On Thursday, July 26, Project Pengyou and the Beijing Energy Network co-hosted a summer meet and greet in Project Pengyou’s beautiful hutong courtyard. The happy hour/speaker series event attracted 60 + professionals, all with a common interest in understanding China’s environmental and social challenges.  Introductory remarks from seven seasoned environment and energy experts kicked off the evening, and was followed by smaller group discussions in a networking-style format. Attendees relished the opportunity to ask targeted questions with the public and private sector experts, and lively discussions about various aspects of the environmental sector filled our courtyard into the evening. Our distinguished experts included:

Yao Zhe– Strategic Climate Communications Officer of chinadialogue (中外对话)

Calvin Quek– Research Fellow at the Tsinghua University Finance & Development Center, Head of Greenpeace East Asia’s Sustainable Finance Program

Alvin Lin– Climate and Energy Policy Director for the China Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council

Zhang Yijun– Senior Program Manager at the Heyi Institute

Erica Huang– Founder of F2N Market (previously known as Farm to Neighbors),

Robert Earley– Founder of an environmental consulting company in Beijing

Nellie Wang– Operations Director at Innovative Green Development Program (iGDP)

Ding Ye– Fuel Consumption Regulation Senior Specialist at Daimler China 

Thank You!

We’d like to thank our co-organizer the Beijing Energy Network for making this event possible, our Project Pengyou team and volunteers for helping with setting up, our knowledgable speakers for their unique insights on the landscape of China’s environmental and social challenges, and our wonderful 60 + attendees. We hope to see you at future Project Pengyou and Bejing Energy Network events!

Co-Organizers

The Beijing Energy Network (BEN) is a professional network with a mission of promoting knowledge sharing, networking, and collaboration in understanding and tackling China’s energy and environmental challenges. The flagship activity of BEN is the Beijing Energy & Environmental Roundtable (BEER), an approximately twice-monthly happy hour/speaker series.

Project Pengyou (“Pengyou” means friend in Mandarin Chinese) is a flagship initiative of the Golden Bridges Foundation that fosters U.S.-China youth leadership. Project Pengyou’s mission is to empower and mobilize a rising generation of U.S.-China bridgebuilders to bring about a world that embraces diverse cultures and shared humanity. Conceived in 2011 as a public-private partnership with the State Department to build a global community of Americans with firsthand China experience, Project Pengyou has since trained over 200 youth leaders and launched over 80 Project Pengyou campus chapters across the United States to empower young Americans and Chinese to serve as active U.S.-China bridge-builders. Backed by funding from the Ford Foundation, Project Pengyou chapters organize events and national U.S.-China youth campaigns, with a growing footprint in coastal and interior states, including New York, California, Kentucky, and Iowa. In addition, Project Pengyou maintains a dynamic online resource hub with over 7,000 members, and hundreds of China related jobs, events and exchange programs.