Janet Yang, the film producer who served three terms as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, has been tapped to serve as chairwoman of the board of Committee of 100, a nonprofit organization made up of distinguished Chinese Americans, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
C100, which was founded in 1990 by architect I.M. Pei, musician Yo-Yo Ma and other prominent Chinese Americans, aims to strengthen U.S.-China relations and challenge the treatment of Chinese Americans as foreigners rather than full participants in American life. Yang, a C100 member since 1998, succeeds Gary Locke, the former governor of Washington state and former U.S. Ambassador to China, who led the organization for the past five years.
Yang, 69, the Queens-born daughter of Chinese immigrants, majored in Chinese at Brown University and earned an MBA from Columbia University. She broke into showbiz by connecting key players in the Chinese and Hollywood film industries, helping to make possible films like Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun. She then became a producer in her own right, accumulating credits including The Joy Luck Club, The People vs. Larry Flynt and Over the Moon, and winning an Emmy for the TV film Indictment: The McMartin Trial.
