Ms. Kamsky is the Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Kamsky Associates, Inc. (KAI), a strategic advisory firm with offices in Beijing and New York City. KAI was established in 1980 and in the same year was one of the first twenty American corporations licensed by the Chinese Government to establish an office in Beijing. KAI was also the first approved foreign advisory firm in China. KAI has been responsible for advising on deals in excess of $8 billion for its client base, which comprises preeminent companies worldwide. In addition to providing advisory services, Kamsky has managed a private equity fund for direct investment in China and is increasingly focusing on Chinese outward investment.
In December 2003, Kamsky was elected Chairman of the Board of Trustees and Chief Executive Officer of China Institute in America, the oldest not-for-profit U.S. organization focused on the US-China relationship. It was at China Institute that she began the study of the Chinese language at the age of ten. At thirteen, she was awarded a National Defense Foundation Fellowship to further her study of Chinese at Columbia University and continued at Yale University during her high school summers. Kamsky graduated in 1970 from The Dalton School in New York City in absentia, having spent her senior year in high school at Fujen Catholic University in Taiwan. Kamsky served on the Board of Trustees of The Dalton School from 2001-2006.
Kamsky graduated cum laude from Princeton University in 1974 with a B.A. in East Asian Studies. She was awarded Princeton summer fellowships for intensive language study for Chinese at Stanford University in 1971 and for Japanese at Middlebury College in 1973. Kamsky entered the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs graduate MPA program on a Robertson Fellowship in 1975. She was granted an internship at the U.S. Embassy in Singapore where she served as an economic analyst in the summer of 1975. Kamsky later served on the Board of Trustees of Princeton University from 1988-1992, and was a member of the Board's Executive and Finance Committees.
Kamsky began her career at the then Chase Manhattan Bank in 1975 in its global credit-training program. She was the manager of Chase's credit training program in Tokyo from 1976-1977, then head of Chase's credit department in Tokyo and returned to New York as an Assistant Treasurer in the international trade and commodity finance division in 1978. In December 1978, Kamsky was a member of the first Chase Bank delegation to China. She became a Second Vice President of Chase in 1978 and headed Chase's corporate China division through the end of 1980. She was responsible for drafting the first foreign commercial bank loan for the PRC.
Kamsky has served on several public company boards including W.R. Grace and Company and Sealed Air Corporation, Tecumseh Products Company, Shorewood Packaging (now part of International Paper), and Olin Corporation. Of these, she has served on corporate governance, compensation and audit committees. Kamsky is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations including its Committee on Corporate Affairs, a Director of The National Committee on US-China Relations and a member of the Advisory Board of AmeriCares. She is a Founding Governor of The American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing and of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center.