Fast Friend of JIS

As an active member of various alumni organizations, JIS Alumna Nina Tao (Class of 1989) shows us that our connection to the schools we attend endures long after the day we move away or graduate. 

She’s a board member of the Harvard Asian American Alumni Alliance (H4A), Co-President of the Harvard Business School Asian American Alumni Association (HBS4A), and a member of the HBS Club of New York’s Small Business Partnership. For Nina, being an alum means giving back to the school community and paving the way for a new generation of learners to thrive.

This is why we can’t express how incredibly fortunate we are to welcome Nina back to the Dragon fold as a board member of the Friends of JIS Foundation! 

“It’s nice to be able to give back to JIS [and] tighten my connection to it going forward. I certainly have very good memories of it,” she says, recalling how big the Cilandak campus seemed to her as a student and having to walk “all the way to the back, not far from the swimming pool” to get to class.

Nina spent three years of her Elementary and Middle School days at JIS, attending Grades 5-7 from 1981 to 1984. Decades on, she still remembers what it was like being in one of JIS’s rare vertical classrooms combining fifth and sixth-graders (“there were only two classes like that”), our school’s iconic hexagonal buildings, and long commutes from her home in Menteng, Central Jakarta, to Cilandak.

“But it was still a good experience!” she laughs. “I had a good time at JIS. It was probably one of my most cherished memories."

A global nomad from a very young age, Nina was born in Taiwan and spent her childhood in Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia before moving to New York at 13. After earning her Bachelor’s in Economics at the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) and a master’s from Harvard Business School, she skipped into her traveling shoes once more and spent the next 17 years around Asia (Tokyo, Hong Kong, Taipei, Beijing) working in finance.

Wanting to be closer to family, Nina moved back to New York — where a last-minute decision to attend a local JIS reunion triggered a veritable domino effect of Dragon connections. During the reunion, she had a chance conversation with our Middle School Principal, Noah Bohnen, which eventually reached our Head of School (and JIS Alumna), Maya Nelson, our Advancement Office, and finally, the JIS Board of Trustees! As a result, she was invited to become a board member of the Friends of JIS Foundation.

“I feel very appreciative and very grateful for this chance to reconnect with the school — it’s one of the main reasons I joined the Friends of JIS Foundation.”

Looking forward to the many engagements and opportunities the foundation can offer the JIS community, she adds that alumni “will play an integral part in the school’s development.” 

“Friends of JIS is willing to do a lot for the school and take it to greater heights. My wish is for everyone to know about the work of the foundation as it develops!”