Justina Wong

Justina Wong will be a second-year M.A. student at SAIS, concentrating in Southeast Asia Studies and International Economics. Born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, she graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in government in 2004. During college, she directed Chinatown Afterschool, a social service program for underprivileged youth. The program was close to her heart since her own parents immigrated from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Justina discovered her passion for international relations during an internship at the U.S. Department of State in the summer of 2003. She researched issues related to conflict, human rights, and governance in Southeast Asia. Awarded a Harvard University-Yenching Institute Fellowship, she studied international politics and PRC foreign policy at Peking University in China from 2004-2005. She spent the spring backpacking overland through Yunnan province in southern China and Southeast Asia.

Prior to starting SAIS, Justina spent a rewarding two and a half years (2005-2008) as program associate to the executive vice president at the Asia Society, an international non-profit organization headquartered in New York, working to promote U.S.-Asia relations. She traveled to Korea, India, Mongolia, Singapore, and Thailand to support the Asia 21 Young Leaders Initiative and high-level policy meeting the Williamsburg Conference, where she wrote and published two conference reports.

Justina speaks proficient Mandarin Chinese and novice-level Indonesian. In the fall of 2008, she interned for the U.S. Department of Treasury in the Office of East Asia and Southeast Asia, International Affairs. She spent the summer of 2009 working at Mercy Corps in Indonesia. She conducted an urban poverty assessment based on the slums in North Jakarta and other second-tiered cities. Justina plans to pursue a career in development and policy upon graduation.