Benjamin Kinnas, Program Committee Chair

Benjamin Kinnas is a member of the World Affairs Council of Hilton Head Board of Directors and serves as chair of the Program Committee.

He is the former Chief Executive Officer of Wells Fargo China. He served concurrently as manager for branch marketing in the Asia/Pacific region. Ben and his family arrived in Shanghai in June 2005, but he began traveling to China in 1992 while serving as general manager of the bank’s Tokyo branch. After a nine-year assignment in Japan, Ben was reassigned to Hong Kong in 1996, when he assumed his regional responsibilities.

Ben is the past chair of the Shanghai American Chamber of Commerce’s financial services committee. He led bank-working groups that authored the Chamber’s “Shanghai IFC 2020” project in cooperation with the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. This document provided a road map for Shanghai to meet its realization of becoming an international financial center.

Ben has been an active advocate in Washington, DC, for programs and policies that enhance the United States export competitiveness and is active in educating lawmakers and other policymakers and opinion leaders on the role of American businesses in China. Ben continues to be an active observer of the Shanghai Bankers Association.

In Hilton Head, Ben is an active member of the World Affairs Council and sits on boards of several civic and charitable organizations. Ben has a double undergraduate major from the University of Maryland, a master’s degree in public policy from Northwestern University, and spent two additional years at Sophia University in Tokyo.