the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins University, the China and Asia Pacific Studies (CAPS) at Cornell University, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and others. In China, she also taught Chinese at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Studies (IUP) at Tsinghua University in Beijing and trained Chinese educators at a teacher-training institution in Nanjing.
Nathaniel Ahrens 安耐德
Nathaniel Ahrens is the executive director of the American Mandarin Society and non-resident fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University SAIS. He was previously the Director of China Affairs for the University of Maryland. Prior to joining UMD, Ahrens was deputy director of the Hills Program on Governance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an adjunct fellow with the Freeman Chair in China Studies. In 2010 he was a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Ahrens worked for ten years in China in telecom software, sourcing, and running cruise ships on the Yangtze River. A member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, Ahrens holds a Master of International Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins SAIS, an A.B. from Vassar College, and studied at Beijing Language and Culture University from 1995-96.
Dorothy Behre 白莉
Dorothy Behre is a program manager at the American Mandarin Society. She runs the organization’s Chinese language education initiatives, focusing on the intersection of foreign language acquisition and public policy. Prior to joining AMS, Behre was a Chinese language translator and interpreter at the Harves Group. She studied and worked in Taiwan for 3 years, including as a Fulbright teacher. She graduated from Clemson University with a B.A. in Chinese and earned her M.A in International Communications at National Chengchi University in Taiwan.
Our curriculum was designed and developed with additional input and advice from a number of top Chinese language experts, including Robert Daly (former diplomat and American Director of the Hopkins Nanjing Center, now Kissinger Chair at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars), Christopher Beede (retired U.S. diplomat), Thomas Madden (retired, Foreign Service Institute), Rita Min Rui, Jeannette Dai-Wang, and Sha Zhu. A number of others who wish to remain anonymous also provided valuable feedback.
