Annie S.C. Wu is the founder of the Beijing Air Catering Company and two decades of involvement with Carleton Off-Campus Programs, particularly the Beijing Seminar led by Professor Roy Grow. She is a pioneer of the Chinese-Hong air catering industry. In 1980, she established the first joint venture company in Mainland China, namely Beijing Air Catering Limited. Today, she is the Vice-Chairman or Managing Director of more than 15 joint venture air catering and services companies in the Mainland. She is one of the 11 founders of the Hong Kong Federation of Women, and Chairman of The Chinese History and Culture Educational Foundation For Youth and the Hong Kong Soong Ching Ling Children’s Foundation Limited. Dr. Wu is now a Member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. She received HKSAR’s Silver Bauhinia Star in 1999. It is on the pure philanthropic side that Dr. Wu’s impact has been felt most dramatically. She heads the large family foundation that distributes funds across Asia. This foundation has established a series of schools across Hong Kong and China, has sponsored thousands of young Hong Kong children for study and travel in the People’s Republic of China, and has worked tirelessly to promote educational opportunity in western China and Tibet. For almost two decades she has been essential support for our off-campus studies programs. Dr. Wu has opened doors for Carleton and paved the way through complex Beijing bureaucracies. She has hired numerous Carleton students to work in China — in her schools, to become members of her philanthropic organizations, to participate in her development projects in western China and, most recently, to help with a women’s project in Tibet. Today, perhaps 25-30 former Carleton students are currently working and living in Asia, and another 25-30 are working in Asia-related fields here in the States. Dr. Wu, in no small measure, is responsible for building one of the strongest and most transited bridges between Northfield and China.
Text of her Commencement Speech
Audio of her Commencement Speech