our founder’s cultural expertise

Garden of Jewels (Norbulingka) in Lhasa, Tibet (China) – April 28, 2025

Throughout his life, Adam Ensign has cultivated a talent to engage with individuals and groups from disparate cultural, economic, political, and religious backgrounds. Beginning with childhood encounters with diverse ethnic subcultures while growing up in California, he went on to pursue formative education that included training in multicultural engagement led by cultural experts and experienced missionaries skilled at interacting with people of various civilizational persuasions. In addition to achieving his master’s in linguistics from Peking University, one of China’s top schools, he worked as a translator for the Palace Museum in Beijing and collaborated with Chinese and international colleagues from his desk in the Forbidden City.

He has applied this competency by teaching American and Chinese culture to Chinese students as well as other courses related to culture, history, and literature to students from across China—including minority students of the Manchu, Mongolian, Sibe, Tibetan, and Uyghur ethnicities—as well as international students from Germany, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, Syria, and Turkey. While living in Beijing, China for the better part of two decades, he was active in Chinese social circles and the international community and traveled frequently around China as well as to destinations in France, India, and Japan. He has a passion for building bridges between cultures and is eager to facilitate interested parties in evaluating experiences and developing deeper understandings of their intercultural encounters.