Returnee: U.S. to Finland, 1974-75
Sending Parent: U.S. to Chile, 2002
Wendy Kuran leads Duke University’s development efforts in China, focused on raising philanthropic funds from Chinese nationals for Duke Kunshan University (DKU). DKU, which opened in 2014, is a joint-venture research university with a liberal arts core, whose students and faculty come from more than 60 countries and live and work on a 200-acre campus near Shanghai.
Before originating this university-wide China role as Associate Vice President in February 2012, she was an Associate Dean at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, accountable for the school’s industry and NGO-facing strategies and initiatives. Ms. Kuran made the transition to academia in fall 2007, after a 20-year career as an executive in the health care industry, based in Los Angeles. She holds an A.B. in English from Princeton University and an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Ms. Kuran resides in Durham, NC and until 2020 spent a third of her time in China.
