Hanmin Liu, Wildflowers InstituteHanmin, on the right above, is the president of Wildflowers Institute. Since 1996, he has been a trustee of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and was its chair from 2003 to 2005. For over a decade prior to becoming a Kellogg trustee, he was a consultant to the Foundation, first in health and then in monitoring and evaluating the work of the International Youth Foundation in five regions of the world.

Hanmin has also carried out strategic planning for Apple, the City of San Francisco, Intel, the Kellogg Company, Lotus, the Peace Corps, and the World Bank. He has served as honorary consultant to the Beijing Medical University, the Shanghai First People’s Hospital, and the Shanghai Mental Health Center, all in the People’s Republic of China. He is also a member of the Commonweal board of directors. Hanmin was invited to the 2013 CityLab Summit and the 2011 Aspen Italia Seminar, and he participated in the 2010 Aspen Executive Leadership Seminar. read more >

From 2008 to 2011, he joined scholars and practitioners from eleven countries for the Fetzer Institute–Woodrow Wilson Center seminar on community resilience. He was a 2009 scholar-
in-residence at the Center on Community Philanthropy, Clinton School of Public Service, University of Arkansas.

In 2006, the U.S. Patent Office awarded Hanmin a patent for Model-Building, “a system and
method for improving intra- and inter-cultural communications.” Hanmin is a 2006 Purpose Prize Fellow and has been a Gerbode Fellow since 2000. He received the 2006 Distinguished Professional Service Award from his under- graduate alma mater, The University of the Pacific.

In 1978, Hanmin founded the U.S.–China Educational Institute to organize leadership, scientific, and educational exchanges between North America and China. He organized a bilateral network of over four hundred fifty leaders and professionals dedicated to improving health, education, and youth services in the United States and China. From 1985 to 1989, he was a member of the Kellogg International Fellowship Program in Health’s steering committee at Michigan State University in East Lansing. In response to the 1989 Tiananmen Square crisis, the U.S.–China Educational Institute convened a binational forum in October 1990 that involved ministry-level government policy makers, national science advisors, and leaders of major scientific and health institutions in building over a half decade of scholarly exchanges between the two countries.

Hanmin earned a doctorate in philosophy from The Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities, Cincinnati, Ohio. He also earned a doctorate in dental surgery, graduating with honors, from
New York University’s School of Dentistry, New
York City.

 Jennifer Mei, Wildflowers InstituteJennifer, second from right above, oversees the administration and documentation projects at Wildflowers Institute. For more than thirty years, she has organized conferences, exchange programs, and site visits for over a thousand leaders, scholars, and community members from all over the world. Jennifer also develops written and video materials that tell the story of the strengths of communities and how they apply these strengths to grow and change over time.

In 2012 and 2013, Jennifer led a grassroots neighborhood effort of over five hundred residents to work on local projects, community improvements, and outreach to political leaders. Also in 2012, she organized a joint Aspen Institute–Wildflowers seminar for community leaders and funders on The American Dream: Community, Culture, and Change. Jennifer coordinated a conference of philanthropists and community leaders to present the social formation of the Ethiopian community in 2011, and she brought together diaspora leaders, funded by the Christensen Fund in 2010. read more >

Starting in 2009, Jennifer documented focus groups for the San Francisco Complete Count Committee on the 2010 Census. In 2007, Jennifer produced two video documentaries on Wildflowers communities: The Red Wolf Band, about an emerging community of indigenous people, and Journey to the Core, which dealt with the relocation of a refugee community from the highlands of Laos. The latter documentary was nominated for a 2008 Arpa International Film Festival award in Los Angeles.

Jennifer worked through family networks and facilitated a 2005 study funded by the Barr Foundation that explored the cultural preferences of Boston’s Chinatown in the design of open green space. In 2003, she also produced videos on the strengths of the African American and the Latino communities in East Palo Alto, funded by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Jennifer organized Studies 2000, a three-day seminar for ten of the largest national, regional, and local foundations, including Ford, Kellogg, Packard, and the California Endowment. For Studies 2000, she also oversaw the production of the 190-page report describing the institute’s research findings on the cultures of five Asian communities in Northern California.

Before beginning her work at Wildflowers Institute, Jennifer cofounded a community primary health care facility, the Min An Health Center, located in Upper Chinatown in San Francisco. Min An was the first of its kind to offer both Chinese and Western medicine, serving some four thousand patients for more than ten years.

Jennifer received a bachelor of arts degree in fine arts from New York University and a master of arts degree in education from San Francisco State University.