Thomas J. Vallely is the Senior Advisor for Vietnam at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute (WEAI) at Columbia University and Founding Chairman of the Fulbright University Vietnam Board of Trustees.

Before his appointment at the WEAI, he was the director of the Myanmar and Vietnam Programs at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center and founded the Harvard Vietnam Program in 1989, and established the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program (the Fulbright School) in Ho Chi Minh City in 1994. Vallely has played a leadership role in the development of several innovative educational exchange initiatives between the United States and Vietnam, including the Fulbright Exchange Program (1992), the Vietnam Education Foundation (2000), and Fulbright University Vietnam (2016).

Vallely founded Fulbright University Vietnam with a group of Vietnamese and American innovators. It is Vietnam’s first independent, nonprofit university. He was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1980, serving until 1987. Vallely served as Senior Advisor to The Vietnam War, an epic ten-part documentary miniseries directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that premiered on PBS in the fall of 2017.