Katie Wachs

Katie Wachs is passionate about bringing China into a mediating role in the Middle East. She believes that China’s growing influence in the region has the potential to lead to stability and mutually beneficial economic cooperation between Israel and her neighbors.

While pursuing her B.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from Columbia University, Katie co-founded the China-Israeli Connection (CIC), which works to strengthen Sino-Israel relations on American campuses by building cultural connections between Israeli and Chinese students and sponsoring educational and expositional events. Katie is currently involved with The Forum for Regional Thinking at Molad – the Center for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy, where she creates and translates content for the organization’s English online platform, and assists in international outreach and fundraising.

Katie’s long-term initiative in Israel is to bring Asian education into Israeli schools.

After spending several months in the Druze village of Dalyat al-Karmel studying the spoken Palestinian dialect, Katie helped to found a program bringing Israelis and Americans to the village to learn the Arabic language and culture. She also taught Arabic to officers in her IDF unit. Additionally, she received one-on-one tutor certification as a language instructor from Wellesley College’s Pforzeimer Learning and Teaching Center.

Katie is pursuing her M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

She is fluent in both English and Hebrew and is proficient in Arabic. She loves travelling, and has travelled through the Arabian Gulf, the Middle East, Central America, China and Japan, and across the United States. In addition to travel, Katie loves to cook, and play the banjo.