Keynote Speakers
Kithmina Hewage​​​
Opening keynote address
Kithmina Hewage is Senior Advisor at the Centre for Asian Philanthropy and Society (CAPS), where he leads the organization’s policy engagement and strategic outreach efforts with governments, philanthropists, corporates, and non-profit organizations across 18 Asian economies to improve the quality and quantity of private social investments in Asia. Kithmina is also a member of the Expert Network of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Prior to joining CAPS, Kithmina has over 10 years of academic and professional experience in international development policy research, analysis, and consulting. This includes in the United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Sri Lanka. During his tenure at the British High Commission in Colombo from 2020 to 2022, Kithmina worked closely with senior political, business, and civil society figures both in Sri Lanka and in the United Kingdom.
In the period 2015 to 2020, Kithmina worked for the Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka (IPS), the country’s foremost policy think-tank. As a trusted advisor across the political spectrum in Sri Lanka, he was appointed to several government task forces on macroeconomic and investment policy reforms. Additionally, he has served as a consultant for international organizations such as the World Bank and the International Trade Centre (ITC).
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As a regular guest on television and radio programs in several countries, Kithmina provides insight into global political and economic developments. He has been invited to speak on panel discussions and deliver keynote addresses at prestigious regional and global summits, including in Hong Kong, Singapore, and India. His op-eds have appeared in international publications such as Nikkei Asia and The Diplomat, while his research articles have been published by the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) and Routledge.
Kithmina holds a BA with university and departmental honors from Johns Hopkins University and a MSc in International Public Policy from University College London (UCL).
Dana Brakman Reiser
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"For-Profit Philanthropic Innovation in the US"​
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This paper will discuss three of the most important recent shifts in US elite philanthropy. First, high net worth individuals are increasingly using limited liability companies rather than nonprofit, tax-exempt foundations, as hubs for their philanthropy. Second, considerable portions of elite giving is now transferred to donor-advised funds operated by giving intermediaries affiliated with major investment firms. Third, more and more, corporate donors are enmeshing their giving with their business operations, in extreme cases by closing down their foundations. Each trend adapts business practices and players to philanthropic ends. They all also sideline philanthropy regulation designed to bolster public trust.
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Dana Brakman Reiser holds a chair as Centennial Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, where she also served as Vice Dean. She teaches courses in Corporations, Nonprofit Law, Social Enterprise, Property, and Trusts and Estates. A globally recognised expert in the law at the intersection of business and charity, her work on the law of social enterprises – firms that pursue profits for owners and social good – defined the field. She has also written extensively on law and finance for philanthropic organizations and on sustainable investing.
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Professor Brakman Reiser’s books, For-profit Philanthropy: Elite Power and the Threat of Limited Liability Companies, Donor-advised Funds, and Strategic Corporate Giving (2023) and Social Enterprise Law: Trust, Public Benefit, and Capital Markets (2017) (both with Professor Steven A. Dean), are published by Oxford University Press. She also served as editor (with Professors Steven A Dean and Giedre Lideikyte-Huber) of Social Enterprise Law: A Multijurisdictional Comparative Review (Intersentia 2023). Her scholarship has also appeared in volumes edited by others, in law journals including Boston College Law Review, Emory Law Journal, and Notre Dame Law Review, and frequently in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Professor Brakman Reiser is a member of the American Law Institute and was an Associate Reporter for its project on the Principles of the Law of Nonprofit Organizations, as well as a past-Chair of the Section on Nonprofit and Philanthropy Law of the American Association of Law Schools and a former member of the executive board of its Section on Business Law. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School.
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Matthew Harding
"Reimagining Charity Law"
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In the common law world, charity law is one of the central components of the legal framework for not-for-profit activity. Ancient in origin, charity law today spans the law of trusts, tax law and regulatory law. Its central organising ideas are a legal conception of charity and an associated test of public benefit. In this paper, I argue that it is time to reimagine charity law to render it better suited to the various legal objectives that intersect with it. Central to my argument is that we should abandon the legal conception of charity, and the public benefit test, altogether.
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Matthew Harding is a professor of law at the University of Melbourne. He has published and taught extensively on topics in private law and the law regulating charities and other civil society organisations. Matthew was the Dean of the Melbourne Law School from 2022 to 2024 and he has held a number of visiting appointments including as the Cheng Yu Tung Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong in 2024. Matthew is a past Chair of the Charity Law Association of Australia and New Zealand and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law.
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Jin Jinping
Education Background
1995,Peking University Faculty of Law, Dual Bachelor Degree of Economy and Law
2001,LL.M., Civil and Commercial Law, Peking University Law School
2004,Juris Doctor, Civil and Commercial Law, Peking University Law School
Work Experience
2004-2006,Postdoctor of Law Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
2003,Visiting scholar in UMKC University in America
2005,Visiting scholar in Yale University Law School
2006,Visiting scholar in University of Michigan
Research Field
Civil and Commercial Law, Social Jurisprudence,Charity and Non-profit Organization Law, Trust Law,Estate Law
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"A Trust as an Entity: Is it Still a Trust? —— Take Charitable Trusts as an Example"
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The concept that ‘a trust is not a contract’ has been widely accepted, which has essentially clarified the distinction between trusts and contracts. However, the boundary between trusts and entities is becoming increasingly blurred. With the emergence of commercial trusts, trusts are increasingly inclined to take on the characteristics of entities. But does a trust, when seen as an entity, still remain a trust? This paper uses the charitable trust stipulated by the Charity Law of mainland China as an example, combined with the practice of charitable trust, to show that in private law parlance, charitable trusts are essentially just those private trusts identified as having charitable purposes. Although charitable trusts may have an independent name, internal governance structure, and the right to engage in legal acts in their own name, there is no normative difference in the private law realm whether their entity-like nature is emphasised or not. However, once the law recognises charitable trusts, its purpose is to confer special rights and interests upon them, thereby imposing corresponding obligations and responsibilities. These regulations, however, extend beyond the realm of private law and enter into the domain of public law. Therefore, this paper concludes that in modern society, when a trust is endowed with social purposes and functions and thus regulated by public law, treating it as an entity is undoubtedly a superior legislative policy choice. However, in terms of private law norms, trusts still possess characteristics that significantly distinguish them from entities.
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