Charles Chao

Charles Chao or Guowei Chao (Chinese: 曹国伟; pinyin: Cáo Guówěi) is a Chinese American businessman who is the CEO and President of Sina Corp. Sina Corp is listed to trade on NASDAQ and now has around 63,918 employees worldwide. He has been with Sina since 1999, where he came in as vice president of finance.

Chao holds a B.A. in Journalism from Fudan University in Shanghai and a Master's in Professional Accounting from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin.

Chao joined Sina in 1999 when the company was facing difficulties in its attempts to get a listing on the NASDAQ. He overcame this challenge by establishing Sina as a VIE (Variable Interest Entity) company, which cleared the way for a successful listing in the US.

Since then, he has served as Sina’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and President in September 2005, and finally Chairman of the Board and CEO in 2011. He is the first Chairman and CEO in company’s history. In 2009, he helped launch Sina Weibo, which has gone on to achieve great success.

Chao has also made use of the Company’s platform to support public welfare undertakings in China. Currently, Sina is one of the largest venues for making donations and emergency fundraising and is one of the first internet companies to set up a charity and public welfare platform. Now, Sina has established Yang Fan Public Welfare Fund, which will enable the company to participate more effectively in charity and public welfare causes.

Prior to joining Sina, Chao served as an audit manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP, an accounting firm. Prior to that, Chao was a news correspondent at Shanghai Media Group. Chao is currently the Chairman of Weibo Corporation, a leading media company, Co-Chairman of E-House, a real estate services company, and a director of NetDragon Websoft Inc., a company providing technology for online gaming and a director of Leju Holdings Ltd., an online-to-offline (O2O) real estate services provider in China.