Founder and President, Janet Yang Productions
China and films. These two forces shaped the life of Janet Yang, affectionately known as the “godmother of Asian Americans in Hollywood.”
In a career spanning more than three decades, Yang has distributed, secured shooting permits from the highest levels of the Chinese government, developed projects for major studios, and been involved with some of the most culturally significant Asian/Asian American films ever made, including “Empire of the Sun,” “The Joy Luck Club,” and “Over the Moon.” Long before it became fashionable, Yang treated Asian themes as the cornerstone of storytelling, proving that stories outside Hollywood’s default could move mainstream audiences.
Yang was born in Queens to parents from Shanghai and Hunan Province who came to the U.S. as students and stayed on after the Communist takeover in China. Growing up on Long Island, NY, Yang experienced the classic “try-to-fit-in, wish-my-eyes-were-rounder” self-consciousness that came with being noticeably different.
That feeling might have defined her differently had it not been for a fateful trip to China at 16. Thanks to her mother’s work at the United Nations, Yang was part of one of the first Chinese American families to visit after it opened to Western visitors. “I was so fascinated by everything,” she recalled. “It gave me a sense of ‘I want to know more.’”
She followed that curiosity to Brown University, where she majored in Chinese Studies and became fluent in Mandarin, then accepted a post at China’s Foreign Languages Press, the publisher of books and magazines for export. During that year-and-a-half assignment, Yang presided over impromptu salons and befriended Chinese filmmakers, artists, and creatives. “It is what changed the course of my life,” she said. “Meeting Chinese artists and seeing films that were being made… I never had that experience in America and a light bulb went off. This is it.’”
After earning her MBA from Columbia University, she was hired to run World Entertainment, distributing Chinese films to Western audiences years before such cross-Pacific exchange became routine. She introduced fifth-generation directors like Chen Kaige to American screens and then represented American studios and their films in China. When Steven Spielberg needed someone to secure shooting permits in Shanghai for “Empire of the Sun” — approvals that traveled from the State Council down to city level — there were few others who knew China the way Janet Yang did.
That production opened the door to creative producing. She conceived “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story” as a young Universal executive and executive-produced “The Joy Luck Club,” becoming recognized as Hollywood’s leading producer of quality Asian-themed films and one of the Hollywood Reporter’s “50 Most Powerful Women in Hollywood.”
Over three decades, Yang’s lens has widened. She produced “The Rose: Come Back to Me,” a documentary about South Korean indie rock band The Rose that won the Audience Award at Tribeca 2025, and “Take Me Home,” a Sundance award-winner by Korean American filmmaker Liz Sargent about her adopted sister with a cognitive disability and her aging parents. One of her next films is Oscar-winning director Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi’s “Everest: The Other Side,” shot entirely on location in Tibet. These stories reflect her expanding vision of whose experiences deserve a global stage.
Yang recently completed three terms as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — the first Asian American to hold the role — expanding its international membership, member engagement, and increasing financial and strategic transparency. The Academy Museum has since established the Janet Yang Endowment to support programming centered on historically underrepresented filmmakers, with special emphasis on Asian American and Pacific Islander artists. In July 2025, she became a founding partner of First Light StoryHouse, a venture with Miky Lee of CJ Entertainment and Dominic Ng of East West Bank dedicated to developing projects by Asian and Asian American creators for global audiences.
A co-founder of Gold House and chair of the Asia Society Southern California’s U.S.-Asia Entertainment Summit, Yang has been a Committee of 100 member since 1998 and takes on the role of board chair in 2026. She sees C100 as an extension of everything she has built in film, a platform where culture does the work that politics cannot. At a moment when U.S.-China relations are shaped more by headlines and algorithms than by human encounter, she believes storytelling remains the most powerful counterforce available.
“What draws us together is so much more than what divides us,” Yang said. It is a conviction she has spent her entire career proving — one film, one bridge, at a time.
