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  Dashiell is the founding managing principal at Xanadu Enterprise. He is a senior executive who brings more than 20 years of leadership and management experience at U.S. corporations and private companies. He has guided clients to support improved outcomes for China-market entry strategies and operations management. As a former global vice president and managing director at Home Depot China, Dashiell held extensive operational and strategic responsibilities for identifying market opportunities, establishing business operations, and managing government relations. 

A native of Shanghai, Dashiell is multilingual and able to interpret the meaning and nuance of Mandarin to bring local insights to international business executives. His perceptions allow him to help clients navigate the intricacies of the ever-changing China business landscape. Dashiell previously worked in executive positions at Sears, Roebuck and Co., and led teams in managing manufacturing and supply chains for SMEs. He currently works with SMEs to Fortune 500 companies looking for capital for strategic market entry in China. Dashiell likes nothing better than to share his expertise and ongoing analysis of the China market place with clients. 

Dashiell graduated with a Bachelor of Science in electronic engineering from East China Normal University. He is fluent in Mandarin, Shanghainese, and English. 

Chris is a founding principal at Xanadu Enterprise. Chris leverages his deep consulting background over the last 20 years for his clients in consumer products, retail, technology, automotive, and specialty products and services. A breadth of experience in China, Chris has led, managed, and executed projects resulting in value-chain transformations, China market entry, cost reductions, and service-level enhancements for clients across a number of industries. Chris provides insights to clients from his on-the-ground experience running businesses as well as workforce creation and management.

Prior to Xanadu Enterprise, Chris worked in senior managerial positions at multi-national companies in consumer goods and retail, with a special focus on China operations, business development, and global supply chain optimization. He has a keen sense of China’s laws and regulatory environment, understanding how they are changing and the impact on clients allowing them to address these concepts in their planning processes. He is regularly tracking and evaluating the latest changes in China’s policies and politics. Chris is uniquely positioned to offer his experience of China and how executives can position themselves to work in this environment.

Chris graduated with a Bachelor and Masters of engineering from Shanghai Jiaotong University. Chris deploys his bi-cultural and bilingual approach for clients to guarantee they have feasibility and flexibility for future opportunities. Chris is fluent in Mandarin, Shanghainese, and English.

Doug  has spent his career researching, writing, teaching and advising companies about two topics: organizational development, where he has focused on issues of leadership, organizational culture and corporate social responsibility; and the Chinese economic reforms, where he has focused on the intersection of economic and political forces that lead to successful economic development models. From 2014-19, Guthrie was a Senior Director at Apple, based in Shanghai China, where he led Apple University efforts on leadership and organizational development in China. Prior to joining Apple, from 2010-14, Guthrie was Dean of the George Washington School of Business, Vice President for University China Operations, and Professor of International Business. 

Prior to his time at GW, from 1997-2010, Guthrie held faculty positions at NYU’s Stern School of Business, where he was Professor of Management and Director of custom Executive Education, and NYU’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, where he was Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the University’s Office of Global Education. He has held visiting Professorships at several business schools, including Kellogg, Harvard, INSEAD, Stanford, Columbia and Emory. He served as Director of the Business Institutions Initiative at the Social Science Research Council (1999-2003) and was Academic Director of the Berlin School of Creative Leadership (2008-11). His research has been recognized by numerous grants and awards.

Guthrie received an AB in East Asian Languages (Chinese literature) from the University of Chicago and MA & PhD degrees in organizational sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Guthrie studied in Taipei, Taiwan, during his undergraduate years and conducted PhD research in Shanghai, China. He has authored and edited numerous books, academic articles, popular articles, and reports on Chinese economic reform, leadership and corporate social responsibility, and economic development in American cities.

Victor joined the Fairfax County (Va.) Economic Development Authority as president and CEO in August 2019. He was previously director of Arlington (Va.) Economic Development. In that role, he led the team that successfully attracted Amazon HQ2 to Arlington County, a deal that will bring between 25,000 and 37,850 technology and corporate headquarters jobs with an average salary of $150,000. It is expected to stimulate creation of another 75,000 jobs in the Washington region, and generate between $3.2 billion and $4.8 billion in revenue for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Arlington County also successfully implemented an Innovation Strategy that moved it boldly toward technology and private-sector commercialization. Other successes in Arlington during Victor's term include the acquisition of Nestlé, Grant Thornton, Lidl, Mastercard, Deloitte, PBS and Opower-Oracle.

Victor also served as deputy mayor of economic development for the District of Columbia and led the turnaround of the District’s economy with projects such as The Wharf and City Center. That work has resulted in almost 375,000 jobs, and he has led  teams that negotiated more than 700 major business deals resulting in billions of dollars in private investment. Victor worked in private real estate investment on Wall Street, as well.

Sarah is a member of our OGL leadership team and the Managing Editor for the site.. A former political reporter, she has a reputation for turning difficult concepts and insights into easy-to-understand ideas that can drive meaningful exchanges, outcomes and actions. She has worked in the thought leadership space for more than a decade, helping to guide and shape ideas and projects that change attitudes and lives.

One of her far-reaching engagements was to oversee and manage development, writing, design, and production of the Creative Economy Strategy for the District of Columbia. In that position, she directed a team of MBA students researching the District’s creative economy industries and developing a series of initiatives to grow the sector. Working with the D.C. government, she oversaw interviews and focus groups that included more than a hundred creative economy leaders.

Sarah also served as chief editor for the Five-Year Economic Development Strategy for the District of Columbia, working with the D.C. government to produce a comprehensive report on District’s economy and its key sectors under Mayor Vincent Gray. She has worked on a series of visioning projects, including creating a business plan to make the case for launching a Gallaudet University Innovation Lab, the George Washington University China Innovation Center and the George Washington University School of Business (GWSB) Initiative for Economic Innovation.

As director of conceptual projects for the Office of the Dean of the GWSB, Sarah developed new programs and initiatives to build the reputation of the school in the greater D.C. community and to establish it as a thought leader in academic circles in the District, the region and nationally. She guided various initiatives to completion, including Conversations on Creative Leadership, the Initiative on Economic Innovation and the China Initiative.

For over three decades, Diane has had a ringside seat at what can only be described as an economic revolution. Arriving in China’s Anhui Province in 1985, she didn’t understand what economic reform was—let alone what it looked like. Diane’s unique and diverse skill set was developed in the cauldron of a forever-changing landscape as China marched forward with reforms at a scale and speed never before seen in history. 

Diane has previously held C-suite positions in global corporations such as Liz Claiborne and Adidas as well as executive roles in start-ups. During the ‘90s, she guided multinational corporations in the first stage of market entry, most notably identifying partners, markets, and teams. Currently, she serves as the Managing Director of Xanadu Enterprise, a bilingual, bi-cultural China market-entry firm that provides a range of consulting and operational services to support companies in various stages of entering and operating in the China market. Her breadth and depth of experience enables her to assist both first-to-market as well as established firms. 

Additionally, Diane has founded and remains involved in a variety of social enterprises in different industries including sports, women’s development, and health care services to economically disadvantaged groups in China. She is past president of the Stanford Club Shanghai. Since 1987, she has served in a number of positions with the American Chamber of Commerce Shanghai, including as the Chairman of the Board.