Richard Lui

Richard Lui
Born	California, U.S.
Education	Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, MBA, UC Berkeley, Rhetoric, City College of San Francisco, AA, George Washington High School (San Francisco)
Occupation	News Anchor, MSNBC
Notable credit(s)	NBC News CNN Citigroup Oliver Wyman

Richard Lui is an American journalist and dayside news anchor for MSNBC. Lui is also a rotating news anchor for NBC's weekend Today show and contributes reports for NBC News Investigations Unit and NBC Weekend Nightly News. He's based at NBC's offices at 30 Rockefeller Center.

Before joining MSNBC, Lui was a news anchor for five years at CNN Worldwide. He also solo-anchored the 10am edition of Morning Express. And led morning political reporting during the 2008 Presidential election as a show member of Morning Express with Robin Meade. When Lui joined CNN Headline News in 2007 he became the first Asian American male to anchor a daily, national cable news show in the U.S.

Before journalism, Lui spent 15 years in business with Fortune 500 and technology companies. This included work at Oliver Wyman, and patenting and launching the first bank-centric payment system in a Citibank carve-out he founded with fellow University of Michigan MBA alumni.

Lui has been active in community leadership for 25 years in Africa, Asia, and the U.S. He leads pro bono strategy consulting teams and is a board member for non-profits in homeless and affordable housing. Lui speaks frequently, including events for the U.S. State Department, Harvard, and the Aspen Institute.

A first generation American, Lui has a twist in his background — Wong is his real last name, part of an immigration wrinkle because his grandfather, an illegal immigrant, filed false "Paper Sons" papers.

Lui graduated from UC Berkeley, earned an MBA from Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and is currently enrolled at Stanford University in its postgraduate program on International Security.

Lui has worked, lived, and studied in Europe, Asia, and the U.S, where he currently resides.

Business career

Lui started in business in 1985, working in manufacturing, strategy consulting, food and beverage, environmental, oil, and technology industries. He has held chief roles from operations to marketing.^{[citation needed]}

Until 2008, Lui worked for Citibank as Director, COO, and CMO of a business unit focused on payments and commerce. His patented payment infrastructure bypassed MasterCard and Visa, enabling consumers to pay for goods and services by connecting directly to their bank. It included wireless access to checking, brokerage, and other funds.

Before Citibank, Lui worked at Oliver Wyman New York. His business development work included online brokerage moving to mobile platforms, and the globalization software market—enterprise systems for multi-language and multi-country applications. Lui also helped launch a joint venture with IBM in the retail vertical.^{[citation needed]}

At the start of his career, Lui skipped college and spent four years at upstart Mrs. Fields Cookies. At one of the stores he managed, he increased revenue making it the largest of 400 nationwide. At the age of 18, Lui became the youngest in the company's history to run a regional training center.

After Mrs. Fields, Lui entered college, followed by work at Clean Environment Equipment (QED), where he led its global advertising and public relations campaigns. The company’s brand ranking grew to #1 and revenue quadrupled during his five years there. According to the company’s website, its oil recovery products are on almost every major refinery with an underground oil spill.

Community leadership

Keynote speech to Delta Air Lines executives on subject of the “universal worker” and globalization. Lui, May, 2009.

Lui is active in the minority community, involved in volunteerism and leadership. He has spoken on issues related to his background, including the minority experience, diversity in America, and intercultural skills.

At the Asian Pacific American Institute on Congressional Studies (APAICS) conference, Lui has spoken on Asian American leadership in the media and news industry. He proposed ideas on integration and advocacy of Asian American faces in mainstream media. Similarly, at the Advancing Justice Conference, much like the NAACP annual convention, Lui led a conversation on the 2010 Census and AACAJ's 2011 report on the Asian American demographic. And the Aspen Institute invited Lui to lead discussions on the state of race in America in education and pop culture, and foreign affairs in U.S. journalism.

The U.S. State Department brought in Lui to the U.S. Speakers Program to discuss his work with Asian American organizations, experiences as a community leader, and Asians in America. This took him to Vietnam, Indonesia, and China. Harvard University invited Lui to the HPAIR conference to lecture on social entrepreneurship and international security. While in Indonesia, Lui spoke on the "collective U.S. minority experience."

Lui speaks on various business topics for groups like the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, Google, Cisco, Delta Air Lines, and others.

Raised on welfare, Lui has always been interested in affordable housing. He volunteers for the Habitat for Humanity, traveling to Ghana in 2010 to build homes. He is on the board of directors of Crossroads, a homeless services non-profit, and the board of PRI, a non-profit developer of affordable and homeless housing. He currently leads a team of pro bono strategy consultants for the CCT organization, an organization providing strategy consulting services to non-profits.

He has been active in community work since high school as a youth counselor for the YMCA. He taught addicted mothers computer skills at the American Indian Family Healing Center, and served as campaign manager for a San Francisco race for College Board.

Journalism career

Lui reporting for CNN on human trafficking in Ghana. March, 2010.

Since joining MSNBC in 2010, Lui has anchored breaking stories, including the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, NATO's attack in Libya, and the historic addresses by Egypt’s president and vice president during the country's revolution.

In an NBC News investigation, Lui examined a human trafficking phenomenon involving high-volume brothels in the U.S. The story exposed clear violations of basic human rights –women locked up and forced to have sex 100 times a day. It aired in English and Spanish. Lui’s field reporting includes the 2010 midterm elections and the Tea Party movement.

During five years at CNN Worldwide, Lui anchored live coverage of breaking stories such as the 2009 Gaza-Israel War, Virginia Tech Massacre, 2006 Hezbollah-Israel War, Mumbai train terrorist bombings, Mumbai Hotels Siege, and Enron verdicts. He reported from the Gulf on the BP oil spill for all CNN platforms.

Lui’s field reporting explored political and civil rights controversies in the Asian American community, including the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which led to a system of illegal immigrants called Paper Sons. He reported on the Vincent Chin killing during the U.S.-Japan during the 1980s U.S.-Japan automaker tensions, and its relationship to the Muslim-American community’s post 9/11 challenges.

Traveling to Indonesia, Lui went undercover to expose the child sex slavery industry. Later, as seen on CNN’s Freedom Project, he investigated five year olds sold to Ghanaian fisherman as labor slaves.

Lui filed reports on the implications of terrorist activity, exploring counter-IED strategy and equipment, and container scanning technology at the world's busiest port. This topic took him to Bali to report on the latent economic effects of the Jemaah Islamiya terrorist bombings.

Lui anchored and reported on all CNN English-language networks, including CNN US, CNN International, and HLN. He also field reported for CNN’s Southern Region.CNN.com Live, the first online news network with full, live programming.

Before CNN Worldwide, Lui worked in Asia during five years of major political change. He anchored live, rolling coverage of the South Asian tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands, and the region’s debilitating 2003 SARS and bird flu outbreaks. In 2004, he reported live on the shooting of Taiwan’s president during the national election. He also reported on Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, as it moved from Sukarno family rule, bridging 50 years. Lui was based in Singapore at Channel NewsAsia, an English-only news network reaching 20 countries and territories.

Personal

Lui is the son of a Presbyterian minister. While at CNN Headline News, he mentioned his father served in the church. Lui is an automobile enthusiast. In his speeches, he has said he started “wrenching” when he was 10, and is an aerodynamics, airplane industry hobbyist. He studied in Spain, and speaks Spanish conversationally.

External links

• MSNBC Biography of Richard Lui
• CNN Biography of Richard Lui
• Morning Express blog
• Journalism Camp video