Ms Mary Wadsworth Darby
Founder & Managing Director, Peridot Asia Advisors, LLC
Vice-Chair, Hong Kong Association of New York

Mary Wadsworth Darby is Founder and Managing Director of Peridot Asia Advisors, a strategic financial advisory firm. She has developed a unique market expertise through her more than 30 years living and working in China and Asia in the financial services industry and with Fortune 100 companies. She develops strategic business plans for many companies, advises on market company opening strategies and negotiates significant and complex transactions with her Chinese counterparts. She was the first US businesswoman to travel to China after the historic Nixon-Kissinger opening.

Before founding Peridot, Ms Darby worked for Morgan Stanley in Firm Management in NY, and for Morgan Stanley Investment Management in HK. She was also President of the America-China Society, an organization devoted to the promotion of relations between US and China chaired by Henry Kissinger and the late Cyrus R Vance.

Presently, she is also a Senior Research Scholar, Jerome A Chazen Institute, Columbia Business School and she has lectured on “how to negotiate with the Chinese”, and researches Chinese capital markets.

Ms Darby serves on a number of not-for profit and corporate boards, including as Vice-Chair of the Hong Kong Association of New York, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Ms Darby received her BA from Princeton University, and an MBA (Masters in Business Administration) and an MIA (Masters in International Affairs) from Columbia Business School and from Columbia School of International Affairs. She speaks Mandarin.