Janet Yang

An Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning Hollywood producer, Yang is currently the President of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Yang has worked with some of the most formidable directors and actors in the world. She came to prominence through her collaboration with Steven Spielberg on Empire of the Sun (Warner Bros). That was followed by a long partnership with multiple Academy Award-winner Oliver Stone—where she served as Executive Producer on the iconic The Joy Luck Club (Disney), and as a Producer on the Golden Globe-winning The People vs. Larry Flynt (Columbia Pictures).

Her most recent credit is as an Executive Producer on the Oscar-nominated animated feature, Over the Moon. Based on her original story, the film was directed by legendary animator Glen Keane and released on Netflix in 2020.

Among her many other credits are: the Sundance award-winning Dark Matter with Meryl Streep; The Weight of Water (Lionsgate) directed by Academy Award winner Kathryn Bigelow with Academy award winner Sean Penn; Fox’s High Crimes with Morgan Freeman; a Chinese adaptation of the acclaimed Disney franchise High School Musical; cult favorites Zero Effect, by Jake Kasdan, and Shanghai Calling with China Film Group.

Yang has been named one of the “50 Most Powerful Women in Hollywood” by the Hollywood Reporter.

Yang began her career by running the first distribution company to market Chinese films into North America. She also brokered the reintroduction of American cinema to the Chinese marketplace on behalf of several studios after a decades-long hiatus.

Committed to fostering global understanding, Yang is a cofounder of Gold House, the non-profit collective of influential Asian cultural leaders; a long-standing member of the Committee of 100, an organization of the most prominent Chinese-Americans; and an advisory board member of Asia Society Southern California where she also chairs its highly regarded US-Asia Entertainment Summit.

Yang has been featured in The New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Variety, South China Morning Post, Harper’s Bazaar, as well as on numerous television and radio shows across the US and Asia such as NPR, CCTV and Beijing TV. She is frequently asked to consult on projects and sought after for public speaking engagements.

Yang is the first Asian American to have a pillar dedicated to her inside the Renzo Piano- designed Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Yang holds a B.A. from Brown University in Chinese studies and an M.B.A. from Columbia University. She was appointed as a Presidential Fellow at Loyola Marymount University and recently awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree in Humane Letters from Bowdoin College.

For more information, please visit: www.janetyang.com