Board Member

Paul Chen (陈扬洋) was born in Chengdu, and immigrated to Norfolk, VA, as a teenager. Paul works at a global Web3 company, collaborating with founders to 10x their growth on the blockchain towards building an open, immutable and more anti-fragile financial system.  

Before that, Paul was the CEO and cofounder of a Silicon Valley venture-backed startup. Paul did not succeed with this endeavor but learned a ton. He documented his learning as a series of blogs here.

Before launching his startup, Paul served on the global technology investment team with Alibaba Group. At Alibaba, Paul traveled across North America, Asia, and Europe to invest in transformative leaders in Big Data, AI, quantum computing and other emerging technologies. He received a joint degree from Stanford Graduate School of Business (MBA) and Harvard Kennedy School of Government (MPA), where Paul co-led the graduate fellowships. During that time, Paul served on the Student Board of Believers in Business, the nation’s largest Christian MBA conference. At UVA, Paul studied Math and Economics. He did his undergraduate thesis with Professor Ken Elzinga and was in Ken’s discipleship group.      

The Study Center shaped Paul’s moral compass which continues to guide him today. The organic conversations, free coffee and printing, study space, and encouragement to think deeply about the Christian faith that he found at the Study Center were life-giving to Paul. He is married to Wanxin, who is also from Chengdu and graduated from Harvard College with a concentration in history.

Paul is also a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.