For the last 15 years, Duncan has worked on fighting human and wildlife trafficking focusing on corporate accountability and global financial crime.
In 2023, he received a Certificate of Merit from the World Customs Organization for the first of its kind investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and Homeland Securities Investigation and successful settlement addressing forced labor in the global supply chain of a Fortune 500 company, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. And later that year, he was runner-up for the Global Coalition To Fight Financial Crime’s Financial Crime Fighter of the Year!
In 2020, he was awarded the first Executive Associate Director Award of Homeland Security Investigations for “Exemplary Partnership” for work on forced labor.
In 2012, he was honoured by FilmAid Asia for his documentary and human rights work.
Duncan Jepson’s second novel, Emperors Once More was published in March 2014. His previous published works include All the Flowers of Shanghai (2011) and the graphic novel, Darkness Outside the Night (2013), which was highly acclaimed by Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan.
Duncan was an editor of the Asia-based culture and fashion magazine WestEast and one of the founders and managing editor of the Asia Literary Review. He has been a social commentator on Asia and writes for The New York Times, The Daily Telegraph, Publishing Perspectives, South China Morning Post and Hong Kong Tatler.
He is also an award-winning director, writer and producer of five feature films, a short film and has produced documentaries for Discovery Channel Asia and National Geographic Channel.
Most recently, Duncan taught sustainability management at University of Southern California Dornsife Wrigley School Institute of Environment and Sustainability for three years. Prior to this, he taught policy and social entrepreneurship at Princeton University for four years, a course he co-created, and strategic leadership at the Eisenhower School at the National Defense University in D.C. He is an affiliated scholar at the Institute of Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, where he taught for two years.
