What 吕家汉 does at JAMUN.
I grew up in Nanjing, China, and now study Economics and Public Policy at Duke — a route that gave me an opinion or two about what it actually takes to move ideas across borders. JAMUN started in one U.S. city, and my job is to figure out what it looks like in dozens more, across countries and education systems that each have their own rhythm.
International programming isn't a translation project. It's a question of which parts of JAMUN are universal — the academic challenge, the welcome, the rigor — and which parts need to flex to fit local schools, families, and competitive cultures. The work is being honest about both, and then doing the slow groundwork of building partnerships that hold.
You don't grow a program internationally by copying it. You grow it by understanding why it works at home first.
国际节目总监.
“You don't grow a program internationally by copying it. You grow it by understanding why it works at home first.”
What 吕家汉 spends time on.
The work behind the role. Four areas where most of the hours go.
International chapters
Helping partner organizations launch JAMUN programs outside the U.S.
Cross-border events
Coordinating conferences that draw delegates from multiple countries.
Local adaptation
Tailoring curriculum and timing to different academic calendars and cultures.
Strategy
Picking the right markets to grow into — and the right pace to grow at.
Beyond JAMUN.
Outside JAMUN, I'm a student at Duke University studying Economics and Public Policy — two fields that spend most of their time on the question of how programs actually work in practice, across populations and political contexts. They turn out to be useful training for running a nonprofit that wants to mean the same thing in seven countries.
Before Duke, home was Nanjing. The hardest and most useful part of straddling those two places hasn't been the language or the time difference — it's the constant negotiation between two different defaults for how a room runs and what counts as polite. Most of JAMUN's international work is just an academic version of that negotiation, scaled up.
Want to reach 吕家汉?
Questions about 国际节目总监, or just want to chat about the work? Drop a line — every message gets read.
Prefer the wider team? [email protected]
