Fengrui Liu (刘沣锐), pronounced “fung-ray lieu”, is an educational scholar at the University of Oxford, dedicated to addressing intractable development challenges through research, policy, and entrepreneurship. He holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Harvard University, with a concentration in Political and Economic Development, as well as a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of Michigan. His work seeks to empower people’s competencies in conceptualizing, caring about, and having the capacity to influence world peace.
Fengrui’s passion for education originated from witnessing firsthand the monumental potential of education to empower individuals, families, and societies. His dedication was shaped by his living experiences within China’s emerging life insurance industry, a field filled with both hope and risks—a novel enterprise in an ancient civilization that seeks to manage critical and morally sensitive issues such as love, death, money, family relations, and personal legacy through market principles.
Fengrui’s expertise is grounded in the two core pillars for understanding systems: (1) economic and socio-cultural studies and (2) policies and institutions. He applies interdisciplinary and mixed-method tools to analyze complex social systems and develop comprehensive frameworks, with a deep appreciation for how culture, institutions, and society operate together to drive educational changes that can enhance global prosperity. Fengrui’s doctoral research views China’s life insurance industry as an economy and investigates the self-formation pathways of life insurance agents in China, focusing on how cross-regional and international mobility, higher education, and vocational training contribute to their development.
Fengrui’s experiences span diverse global regions: Harbin in Northeast China, Shanghai in East China, Dushan in West China, Ann Arbor in the Great Lakes region of the United States, Boston in the New England region of the United States, and Oxford in England, United Kingdom. Fengrui is the founder and president of the Wen Dao Society (问道社), established in 2014 in the Pudong New Area, Shanghai. This initiative has brought together over 10,000 families to read world classics in Chinese, integrating personal, family, and professional aspirations while exploring educational issues and development principles. Inspired by transformative programs like El Sistema, which uplifted thousands of underserved Venezuelan children through music education, the Wen Dao Society has supported more than 1,000 underserved primary school students in Dushan, Guizhou, by providing continuous and systematic Chinese, English, and leadership education.
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