Leadership

Tom Mason, Ph.D.
Chairman & Founder

Dr. Tom Mason works to strengthen people-to-people diplomacy and East Asian language education.

In 2003, Dr. Mason founded the ALLEX Foundation (Alliance for Language Learning and Educational Exchange) to establish and expand East Asian language departments at U.S. universities. Under his leadership, ALLEX has built language programs at over 100 partner institutions, trained more than 1,200 lecturers, and awarded over $60 million in study grants to support Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language education.

The Foundation's global impact is evident in its graduates, who hold or have held teaching positions at Harvard (currently six of seven Japanese instructors), MIT, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, and dozens of other leading institutions in the U.S., Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, France, and the U.K.

After serving as executive director for eighteen years, he transitioned to chairman in 2020 and now also serves as executive director of the U.S.-Japan Bridging Foundation.

Dr. Mason has held teaching and leadership positions with Columbia University's Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies, Cornell University, and several Japanese institutions. He has interned with members of both the upper and lower houses of the Japanese Diet and was embedded as an observer in election campaigns in rural Japan for candidates who later served as Cabinet ministers. He was selected as a Mansfield Foundation Fellow in 2022 for the U.S.-Japan Network for the Future Program and holds a courtesy affiliation as Associate-in-Research with Harvard University's Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies.

Dr. Mason earned his B.A. and M.A. in Asian Studies from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in East Asian Languages from The Ohio State University, where he studied with Mari Noda, the field's preeminent scholar in Japanese language pedagogy. He co-authored "Action! Japan" with Mari Noda and other scholars, studied at National Taiwan University on a Taiwanese government fellowship, and is a frequent speaker on citizen diplomacy and social entrepreneurship.

In August 2024, the Government of Japan honored Dr. Mason with the Foreign Minister's Commendation (外務大臣表彰) in recognition of his contributions to strengthening U.S.-Japan relations and promoting Japanese language education worldwide.

Adrienne Henck, Ph.D.
Executive Vice-President &
Director of Programs

Dr. Adrienne Henck is a global education professional specializing in program development and implementation. She joined ALLEX in 2021 as a Senior Program Officer and led the resumption of the scholarship program following the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Henck began her career in international education nearly two decades ago as an Assistant Language Teacher in Gifu, Japan with the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Program. She is an expert in global citizenship education, education policy, and approaches to improving school quality such as child friendly schools and whole-school assessments. Dr. Henck earned her M.A. in International Education and Development from New York University and her Ph.D. in International Education Theory and Policy from Penn State University.

Qi Wang, Ph.D.
Managing Director

Dr. Qi Wang is an expert in international higher education. She became Managing Director of ALLEX in 2020 after having served in several roles at ALLEX, including Director of Global Outreach and Research. Most recently she led the program’s expansion to Hong Kong, Macau, and Mainland China, areas that now comprise a significant portion of our annual applicant pool. She leads the organization’s administrative and candidate outreach operations. Dr. Wang has additional appointments as an adjunct associate professor at the School of Education (SOE), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) and a research fellow at the Center for International Higher Education, Boston College. She is the author of many books and articles on international higher education policy. Much of her research is on international student employment and world-class universities. Dr. Wang earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Education from the University of Bath in the United Kingdom.