txteagle is Boston-based company that enables mobile phone subscribers in the developing world to earn airtime by completing simple work. We have now integrated our compensation platform within the billing systems of over 220 mobile operators - providing 2.1 billion mobile phone subscribers with the ability for moderate economic empowerment. While originally focused on text-based tasks from the outsourcing industry, we have recently come to appreciate our distributed workforce as much more than a source of cheaper labor for the data-entry industry. Instead of simply facilitating labor arbitrage, we are now focused on leveraging a particular population's unique insights and local knowledge. Today our workforce provides services that could never be outsourced - services that require on-the-ground knowledge and insight. The scope of these types of services is rapidly expanding - ranging from conducting a 50-country survey commissioned by the United Nations, to helping a massive consumer goods corporation grow their sanitary pad distribution and marketing channels into rural markets, to localizing software for a major search engine, to verifying local businesses for the World Bank, to responding to surveys for international market and investment research firms, to conducting compensated awareness and engagement campaigns for many large, international brands.

The underlying value of our workforce comes from their unique community, their culture, their neighborhood, their social network, and their knowledge of the place where they live. We are excited to be continually discovering new ways to demonstrate this unique value they can provide to the rest of the world.

Nathan Eagle is the CEO of txteagle Inc. He holds faculty appointments at the MIT Media Laboratory and Northeastern University, and is an Omidyar Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. His research involves engineering computational tools, designed to explore how the petabytes of data generated about human movements, financial transactions, and communication patterns can be used for social good. He holds a BS and two MS degrees from Stanford's School of Engineering; his PhD from the MIT Media Laboratory on Reality Mining was declared one of the '10 technologies most likely to change the way we live' by the MIT Technology Review. Recently, he was named one of the world's top mobile phone developers by Nokia and also elected to the TR35. His academic work has been featured in Science, Nature and PNAS, as well as in the mainstream press.

The Stanford China Program, in cooperation with the Center for East Asian Studies, will host a special series of seminars to examine China as a major political and economic actor on the world stage.  Over the course of the autumn and winter terms, leading scholars will examine China actions and policies in the new global political economy.  What is China's role in global governance?  What is the state of China's relations with its Asian neighbors?  Is China being more assertive both diplomatically as well as militarily?  Are economic interests shaping its foreign policies?  What role does China play amidst international conflicts? 

Seiichiro Takagi is a professor at the School of International Politics, Economics and Communication at the Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan and a Senior Visiting Fellow of the Japan Institute of International Affairs. He specializes in Chinese foreign relations and security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. Previously, he was the director of the Second Research Department, which was responsible for area studies, at the National Institute for Defense Studies in Tokyo. He also served on the Graduate School of Policy Science of Saitama University (which became the National Graduate Institute of Policy Studies) for over 20 years, and has been a guest scholar at The Brookings Institution and Beijing University. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Japan Association for International Security, and is a member of several other organizations, including the Japanese Committee, Council for Security Cooperation in Asia-Pacific (CSCAP); the Japan Association for International Relations; and the Japan Political Science Association. His recent publications in English include China Watching: Perspectives from Europe, Japan and the United States, 2007 and in Japanese The U.S.-China Relations: Structure and Dynamics in the Post-Cold War Era, 2007.. He earned a B.A. in international relations from the University of Tokyo, Japan, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University, California.

This event is part of the China and the World series.

In an emerging economy like China's, institutions are not yet institutions. They are often the playthings of politics and bureaucratic rivalries. China's banking system is a case in point.  Since 1949, banks have bounced around China's institutional landscape as the government tried out first one then another banking model.  This mattered little to the outside world until the last decade when reform brought banks to the international capital markets in search of massive amounts of new capital.  This did not, however, stop institutional in-fighting.  It spread so that today the domestic struggle over bank roles, responsibilities and ownership has expanded to involve international markets, investors, regulators and the reputations of market professionals at a growing cost to the Chinese government and to the banks themselves.

Carl Walter brings to JPMorgan over 20 years of professional experience in a number of senior banking positions across Asia and primarily in China.  Currently Mr. Walter is Managing Director, JPMorgan China.

Prior to joining JPMorgan, Mr. Walter was a Managing Director and a member of the Management Committee at China International Capital Corporation ("CICC"), a joint venture of Morgan Stanley and China Construction Bank. He played a key role in the execution of CICC's international and domestic equity and fixed income transactions. 

While at Credit Suisse First Boston Mr. Walter was responsible for organizing the firm's China investment banking team and established its Beijing Representative Office in 1993 serving as Chief Representative. During this time, he was involved in a number of significant equity and debt offerings. 

A fluent Mandarin speaker, Mr. Walter received an MA in economics at Beijing University in 1979-80 supported by a grant from National Academy of Science. He received his PhD in Political Science from Stanford University in 1981 and earned his BA from Princeton University. He is also the author of "Privatizing China: Inside China's Stock Markets" which has been published in a Chinese edition "Minyinghua zai Zhongguo".

This event is part of the China and the World series.

Wolak spoke at the 3-day City Leader Program event on Thursday, September 9^th which gathered 50 cities' mayors from China.  Frank Wolak presented on the topic of Visionary & Executive Leadership: Investment Management & Decision Making for Future Economic Development with a presentation titled "Managing an Increasing Renewable Generation Share Through Active Demand-Side Participation".

This year's event was hosted in collaboration with Cisco and held on Stanford campus.