IAN H. E. HANKS ’05

IAN H. E. HANKS, the co-founder of Hanks Brothers Chinese Trading Company, which sources Chinese products, died Dec. 23, 2011. He was 30. A lymphoma survivor in his teens, he was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2005. He was an East Asian Studies major who had been inspired first by a Wesleyan course in Buddhism that piqued his interest in Asia and then by his courses in Mandarin Chinese, in which he became fluent. A Princeton in Asia scholar, he worked as a consultant in Shanghai with Tractus Asia, a management consulting firm, and later moved to Hangzhou, where he and his brother founded their company. He and his wife also provided heart surgery for seven Chinese school children through Project Hope. Among those who survive are his wife, Sandra Hanks; his mother and father; his brother and sister; his grandmother; and his other mother, Tita Dueñas.