Tyler Brent currently works as a Media Liaison for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington, DC. He began studying Chinese when he was awarded the State Department’s National Security Language Initiative for Youth Scholarship to spend a gap year in Shijiazhuang, China. After interning with the Confucius Institute and the US Embassy in Beijing’s American Employees Association, Brent worked with Ping Pong Productions in Beijing to bring the LA-based theater company The Actors’ Gang, directed by Academy Award-winner Tim Robbins, to perform Shakespeare in Beijing and Shanghai. After a summer volunteering with the Beijing LGBT Center, Brent wrote his senior honors thesis about cooperative marriage and LGBT rights in China. On weekends, he can be found giving tours of Washington, DC, in Chinese to groups from the State Department’s Office of International Visitors.