As a native of China, Zhenting brings the first-hand experience in American immigration. Zhenting began as an intern at Cleveland International Fund (CiF), then rose steadily up the ranks to Market Analyst, Operations Manager and now serves as Vice President. CiF is a proven EB-5 Regional Center that connects foreign investors seeking U.S. residency (“green card”) to quality real estate projects. The EB-5 Program is an Immigrant Investor program that provides a method for qualified foreign nationals to receive a permanent US Green Card if they make a $500,000 USD investment into a qualified, job-creating project. As of today, CiF has raised and invested more than $248 million in successful projects and thus preserved over 15,000 jobs in Northeast Ohio. CiF was founded in 2009 and Zhenting has been working for CiF since 2010.
At CiF, Zhenting is responsible for the daily management and monitoring of investment projects, investor relations and immigration process. He reviews all the investment offering materials, establishes and executes operations protocols, manages all the project escrow accounts, and ensures the up-to-date account activity and fund flow monitoring. In terms of investor relations, Zhenting leads the establishment and implementation of the client management system, which is CiF’s proprietary database used to maximize the accuracy and efficiency of company operations.
Moreover, Zhenting is a co-founder of Cleveland Chinese Entrepreneur Association, a professional organization bringing Chinese entrepreneurs to Cleveland and Cleveland to China. Together with his entrepreneur partners from both Cleveland and China, Zhenting further established a Chinese network platform (“Sun Tribe”, a social media platform on smartphone), which currently covers the whole Chinese community in the Greater Cleveland area. As the new generations are used to do everything on smartphones, Zhenting and his partners are now cooperating with the mobile payment services from China and aiming to help businesses in the US tackle payment barriers to the Chinese consumers, processing and settling cross-border payments into US dollars.
In 2018, Zhenting is selected by Crain’s Cleveland Business for the prestigious “Forty Under 40″ group. When asked the reason why choosing Cleveland, Zhenting said it is actually his honor to be selected and accepted by this city. This city offered him one opportunity to stay and now it is his pleasure to bring investments and jobs back to this beautiful place.
Zhenting earned his Bachelor’s degree from Nankai University in China and two Master’s degrees in business administration and accounting from Cleveland State University. Zhenting lives in the eastern suburb of Cleveland with his wife from Taiwan and they have a lovely daughter Mia.
