Travis Tanner

Travis N. Tanner is a member of the Board of Advisors at the National Bureau of Asian Research.

Mr. Tanner is the Beijing-based Senior Vice President of GreenPoint Group.

Mr. Tanner assists clients based on two decades of experience conducting research and analysis, briefing policymakers, directing programs, and building bridges between Chinese and U.S. government, corporate, academic, and non-profit communities.

Previously Mr. Tanner served as President of the U.S.-China Strong Foundation, an offshoot of the Obama administration’s “100,000 Strong Initiative,” a public-private partnership designed to equip the future generation of leaders with the knowledge and skills to engage productively with China. Mr. Tanner established and directed the Foundation’s operations in China and drove engagement with key stakeholders and partners including Chinese and U.S. government officials, business leaders, academic institutions, media outlets, philanthropists, and students.

Mr. Tanner worked for over a dozen years in the think tank industry conducting research projects examining a wide range of policy issues facing the U.S.-China relationship, including China’s intellectual property, technology standards and innovation policy, China’s military development, and U.S.-China people-to-people exchange. He previously served as Senior Project Director at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) and Director of NBR’s Kenneth B. and Anne H.H. Pyle Center for Northeast Asian Studies. He was Deputy Director and Assistant Director of the Chinese Studies Program at the Center for the National Interest (formerly the Nixon Center) in Washington, D.C. He also worked as a Research Assistant at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Mr. Tanner is the author, contributing author, or co-editor of numerous publications on the strategic, economic and political dimensions of the U.S.-China relationship, including co-editor of five volumes of NBR’s Strategic Asia series and U.S.-China Relations in Strategic Domains (Routledge, 2020). Mr. Tanner has also been featured in major media outlets in the U.S. and China.

Mr. Tanner is the recipient of the Doak A. Barnett and Hassenfeld Fellowships and received his M.A. in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University – SAIS and the Hopkins-Nanjing Center and his B.A. in Chinese language and literature from the University of Utah. Mr. Tanner is member of NBR’s Advisory Board, a Tsinghua University Schwarzman College Industry Mentor, and member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. He has also served as a leader in the Boy Scouts of America for over 20 years.

Mr. Tanner is fluent in Portuguese and Mandarin Chinese. He and his wife, Amy, and two of their four children, Josephine, and Vivian enjoy living in Beijing.