Ambassador Chantale Wong was nominated by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate on February 8, 2022 as the U.S. Executive Director to the Asian Development Bank with the rank of Ambassador. Ambassador Wong has had a long and distinguished career in public service, a leader-participant in some of the most significant events in U.S. history. Until August 2016, she was the Senior Vice President at a technology startup firm, Amida Technology Solutions, where she focused on solving data interoperability challenges by developing agile, open source tools. Just prior to that, she was appointed by President Obama to serve as Vice President for Administration and Finance, and Chief Financial Officer at the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).

Chantale was also intimately involved in the financial rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and in developing the framework of the financial instruments of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). During her career, Chantale has held leadership positions at the Office of Management and Budget, Departments of Treasury and Interior, NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Chantale was the founding chair of the Conference on Asian Pacific American Leadership (CAPAL), an organization dedicated to encouraging careers in public service by providing training, workshops, mentors, and work opportunities for young Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs). Chantale is also a member of the Advisory Board of Veterans for Global Leadership, which provides leadership opportunities for veterans transitioning into careers of diplomacy, security and development. In addition, she is a founding member and Treasurer of the Board of Focus on the Story, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support visual storytellers of diverse backgrounds in bringing attention to critical issues, bridging cultural gaps, and sparking social change.

Aside from public and community service, visual storytelling is Chantale’s passion. Her portraits capture the souls of the subjects, whether chronicling urban blight in East Baltimore or photographing crew teams on the Anacostia at dawn. Her travels to Cuba, India and Nepal, Southeast Asia and an epic trip on the Trans Siberia Railway have produced stunning images of cultures remote and afar. She has chronicled the annual Congressional Civil Rights pilgrimages to Alabama with Civil Rights icon, the late Cong. John Lewis.

Ms. Wong holds a Master in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where she was a Littauer Fellow and a Women’s Leadership Fellow. She has another Master in Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, with a focus on water and wastewater management. She earned her undergraduate degree in civil and structural engineering from the University of Hawaii.