Management Committee
Chapter 26
The Global Team & Advisors
at Whittle School & Studios, where she managed a team of 30 members in the US and China (including 4 CPAs, 2 hedge fund managers, a nuclear energy scientist, a physicist, Ivy League admission officers, and a presidential special assistant!). She led the creation of Whittle’s 1,000-student campus in Shenzhen. In her spare time, believing students should not be judged on mere academic excellence, she cofounded a multi-city art organization. Education: Columbia University, MPA; Beijing Foreign Language University, MA and BA Languages: Mandarin, English Birthplace: Nanjing, China Lived in: China, United States Special Book: The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage , Todd Gitlin
in New York City. She is right at home in Basel, Hong Kong, Miami, FIAC in Paris, or MACO in Mexico City. As President of Baret Scholars, she will be the creative spirit of the organization, leading the team charged with developing every aspect of the Baret Scholars experience. Her mandate includes production of The Morning Program. Education: The New School, BA Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, English Birthplace: Mexico City Lived in: Mexico, Switzerland, France, England, United States, Spain, Brazil Special Book: Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch , Henry Miller
LI JING, CEO BASED: BEIJING
ALEXANDRA GARCIA, PRESIDENT BASED: MEXICO CITY
IN JULY of 2022, Chris Whittle, the ear- liest (and by far the oldest!) member of our founding team, penned Version 1 of the plan for Baret Scholars. Its early, de- scriptive code name was GlobalGap. Two years later, there are 38 of us full time, along with 3 important advisors. We came together one by one, meeting for the first time face-to-face as a full group at a plan- ning retreat in İstanbul in the past sum- mer of 2023. Though serendipity played a role in how we met, the organizational design of Baret Scholars was intentional and careful. From inception, we knew that trust in us and in our international expe- riences would be the core of our appeal to students and their families. We knew the only way to manage our global opera- tional requirements was by mirroring the multi-cultural mission of Baret. Our strength comes from the warp and weft of our differences and commonalities. Not one of us grew up in the same city. A dream come true for Zoom, today we live in 12 cities and hail from 14 differ- ent countries. Rivaling an Emirates flight crew, we speak 17 languages, including a couple of dead ones, and we are learning many more. Our careers are a mosaic of art and construction, television and in- vestment banking, publishing and fash- ion, education and cosmetics, consulting and engineering–we even have a budding psychoanalyst.
What binds us together is a belief in the Baret mission: that today’s cultural literacy is only achieved by knowing both your home country and the wider world. All of us are internationalists, having lived and worked in an average of 3 countries. As a group, we’ve been fortunate to see the transforming effects of powerful ed- ucation. Amongst us are graduates of the world’s most highly regarded universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, and Stanford. We’ve not just gone to strong educational institutions, but founded and managed them too, including large and admired schools in NYC, Shenzhen, Lahore, and São Paulo. And we’ve been professionally honed by leading global companies such as J. P. Morgan, Bain, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Lazard, and BCG. As collaborative as we are, there is a competitive streak in Baret too. Our team sports national and college level athletes in tennis, swimming and golf. Meet us below and watch, by further announcements, as we grow to over 50 in the months ahead, all to support our Baret Scholars.
Twenty years after she taught her first English class at China’s most renowned high school, Renda Fuzhong (RDFZ) in Beijing, students of that class still call her for all manner of advice, whether they should marry, take a post, or move to another city. To them, she will always be “Laoshi,” translated as “old teacher,” no matter one’s age, as a show of respect. And teaching will always be at the heart of her career. She rose quickly at RDFZ: by her mid- 20s she managed its extensive international connections, including its membership in G30, the organization of the top 30 schools in the world. She created and oversaw more than 40 outbound and inbound international programs to 30+ country destinations annually for its 4,600+ student body. Soon she was recruited to become Secretary General for China's most highly regarded bilingual school, YK Pao School in Shanghai. And, then, on to a global leadership role
With a mother who was the Rhonda in The Beach Boys hit “Help Me Rhonda” and a stepfather who was twice Mexico’s Ambassador to the United Nations, the easy path would have been to become a diplomat (or groupie!). She chose the world of art. For 20 years, Alexandra has broadened access to art as an editor and publisher of over 100 art titles; she’s been the artistic director of several leading international galleries and curator of important art exhibitions. She’s held publisher or editor positions at Turner Libros and A&R Press. In São Paulo, she co- founded and was Artistic Director of Associação para o Patronato Contemporâneo and was Artistic Director for Galeria Nara Roesler. For the 2015 Venice Biennale, she produced the monumental Dansekwa and Lee Ufan exhibition. Alexandra opened the first Latin American gallery, Galeria Nara Roesler,
jing.li@baretscholars.org
alexandra.garcia @baretscholars.org
If you’re interested in joining our Global Team, reach out to us at info@baretscholars. org for more information.
138 BARET SCHOLARS
139 THE BARET TEAM & ADVISORS
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