Officers

Dr. Desai is the sixth President and CEO of Asia Society, a leading global organization committed to strengthening partnerships among the people, leaders, and institutions of Asia and the United States. Founded by John D. Rockefeller 3rd in 1956, Asia Society is the premier organization with a unique focus on three-dimensional engagement—combining culture, commerce, and current affairs—with more than 35 countries in Asia. Appointed President in 2004, Dr. Desai sets the direction for the Society's diverse sets of programs ranging from major US-Asia policy initiatives and national educational partnerships for global learning to path-breaking art exhibitions and innovative Asian American performances.

Dr. Desai is a frequent speaker at national and international forums on a wide variety of subjects that include US-Asia relationships, cultural roots of Asian economic development, regional connections within the Asia Pacific region, as well as the arts and cultures of Asia and Asian America. She has authored many opinion pieces that have appeared in over 50 publications around the world. As scholar of Asian art, Dr. Desai has published and edited several books and numerous articles on traditional and contemporary art. She has an international reputation for introducing contemporary Asian art in the US through critically acclaimed exhibitions and scholarly catalogues. Under her leadership, Asia Society has expanded the scope and scale of its activities, including the opening of new offices in India and Korea, the inauguration of a new center on US-China relations, and the development of new initiatives focusing on the environment, on Asian women leaders, and on partnerships among the next generation of exceptional leaders in Asia and the United States.

Prior to assuming her current position as President, Dr. Desai held several positions at Asia Society, first as Director of its Museum, and then as Vice President for Arts and Cultural Programs and as Senior Vice President of the Society. Before joining Asia Society in 1990, Dr. Desai was a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the head of Public Programs and Academic Affairs. She has also taught at the University of Massachusetts, Boston University, Columbia University, and Williams College.

Dr. Desai holds a B.A. in Political Science from Bombay University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Asian Art History from the University of Michigan. The recipient of numerous international and national grants and fellowships, Dr. Desai has received honorary degrees from Susquehanna University, College of Staten Island, and Centre College. For her work on Asian American issues, she has received awards from the University of Massachusetts, City University of New York, and Asian Americans for Equality. For her leadership in the arts, she has been honored by ArtTable, a national organization of women leaders in the arts, and has received a Gold Medal from the National Institute of Social Sciences. Dr. Desai was selected by Crain's New York as one of the "100 most powerful women leaders" in New York, by India Abroad, the leading national weekly for Indian Americans, as one the "50 most distinguished Indian Americans," and was honored by Zee T.V. (India) as the outstanding International Woman of the Year.

Dr. Desai serves on the boards of the Brookings Institution, Citizens Committee for New York City, Asian University for Women, and the New York City Mayor's Advisory Commission for Cultural Affairs. She served as the President of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) in 1998-99, and was on the Board from 1995-2000. She has also served on the boards of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, LEAP (Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics), the South Asian Council of the Association of Asian Studies, the College Art Association, ArtTable, and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities.

Dr. Desai is married to Robert B. Oxnam, a China scholar, who was Asia Society's President from 1981 to 1992.

Jamie Metzl is Executive Vice President of Asia Society. He is responsible for overseeing the institution's strategic directions and overall program activities globally.

An expert on Southeast Asian history and politics, Dr. Metzl has extensive government experience, including service in the White House, the Department of State, and the US Senate. In 2004, he ran unsuccessfully for the US House of Representatives from Missouri's Fifth Congressional District in Kansas City.

Dr. Metzl's government appointments have included Deputy Staff Director and Senior Counselor of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senior Coordinator for International Public Information and Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the Department of State, and Director for Multilateral and Humanitarian Affairs on the National Security Council. At the White House, he coordinated US government international public information campaigns for Iraq, Kosovo, and other crises. A Khmer speaker, he was a Human Rights Officer for the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) from 1991 to 1993, where he helped establish a nation-wide human rights investigation and monitoring unit for Cambodia.

Dr. Metzl has appeared widely on national media, including Meet the Press and the Today show. The author of a book on human rights in Southeast Asia, he has been featured in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and many other publications. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Founder and Co-Chair of the Board of the Partnership for a Secure America, a former White House Fellow, and a former Aspen Institute Crown Fellow. He holds a Ph.D. in Southeast Asian history from Oxford University, a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School, and is a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University.

Dr. Metzl has completed four ironman triathlons and 20 marathons. His novel The Depths of the Sea was published by St. Martin's Press in May 2004.

Anthony Jackson is Vice President for Education at Asia Society. He also leads Asia Society's Partnership for Global Learning (PGL), a national membership network of practitioners and policymakers dedicated to integrating knowledge about Asia and the world as a mainstay of American education. Over the past six years, he has led the development of Asia Society's International Studies Schools Network, an effort within the PGL to create a network of small, effective, internationally-themed secondary schools across the country.

Before joining Asia Society, he was a Director of the Walt Disney Company's Disney Learning Partnership, where he designed and oversaw the Creative Learning Communities network of reforming elementary schools. Dr. Jackson, trained in both developmental psychology and education, is one of the nation’s leading experts on secondary school reform and adolescent development.

After a stint on Capitol Hill as a Congressional Science Fellow he became a senior staff member on the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, chaired by George Miller (D-CA). Dr. Jackson later directed the Carnegie Corporation Task Force on the Education of Young Adolescents that produced the seminal Turning Points report, which became a key blueprint for the reform of thousands of middle schools nationwide.

While at Carnegie Corporation he created and directed the Turning Points network of over 250 middle schools that operated in 15 states, as well as in Los Angeles and New York City. He also co-authored the follow-up blueprint Turning Points 2000, which transformed many of the design principles in the original report into concrete action steps for new and reconstituted secondary schools. Many urban districts are now using Turning Points 2000 to guide secondary school reform initiatives.

In 2004, Teachers College Press published the latest book Dr. Jackson co-authored, entitled Making the Most of Middle School: A Field Guide for Parents and Others. While at Carnegie, Dr. Jackson also directed an inter-group relations program and research network that led to the design of model inter-cultural school and community programs.

Don Nagle joined the Asia Society in July 2007 as Chief Financial Officer. In May 2009 his responsibilities were expanded to include administrative oversight of the Society, including its Centers in Asia and the US, its Human Resources, IT, and planning functions, and the running of the organization's headquarters building in New York City. Additionally, he is responsible for managing the institution's financial affairs, including accounting, budgeting, forecasting, and controls.

Prior to joining Asia Society, Mr. Nagle spent most of his career at Kraft Foods, leading the financial organization for several of its businesses. During his nearly three decades with the company, he developed extensive operating experience managing financial organizations through significant business change. Over the years, Mr. Nagle has augmented his corporate experience with service on several
boards, including an inner city social services agency, where he focused on improving financial infrastructure and resources. He began his career in the mid-1970s with AFS-USA, the international student exchange organization.

Mr. Nagle earned an MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia and holds a BA from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in Economics and International Relations.

Dr. Melissa Chiu is Director of the Asia Society Museum in New York and Vice President of the Society's Global Arts Programming. She was appointed director in 2004 after serving for three years as the Museum's first curator of contemporary Asian and Asian American art. As a leading authority on Asian contemporary art, she has initiated a number of major initiatives at the Asia Society Museum, including the launch of a contemporary art collection to complement the museum's outstanding Rockefeller Collection of traditional Asian art.

Chiu, who is a frequent lecturer and commentator in the news media, is a visiting professor at the CUNY Graduate School. She has spoken at numerous American universities, including Harvard University. She was a Getty Research Fellow (2003-2004) and has served on grant and policy advisory committees for: the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Chiu is a member of the Academic Advisory Board, Asia Art Archives, Hong Kong; Advisory Board, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Vancouver; Advisor for Art 21, an art television series broadcast on PBS; Board Member, Vietnam Foundation for the Arts; and is a founding member of the Asian Contemporary Art Consortium in New York, a group serving the interests of Asian art and culture at the world's leading museums and galleries. She is an active member of the American Association of Art Museum Directors.

She has served as an Editor for Asian contemporary art, The Grove Dictionary of Art, published by Oxford University Press, London and New York, and is the author and editor of many books, monographs, and anthologies, among them books on the Chinese contemporary artist Zhang Huan and a co-authored work on the art of the Cultural Revolution published by Yale University Press in 2008. Her most recent scholarly book, Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China (Charta, 2007), focuses on the international Chinese artistic diaspora.

Prior to joining Asia Society, Chiu was Founding Director of the Asia-Australia Arts Centre in Sydney, Australia (1996–2001). She earned her Ph.D in Art History and M.A. in Arts Administration in her native Australia.