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Western Professionals Make Intellectual Inroads Into Asia

San Diego’s business community is rich with experience when it comes to trading in China. From the nonprofit CONNECT’s aggressive inclusion of Chinese venture capital investors and companies in its innovation development programs to the region’s wealth of former government functionaries who dealt with China on trade issues, the area has the knowledge base to help local companies further their relations with one of the largest markets in the world.

Camille Sobrian, chief operating officer of CONNECT

As COO of the innovation acceleration organization CONNECT since 2007, Sobrian is someone whom people like Lee Sands, a former business associate and managing director of Sierra Asia Partners, think of as the “smartest person at the table.”

Sobrian began her working life in journalism, and quickly found her way to marketing, where her people skills and ability to synthesize information and connect the right dots advanced her career quickly.

She has served as director of marketing at Procopio Cory Hargreaves & Savitch LLP, and on boards of several local groups that help support and promote young technology businesses and ideas, including CommNexus San Diego and CleanTECH San Diego.

Sobrian is a gracious and well-respected networker, the first person to call when someone has a great idea and isn’t sure where to start. But her passion is finding ways for San Diego technology and life sciences companies to build their businesses.

Sobrian has made a number of trips to China, both as a partner in Sierra Asia and while she was helping Procopio Cory launch its China practice, and more recently while promoting San Diego companies.

Lee Sands, managing director of Sierra Asia Partners

Sands, who is based in Shanghai, China, has more than 30 years of experience with international trade in both the public and private sectors. He speaks both modern and classical Chinese as well as Korean.

He earned master’s degrees in Korean and Chinese languages from Harvard University and another master’s degree in Chinese history from Yale University before he went to work in the Economics Section of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, where his duties included award-winning reporting on China’s economic restructuring efforts.

Sands then served in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, where he was chief U.S. trade negotiator with China and Japan from 1991 to 1997. Sands helped formulate U.S. trade policy and negotiated all major trade agreements with China, including China’s entry into the World Trade Organization.

He left to work for the law firm of Mayer Brown LLP, where he helped form a consulting practice based in Beijing and Shanghai. In 2004, Sands founded Sierra Asia Partners, which helps U.S. and Chinese businesses and investors work together.

“At first, we represented U.S. companies that wanted to enter China, then Chinese companies that wanted to work with U.S. companies,” Sands said. “Now Chinese companies are looking to invest in midcap U.S. companies.”

Peter Cowhey, UC San Diego

dean of the Graduate School of

International Relations and Pacific Studies

An oft-honored professor at UCSD since 1976, Cowhey has specialized in international trade and communications issues that have led to fascinating furloughs from academia. His most recent: serving as senior consular U.S. Trade Representative for the first year of the Obama administration after co-directing the transition team on U.S. trade policy.

Now a dean at UCSD’s Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, Cowhey is an internationally recognized expert in telecommunications and information policy, as well as a pioneer in building cooperative international arrangements for the management of security and economics issues.

He headed the international policy division at the Federal Communications Commission during the Clinton administration while the FCC was deciding whether or not to regulate the Internet the way telephone service is regulated.

“It was a transforming technology that changes how everything works — like electricity, where it made traditional boundaries irrelevant,” Cowhey said. “We had to choose if we were going to make it like the phone system and, instead, we liberated it from the model.”

The rest is history.

Don Starkey,

vice president and relationship manager at Union Bank N.A.

With 20 years of experience in banking, Starkey is a wizard at helping his clients in the Global Business Coordination Unit, where he is the manager.

“I work with big companies as they navigate foreign markets and deal with financing and currency issues,” Starkey says in the direct and smart way that marks his style. “The cloud of mystery over doing business in China is clearing off and banks are getting to be experienced at doing business there so we can help our clients better.”

Starkey began his banking career as a teller with Wells Fargo in Sacramento while he worked his way through school. Four banks, a great deal of learning and a number of promotions later, he remains fascinated by, and knowledgeable about, the minutiae of foreign trade, from the currency manipulations by governments trying to control their economies to the details of tax and investment problems.

“From a fiscal perspective, China has done a fantastic job of managing growth and expectation to avoid inflation and stagflation,” he said. “But that’s also led to a very controlled and complex system for banking.”

William Molloie,

partner and head of the

pharma/life sciences practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers

Molloie, a 24-year veteran of Pricewaterhouse, spent his first 19 years in Philadelphia, where he worked his way up to heading the venture capital division. A smart, direct partner with the firm, he was sent to Shanghai to co-lead the office’s technology practice.

“It was one of the most challenging and most fulfilling things I’ve ever done,” Molloie said. “It gave me an awareness of the tremendous cultural differences.”

The three-year gig also gave Molloie the chance to walk around places in Shanghai that few Westerners ever see, the tiny businesses tucked into mazes of back alleys where Molloie found gifts for co-workers.

“I learned a lot about how the Chinese see Americans, as the know-it-all in the room, where their culture makes things a process,” he said. “Here, we can do a whole transaction and never know where our colleagues and partners came from — that would never happen in China.”

Now the head of the pharma/life sciences section in San Diego, Molloie gets to apply his experience and expertise to deals that bring Chinese investments and partnerships to San Diego companies.

“It’s a very exciting practice,” he said. “Opportunity is rampant.”

Eddie Rodriguez,

managing member at the

Mintz Levin law firm

Fluent in Cantonese, Eddie Wang Rodriguez grew up in Hong Kong. His many honors include being recognized by Lawdragon Inc. as one of the 500 New Stars and Top 500 dealmakers.

Rodriguez made his way to California, though he still returns to Hong Kong to visit family, and earned his bachelor’s degree from UCLA in 1991 and his law degree from Stanford Law School in 1994. He was the editor-in-chief of the Stanford Journal of International Law and the articles editor of the Stanford Law and Policy Review.

He began his practice with Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, where he worked on business and finance issues, then moved to Fish & Richardson. Between the two firms, he worked on more than 200 mergers and acquisitions. Rodriguez focused on high-tech business matters until the dot-com bubble burst in 2001.

“When the bubble burst, it gave me the chance to step back and start networking with organizations and businesses that were beginning to look at expanding trade with China,” he said. “My practice really started to take off in 2003.”

Marty Graham is a freelance writer for the San Diego Business Journal.

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