Robert A. Kapp maintains his own China consultancy, Robert A. Kapp & Associates, Inc., in Port Townsend, Washington. He is Senior Advisor to The China Program of the Carter Center, and served, in reverse chronological order, as President of the the Washington D.C.-based U.S.-China Business Council from 1994-2004; President of the Washington Council on International Trade, 1987-1994, and Founding Executive Director of the Washington State China Relations Council, 1979-87. He earned his Ph.D. in modern Chinese History at Yale, and taught on the faculties of Rice University and the University of Washington through the 1970s.