Melissa Chen, Director of the Board

Melissa Chen, Ph.D. is the Managing Director of the nonprofit organization Ideas Beyond Borders and the New York Editor of Spectator USA — the American edition of the oldest English language magazine in publication. She is a human rights activist and classical liberal who regularly talks on various podcasts, TV news, and at conferences. Melissa is a critic of the People’s Republic of China’s weak human rights record, with free speech and foreign relations restrictions. She is also a critic of her native Singapore’s similar restrictions on free speech.

Melissa earned her Ph.D. in computational biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Previously she attended Boston University to be a geneticist, inspired by Richard Dawkins. Fresh out of college she worked at the Broad Institute, a genomics research institute, bound for academia. As well, she was an Editor at the Global Secular Humanist Movement. Soon, however, she dropped out of academia and cofounded the nonprofit organization Ideas Beyond Borders with Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, a founder of the Global Secular Humanist Movement. Together they make inaccessible ideas freely accessible to those who speak Arabic, Farsi, or Kurdish.