Board of Mentors
Dr. Ken Peterson
Dr. Petersen is the Technical Director for Online Learning and Assessment at American Councils for International Education, where he has overseen the development of Web-based language learning and assessment systems for over two decades. He is the principle architect of the ACLASS test development and administration system which has been used to assess language proficiency for tens of thousands of learners. He spent many years as an ESL teacher and a foreign language learner in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Uzbekistan. He holds a Ph.D. in Applied/Computational Linguistics from Georgetown University and an M.A. from the University of Washington in Near Eastern Languages. His areas of expertise include instructional design, language testing, natural language processing, software systems architecture and multimedia.
Jeff Kaplan
Jeff is an Honors graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School. He is a senior executive at the venture-backed tech company, Carto -- and has been a business leader at software start-ups for the past 6 years. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Malaysia, and has decades of experience working and living in East Asia with the UN, World Bank, and in the private sector. He speaks several ASEAN languages. His career began as a law clerk for a federal judge and a corporate lawyer. Jeff is married to the World Bank economist, Dr. Hitomi Komatsu, and lives in the Washington, DC area with their daughter.
Min Kym
Min is an internationally renowned violin virtuoso, and author of the critically acclaimed book,“Gone,” South Korean-born and raised in the UK, Min Kym made her international debut at the age of thirteen and her Korean debut at the invitation of Kyung Wha Chung. At the age of sixteen she became the youngest student ever to be awarded a Foundation Scholarship at the Royal College of Music in London and in 2005, became the first ever recipient of the prestigious Heifetz Prize as awarded by the Jascha Heifetz Society in Los Angeles. Min has performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras including The Philharmonia, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the Dresden Staatskapelle and has worked with eminent conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sir Andrew Davis and Giuseppe Sinopoli. Min is a goodwill ambassador for the city of Seoul.
Tom Sugiura
Tom is an Honors graduate of Harvard College and received an MBA from the Yale School of Management. He brings a diverse set of work experiences, spanning efforts on behalf of the homeless and low-income communities in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, to a two decade career as an equity derivatives trader on Wall Street. Tom has long served as a Harvard College alumni interviewer. He is currently working on his first novel.
Kaidi Wu
Kaidi is a multi-award winning doctoral candidate in social psychology at the University of Michigan, where she graduated with dual degrees in psychology and piano performance. Her research focuses on how people of diverse cultures grapple with notions of success and the decisions they make to achieve it. A remarkable accomplishment for a young scholar, her peer-reviewed research has been featured in distinguished academic journals such as Social Psychological and Personality Science and American Psychologist as well as in popular media outlets such as The Atlantic, Inside Higher Ed, and Quartz. She is also a guest contributor at Scientific American and has appeared on Freakonomics Radio Live.
Jasmin Liu
Jasmin is a senior at Harvard University studying History of Science and Economics. Jasmin served as Ja-Tek’s first summer intern, where she played a central role forming the original Public Speaking & Leadership curriculum. On campus, she has done everything from dance, band, business, to backpacking trips in the outdoors, as a Leader in the Harvard Freshman Orientation Program (FOP). She recently accepted a position with Deloitte as a consultant. Jasmin is originally from Boston and is very excited about Ja-Tek!