Echopedia

Will Tiao (刁毓能)

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Will Tiao (刁毓能)

Identity Snapshot

  • English: Will Tiao
  • Chinese: 刁毓能
  • Era: 1973
  • Geography: Manhattan, KS
  • Core roles: entrepreneur
  • Source: TAH Foundation Who’s Who

Accomplishment

  1. Actor, Producer, and Writer/Translator for TV, Film, and Stage, Starred in and Produced the Award-Winning Short Film “A Starbucks Story”, “Stan” and the Writer, Actor, and Producer of Movie “Formosa Betrayed”

Education

  • Tufts Univ. — B.A. International Relations
  • Columbia Univ. — M.A. in International Affairs

Employment

  • Clinton Administration — Presidential Management Fellow — George W. Bush Administration — International Economist — Formosa Entertainment — Co-Founder — (2010-) — Tiao Properties — Owner — (2012-) — Community — Formosan Association for Public Affairs — Employee — U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means — Legislative Fellow — Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Senator Nancy Kassebaum) — Staffer

Timeline

  • Studied International Relations at Tufts Univ. (B.A.), then International Affairs at Columbia Univ. (M.A.)
  • Worked in Congress: Legislative Fellow, U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means; Staffer, Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Senator Nancy Kassebaum)
  • Presidential Management Fellow under the Clinton Administration; International Economist under the George W. Bush Administration
  • Employee of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs
  • Writer, actor, and producer of the movie “Formosa Betrayed” (per TAH #40, 2009); starred in and produced the award-winning short films “A Starbucks Story” and “Stan”
  • 2010– Co-Founder, Formosa Entertainment
  • 2012– Owner, Tiao Properties

Family

No filled family fields on the TAH profile.

Vault records

  • [[works/taiwaneseamericanhistory-org/40-will-tiao-e5-88-81-e6-af-93-e8-83-bd-the-first-movie-producer-formosa-betraye||TAH #40: Will Tiao 刁毓能 — first movie producer, “Formosa Betrayed” (2009)]]
  • [[works/taiwaneseamericanhistory-org/ota-233||TAH #233: Will Tiao 刁毓能 (2019)]]

Notes absorbed from vault records (2026-09-10)

From the taiwaneseamerican.org records linked below: born and raised in Manhattan, Kansas; parents from Kaohsiung, blacklisted for identifying as “Taiwanese”. Formosa Betrayed (released 2010-02-26) — the first American film on US–Taiwan relations and White Terror-era issues — was funded by over $6 million from Taiwanese investors in the US and Canada; Tiao spent five years developing it. He promoted it on a 2010 US campus tour (Northwestern, Emory). He graduated magna cum laude from Tufts (international relations; his student association is paged in the vault) with an MIA from Columbia.

Vault records (deepen pass 2026-09-10)

Additional records about this person already held in the vault (taiwaneseamerican.org harvest):

Role in the Community (deepen pass 2026-10-09)

Fresh corpus pass across works/articles/sources/events/topics surfaced record groups not previously linked:

  • Early career — Formosa Foundation intern. Before Capitol Hill, Tiao interned for the Formosa Foundation; the formosa-betrayed premiere write-up notes this alongside his Washington work on US–Taiwan legislation. He began his college career as a Music major before shifting to international relations.
  • Formosa Betrayed, four-year arc. Introducing Will Tiao (2006) first featured him during the film’s early fundraising, when he had raised his first $50,000; he then raised capital in 60+ cities from investors worldwide. Director Justin Lin’s 2009 reflection, Director Justin Lin on Asian American Filmmaking, describes rallying community investors to “multi-million” capital — “an amount unheard of by Asian American independent film standards” — and hiring seasoned actors and director Adam Kane, with co-producer David Allen Cluck and associate producer Jon Lee. The company behind the marketing-for-distribution strategy is named Formosa Films in Lin’s account (vs. “Formosa Entertainment” in the TAH tables — HOLD: company-name variant across sources).
  • Premiere, February 2010. Formosa Betrayed: Giving Voice to History via the Big Screen describes the LA premiere (~400 guests, James Van Der Beek, Wendy Crewson, John Heard, Tzi Ma, Kenneth Tsang, Leslie Hope; most cast and crew took reduced pay), and Remember 228 — Celebrate Identity and Make History frames the opening weekend as a community mobilization test — “four years of work by Will Tiao and his team.”
  • 2009 ITASA conferences. At the ITASA West Coast and Midwest Conferences (2009) Tiao screened clips of the film to second-generation students; attendee Jon Lee’s line — “the story of our grandparents, funded by our parents” — is quoted there.
  • 2013 public voice. In the Ang Lee Oscar-win coverage (2013) Tiao posted as executive producer of Formosa Betrayed (2009), congratulating “Taiwan’s Ang Lee.”
  • 2021 Pew Research response — community signatory. Tiao signed the Taiwanese American community response to Pew Research Center reports merging “Taiwanese” into “Chinese” (2021-05-01), joining a cross-org coalition demanding the Center republish findings with Taiwanese Americans as a separate category — evidence his public voice extended from film into identity-data advocacy two decades into his career.
  • HOLD: development timeline — three years (2006 feature → 2010 premiere, per the premiere write-up), four years (Justin Lin, 2009), five years (earlier vault note). Never auto-merged.
  • HOLD: [[works/taiwaneseamericanhistory-org/our-journeys-351|Our Journeys #351 (Kansas, 1983)]] mentions a “Joe Tiao” (professor, Kansas State Univ.) — surname-only match, not established as a relation to Will Tiao (raised in Manhattan, KS); never merged.

Sources

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