Steven Wu

I completed research on international financial markets, including 3 case studies on financial crimes in Asian securities markets, analysis of 10 ASEAN finance ministries' regulatory policies, and 8 detailed reports on commercial arbitration frameworks.

Hong Kong's 2013 IPO reforms rethought how premier stock exchanges balance innovation with investor protection. I examined that shift through three e-commerce giants (Alibaba, Rakuten, Softbank) whose corporate governance structures challenged traditional regulatory assumptions. It was a real-time case study in how markets and regulation adapt to each other.

Immigration courts operate under extraordinary pressure, thousands of cases with life-altering stakes. Supporting judges managing a 2,000-case docket, I drafted decisions that determined whether families were separated or reunited. When legislation expanded asylum protections, I translated statutory language into the procedures the court actually ran on, and watched abstract law become concrete outcomes for real people.

I worked between Capitol Hill and Asian diplomatic missions, moving H. Res. 333 in support of forgotten POWs through Congress while tracking sensitive geopolitical developments. My month-long F-16 analysis weighed military capability against diplomatic signaling and cross-strait dynamics. The reports explained what each development meant for relationships between Pacific powers.

American foreign policy has institutional memory, and I worked to preserve it. Working with diplomats' oral histories from Cold War Berlin to post-conflict Bosnia, I captured decades of hard-won lessons: the informal relationships and cultural insight that separate effective diplomacy from the rest. The result let wisdom earned in one generation reach the next.