Yan, Lan

Biography

Yan Lan (born in 1957). A very gifted little girl, she was not allowed to enter higher education because her Communist family had been designated as counter-revolutionaries. In 1969, she and her mother were sent to a labor camp in Henan. In 1977, the year after the Cultural Revolution ended, she enrolled at university. Exceptionally motivated, she was awarded grants to study at the most prestigious universities in Europe and the United States. In 1991, she joined the Gide Loyrette Nouel legal firm based in Paris and became the first foreign woman to make partner. In 1998, she returned to China to run the firm’s Beijing office. Since 2011, Yan Lan has been managing director of Lazard’s Greater China Investment Bank (Beijing, Hong Kong, Taiwan).