Advisory Management Committee

Kevin Hobgood-Brown AM is the Managing Director of Clay International Partners Pty Ltd, a corporate advisory firm focussed on investment and infrastructure projects involving Australia and China. Kevin was an international law firm partner where he had postings in Beijing, San Francisco, Taipei, and Sydney. Kevin was the Deputy Chair of the Australian government’s Australia-China Council from 2007 to 2013. He was the national President of the Australia China Business Council from 2005 through 2008. He is the Chair of the Advisory Board of the China Studies Centre of Sydney University. Kevin taught at the Law School of Beijing University from 1983-87. He is the Chair of the Foundation for Australian Studies in China (FASIC) which provides scholarships to Australian and Chinese post-graduate students and provides support to the 39 Australian Studies Centres located throughout China.

Simon Chan is the director and founder of Art Atrium. An architect and a passionate art collector for over 30 years, Simon’s long-standing interest in art led to the establishment of Art Atrium, an art gallery exhibiting contemporary Australian and Indigenous art in 2009.

Simon is the Chair of the VisAsia Committee at Art Gallery of NSW supporting and promoting Asian art and culture and a Council member of the Power Institute, Foundation for Art and Visual Culture at The University of Sydney. Simon is a Director and former Chair on the Board of the Aboriginal Benefits Foundation fundraising for various Aboriginal communities throughout Australia with a focus on art and culture. He is also a Director on the Foundation Board of the Australian National Maritime Museum.

Simon is active as a Board member of Multicultural NSW Advisory Board including his role as Chair of the Sydney South Regional Advisory Committee and he was appointed as a Board member of the NSW Government Geographical Names Board. Simon is also involved as a Committee Member of the NSW Government Chinese Garden of Friendship Advisory Committee, a Director on the Board of Contemporary Asian Australian Performance (CAAP) supporting and promoting Asian Australians in performing arts.

Simon has been involved in a broad range of community organisations including his role as President of Chinese Australian Forum (CAF. He is also the Immediate Past President of Haymarket Chamber of Commerce. He is also a Committee member of the Woollahra Council Cultural Committee and as a Community Ambassador at Art Gallery of NSW.

Simon was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to multiculturalism, to the Indigenous community, and to the arts in 2023.

Dr Minglu Chen is a senior lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations and a member of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. Her research concentrates on social and political change in China, especially the interaction between entrepreneurs and the state and women’s political participation. She has published her research in The China Quarterly, TheChina Journal and Journal of Contemporary China.

Min-Jung Kim is a Curator at the Powerhouse Museum (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences), where she has led the museum’s Asian arts program since 2007. Originally from South Korea, Kim has spent over two decades curating, researching, and interpreting East Asian art in Australia, with a strong focus on fostering cross-cultural understanding through innovative exhibition practices and scholarly engagement.

Her curatorial expertise spans a wide range of art forms, including Korean textiles, ceramics, and metalworks, as well as Japanese fashion and Chinese decorative arts. She has published and lectured extensively on museology and Asian material culture in Western museum contexts. Notable publications include Spirit of Jang-in: Treasures of Korean Metal Craft (2011)and Chinese Toggles: Culture in Miniature (co-edited, 2024).

Kim’s work is grounded in international collaboration and intercultural dialogue. Her exhibition Spirit of Jang-in (2011) received the ICOM Australia Award for International Relations in 2012, and she was a plenary speaker at the ICOM Kyoto conference (UNESCO) in 2019, where she spoke on the global significance of interpreting Asian art collections within Western museum contexts.

Selected exhibitions she has curated include Rapt in Colour (1998), Earth, Spirit, Fire (2000), Japanese Folds (2015), Reflections of Asia (2018), Five Hundred Arhats of Changnyeongsa Temple (2021), and Chinese Toggles: Culture in Miniature (2024). She currently serves on the committee of TAASA (The Asian Arts Society of Australia).

Kevin Yeoh is the Chief AI Strategist at Pinnacle Investment Management. From 2015 to 2025, he was an investor at MFS Investment Management. His career is distinguished by a commitment to in-depth, on-the-ground research across diverse global contexts – spanning Asia-Pacific markets to the US and Europe. He has lived and worked in Beijing, Hong Kong and Boston, and brings a nuanced understanding of global markets and cultural dynamics.

Kevin has extensive experience in corporate governance and strategy, having advised numerous listed company Boards. He’s previously worked at J Capital Research, where he provided strategic insights on China-related investments and also ran the finances of One Big Switch, a fast-growing internet startup. At AMP Capital, he was among the first Australian investors to invest directly in China’s A-share market. He began his career at Macquarie Group, focusing on credit and country risk management.

Kevin is also an accomplished pianist with an Associate Diploma in Music (AMusA), and enjoys the works of Rachmaninoff, Ravel and Falla.  He is a volunteer surf lifesaver at Dee Why Beach, holding a Silver Medallion.

Ariel Zhang is the Arts Initiatives Manager at Hope Charity Foundation (BHCF) and TWT Property Group in Sydney. She manages the Creative Precinct in St Leonards, where various cultural exchange programs run throughout the year. She also manages all corporate initiatives in supporting the art ecosystem, including public art projects for property development, TWT Excellence Prize for UNSW Art & Design Annual Exhibition, artist residency for locals and from China, art partnerships as well as the corporate art collection. Through BHCF’s major support for Big Anxiety Research Center, Ariel advocates for the power of art on improving people’s mental wellbeing.

Retired Member

Emeritus Professor Nicholas Jose has made tremendous contributions over the last three decades to cultural interactions between Australia and China, particularly in contemporary art and literature. He was Cultural Counsellor at the Australian Embassy Beijing from 1987-1990. His recent publications include, as co-editor, Everything Changes: Australian Writers and China - A transcultural anthology (2020) and Antipodean China: Reflections on Literary Exchange (2021).  He was pivotal in establishing the influential China Australia Literary Forum (CALF) in 2011, a biannual ongoing program between the China Writers Association and Western Sydney University, where he is now an adjunct professor in the Writing and Society Research Centre. He was Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University in 2009-10 and has taught at universities around the world, including Beijing Foreign Studies University and East China Normal University. He is now Emeritus Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide.

Professor Jose is also a highly esteemed writer, best known for his fiction and cultural essays. He has published seven novels. Avenue of Eternal Peace was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Prize in 1990 and adapted for television. The Custodians was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, South-East Asia, in 1997. A collection of his short fiction, Bapo, appeared in 2014. He was general editor of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature (2010). His research interests include Australian literature, literary translation, cross-cultural writing and contemporary Chinese art.