Janet Yang

Janet Yang came to prominence through her collaboration with Steven Spielberg on Empire of the Sun followed by partnerships with Oliver Stone and Lisa Henson. Her extensive Film and TV credits include The Joy Luck Club, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Shanghai Calling and High Crimes. Yang recently completed three one-year terms as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, ending her tenure on June 30, 2025. Yang has worked with some of the most formidable filmmakers and talent in the world. She came to prominence through her collaboration with Steven Spielberg on Empire of the Sun (Warner Bros). That was followed by a long partnership with multiple Academy Award-winner Oliver Stone, where she served as Executive Producer on the iconic The Joy Luck Club (Disney), and as a Producer on The People vs. Larry Flynt (Columbia Pictures). Most recently, Yang was an Executive Producer on the Tribeca Audience Award-winning documentary The Rose: Come Back To Me , the Sundance-premiering narrative feature Take Me Home , and the Oscar-nominated animated film Over the Moon . Based on her original story, the film was directed by legendary animator Glen Keane and released on Netflix in 2020. Among her many other credits are: the Sundance award-winning Dark Matter (Universal Pictures) with Meryl Streep; The Weight of Water (Lionsgate) directed by Academy Award winner Kathryn Bigelow with Academy award winner Sean Penn; Savior (Lionsgate) with Dennis Quaid; South Central (Warner Bros.) directed by Steve Anderson; High Crimes (Fox) with Morgan Freeman; a Chinese adaptation of the acclaimed Disney franchise High School Musical ; cult favorites Zero Effect, by Jake Kasdan, and Shanghai Calling with China Film Group. Yang won an Emmy and Golden Globe Award for the HBO movie Indictment: The McMartin Trial. Yang serves on the IMAX China Board, the Forbes APEX VIP Founding Advisory Board, and the board of Unified Youth, a mental-health-focused organization. Yang is the first Asian American president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and also has a pillar dedicated to her inside the Renzo Piano-designed Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. In April 2025, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures established the Janet Yang Endowment, honoring her historic tenure as President of the Academy. The endowment will support programming that explores and elevates the contributions of filmmakers from historically underrepresented communities, with a special emphasis on Asian American and Pacific Islander artists. Chinese film YELLOW EARTH gave Janet Yang the courage to believe that the Western world would also relish this work, which led to Yang beginning her career by running the first distribution company to market Chinese films into North America. She also brokered the reintroduction of American cinema to the Chinese marketplace on behalf of several studios after a decades-long hiatus. Committed to fostering global understanding, Yang is a co-founder of Gold House, the non-profit collective of influential Asian cultural leaders; a long-standing member of the Committee of 100, an organization of the most prominent Chinese-Americans; and an advisory board member of Asia Society Southern California where she also chairs its highly regarded US-Asia Entertainment Summit. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Yang holds a B.A. from Brown University in Chinese studies and an M.B.A. from Columbia University. She was appointed as a Presidential Fellow at Loyola Marymount University and recently awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree in Humane Letters from Bowdoin College. Yang has been featured in The New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Variety, South China Morning Post, Harper’s Bazaar, as well as on numerous television and radio shows across the US and Asia such as NPR, CCTV and Beijing TV. She is frequently asked to consult on projects and sought after for public speaking engagements. Janet Yang Produc