Janet Yang

Source: Troy Harvey / AMPAS

Janet Yang

Producer Janet Yang has been elected president of the Academy, the board announced on Tuesday (August 2).

Yang begins her first term as president and her second as a governor-at-large, a role for which she was nominated by David Rubin, the current incumbent who has reached the end of his third term and would only be able to stand for re-election if he took a hiatus.

Yang has been a member of the producers branch since 2002 and until recently served on the board as vice-president and chair of the membership committee, and prior to that the membership and governance committee. She is also co-chair of the Academy’s Asian affinity group.

Her producer credits include The People vs. Larry Flynt, High Crimes and Shanghai Calling and she was executive producer on recent animated feature Oscar nominee Over The Moon as well as The Joy Luck Club. She shared an Emmy with Oliver Stone and others for the HBO film Indictment: The McMartin Trial.

The following were re-elected as officers: Donna Gigliotti (board vice-president/secretary and chair, governance committee); Larry Karaszewski (board vice-president and chair, history and preservation committee); David Linde (board vice-president/treasurer and chair, finance committee); Isis Mussenden (board vice-president and chair, museum committee); and  Wynn P. Thomas (board vice-president and chair, education and outreach committee).

Voted to serve first terms on the board were: Teri E. Dorman (board vice-president and chair, membership committee); Lynette Howell Taylor (board vice-president and chair, awards committee); and Kim Taylor-Coleman (board vice-president and chair, equity and inclusion committee).

Academy CEO Bill Kramer called Yang “a tremendously dedicated and strategic leader who has an incredible record of service at the Academy” and said she was “instrumental in launching and elevating several Academy initiatives on membership recruitment, governance, and equity, diversity, and inclusion”.