Shawn Shieh has 15 years of experience working to strengthen civil society and social movements in China and the Asia-Pacific. In 2018, he founded Social Innovations Advisory, Ltd. (SIA), a consultancy dedicated to building a resilient civil society in China and the global South. SIA has been partnering with other organizations to explore strategies and models for sustaining civil society and movements in closed spaces such as China, and helping civil society respond to China’s growing global influence.
Shieh is also a Research Associate at the Overseas Development Institute, a Research Fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a contributor to Rights CoLab, a member of the Governance Circle of Innovation for Change-East Asia, and a long-time consultant for the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law. He was previously the Deputy Director of China Labour Bulletin in Hong Kong, and Founder and Director of the English-language operations for China Development Brief, China’s only bilingual platform covering civil society and philanthropy.
Shieh received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University and was a professor of Political Science at Marist College from 1995 to 2009. He has written and published extensively on civil society, corruption, and government-business relations in China and has maintained a blog on NGOs in China since 2009.
