Christine Keung ’14 MBA Candidate, Harvard Business School
Christine began her professional career as an early member of Dropbox’s security team, helping develop policies, processes, and programs to enable business growth and preparation for the company’s initial public offering. After her first year, she was promoted to Chief of Staff, serving as the operational lead of a global legal, policy, and security organization. Most recently, she was the Head of Operations at Fountain, an early-stage AI/ML startup, helping the company triple in size and double its revenue.
Christine graduated with a B.A. in Economics from Wellesley College and was accepted into Harvard Business School’s MBA Program during her senior year. The first in her family to graduate from high school and college, she advocated for first generation students while serving on the College’s Board of Admissions and as an academic tutor and mentor for students from under-resourced backgrounds.
After graduation, Christine moved to Xi’an, China on a U.S. Department of State Fulbright Fellowship, where she had the opportunity to engage with U.S. Ambassador to China Max Baucus, Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou, and the Country Heads of global NGOs. Her development work as garnered funding and recognition from National Geographic, World Health Organization, and the United Nations. She is the youngest person to win the Rolex Awards for Enterprise and in 2017, was recognized as a Next Generation Leader by TIME Magazine.
Born in Italy and raised in Southern California, Christine’s fascination with rural Western China stemmed from her cultural roots as the daughter of Chinese farmers turned Los Angeles restaurant owners. She grew up listening to stories of her father’s childhood in Ili, a Kazakh autonomous prefecture in China, that sits on the border of Xinjiang Province, Kazakhstan, and Russia. She began conducting environmental research in this region in 2012, after receiving a National Science Foundation grant that funded field research on China’s Loess Plateau. She founded her watershed restoration project after witnessing the haphazard dumping of used medical supplies and agricultural chemical wastes.
When she’s not speaking or publishing papers on her research in China, she speaks about her work in cybersecurity at conferences like the SANS Institute. She is also a Fulbright Alumnae Ambassador with the Institute of International Education and travels around the country to speak about the impact of international exchange. Christine will pursue an MBA at Harvard this Fall, where she will develop her interest and expertise in business practices and policies that govern privacy and security. She is currently at Harvard Business School, pursuing a Master of Business Administration.