James Heller is a career member of the U.S. Senior Foreign Service and Consul General at the U.S. Consulate General in Shanghai.  His previous assignment was Director of the Office of Japanese Affairs at the State Department. In Washington, Mr. Heller has also served in the Office of Taiwan Coordination, Office of Korean Affairs, the State Department’s 24/7 Operations Center, the Office of Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus Affairs, and the Office of Multilateral Trade Affairs.  Overseas, Mr. Heller has served twice at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing as well at the U.S. Embassies in Seoul and Kyiv and with Regional Reconstruction Team Erbil in Iraq.

Mr. Heller has a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Michigan and is a Hopkins-Nanjing Center graduate. His wife Lisa is also a U.S. Senior Foreign Service Officer. They have an adult daughter and son.

Mrs. Laurie Farris is the incoming Minister Counselor for Commercial Affairs at the U.S.
Embassy, Beijing, China. Prior to her assignment to China she was the acting Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Commerce for Asia where she led the U.S. Commercial Service in fourteen
countries across Asia, and a team of trade experts in headquarters. A twenty-five-year veteran of
the Foreign Service, Mrs. Farris holds the rank of Minister Counselor.
From 2016 to 2019 Mrs. Farris was the Director of the Office of Digital Initiatives of Global
Markets, International Trade Administration. From 2013 to 2016, she served as the Executive
Director for Asia. Ms. Farris has also served at the U.S. Embassy in Brussels, Belgium, Abu
Dhabi, UAE, Amman, Jordan, Toulouse France and Paris France, as well as U.S. assignments in
Chicago and Washington DC.