TOM PLATE, an internationally syndicated columnist, writes about America's relationship with the Pacific Rim and travels frequently to Asia. Mr. Plate's columns have appeared in many world newspapers, in Asia and the United States. He is a columnist with The Honolulu Advertiser, The South China Morning Post of Hong Kong, and The Straits Times of Singapore. His column also runs in such leading newspapers as The San Francisco Chronicle, The Japan Times in Tokyo, The Korea Times (USA and South Korea) and The Seattle Times – all via the Los Angeles Times Syndicate International and the Tribune Media Services/Knight-Ridder news service.

Plate has a joint appointment in the College of Letters and Science as well as in the School of Public Policy at the University of California, at Los Angeles, where he began teaching full time in 1996. He teaches courses on Asia's media and politics, and on business, government and media ethics. He has lectured at UCLA's Anderson School, the East West Center at the University of Hawaii, The Getty Museum and Trust, and at universities in Asia. He is currently working on an autobiography and is heard on radio as an occasional BBC commentator.

He is the founder of the non-profit Asia Pacific Media Network, headquartered at UCLA. APMN is an international network for educators, journalists and media professionals, government and business officials concerned with regionally common issues, controversies and opportunities.

Mr. Plate is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, the Century Association of New York and the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, with a master’s degree in public and international affairs. He is the author of five books and has been a journalist at Time, Newsday, New York Magazine and “CBS Family Week.” From 1989-1995 he was Editor of the Editorial Pages of the Los Angeles Times. He has won numerous journalism awards, including the American Society of Newspaper Editors Deadline Writing Award and the Greater Los Angeles Press Club Award for “Best Editorial.” Recently, he was a Media Fellow at Stanford University and a fellow in Tokyo at the famed Foreign Press Center's annual Asia-Pacific Media Conference. He is listed in Who's Who in America and for the last several years has been a participant at the annual retreat of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.