Shannon Van Sant

Shannon Van Sant is a Strategy and Public Affairs Advisor for the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, where she advises on the foundation’s development, government relations, and public affairs campaigns, and leads the foundation’s work in Canada. Ms. Van Sant is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing data-driven analysis and evidence-based reporting on global conflict and transnational security issues. Previously Ms. Van Sant worked as a journalist for nearly 20 years and lived for 11 of those years in Beijing and Hong Kong. She reported on the ground across 20 provinces and regions in China, and throughout Sub-Saharan and East Africa, filming documentaries on humanitarian issues, including the migration routes of North Korean refugees. Ms. Van Sant has been honored with a Human Rights Press Award from Amnesty International and the Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong, and in 2014 she reported on Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement.  Her recent open-source research and analysis have focused on technology and national security, and she has advised government and private clients on foreign malign influence and political interference from Iran, the Kremlin, and the Chinese Communist Party.