Ker D. Gibbs

Ker Gibbs has served in executive positions with public and privately held companies, and as an independent director and board-level advisor. He served as the President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, where he focused on US-China relations and business issues facing American companies operating in Asia. Mr. Gibbs has lived in Asia for more than two decades and is a Mandarin speaker.

In the 1990s Mr. Gibbs worked for The Boston Consulting Group in Shanghai and San Francisco. Since then he has split his time between Asia and Silicon Valley, serving in executive positions with Apple, Disney, and high-growth technology businesses. He moved to Shanghai in 2002 as head of Asia Pacific for a Nasdaq-listed network security company that was later acquired by McAfee. His career in high tech led him to banking, where he became head of technology and media for HSBC in Greater China. As an investment banker he advised at the board and C-level at Alibaba, Baidu, and other firms engaged in mergers and cross-border transactions.

From banking Mr. Gibbs moved to direct investments. He was a founding investor in the Crystal Orange Hotel Group, helping grow the company to 130 properties and 1,500 employees in China. He also led successful investments in e-commerce, real estate, and medical technology companies.

Before his appointment as president, Mr. Gibbs served on the Board of Governors of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai for four years, including two years as chairman. He served on the audit, finance, and compensation committees. Other board roles include tech/social media companies MyETone and the Asia joint venture of NBC. He sat on the board of the United Way in China, a joint venture with the Shanghai Charity Foundation, and on the Advisory Board of the Jiaotong University business school. He is a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations.

Currently, Mr. Gibbs teaches at the University of San Francisco, where he is an Executive in Residence with the Center for Asia Pacific Studies. He is also a partner in Foresight, a financial advisory firm, and an advisor to K2X Capital.

Mr. Gibbs is the author of The Fragile Dragon: Trade, Trump, and China’s Vulnerabilities (Earnshaw Books 2026), and the editor and co-author of Selling to China: Stories of Success, Failure, and Constant Change (Palgrave Macmillan 2023). He is an op-ed contributor to the Wall Street Journal, South China Morning Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications. He holds a BA in economics from UCLA and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He lives in San Francisco and Shanghai.