eiLi & Robert A. Hefner III are both business entrepreneurs and philanthropists. Robert is a long time natural gas producer, a pioneer in ultra deep exploration and founder of The GHK Company in Oklahoma, a privately-owned oil and natural gas exploration and production company. From the late 1960's to the early 1980's, he led the technological innovation necessary for GHK to drill many of the world's deepest and highest pressure natural gas wells. Hefner is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London, a Fellow National in The Explorers Club, Member of the International Council at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and serves on Singapore's International Advisory Panel on Energy. In 2009 Hefner’s groundbreaking book The Grand Energy Transition – GET (www.The-GET.com) was published by John Wiley & Sons, with a documentary based on the book slated to be released in 2012. MeiLi was born in Singapore, of parents from Fujian and Guangzhou, China. She has a cosmopolitan background and has traveled and lived abroad extensively for much of her life (Brazil, South Korea, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Portugal, and London). She specialized in hotel management and has worked in leading hotels in Asia and Europe. For many years, MeiLi owned her own business focusing on global branding, marketing, communications, design and event planning. MeiLi oversees The Hefner Collection and the Robert & MeiLi Hefner Foundation.

"The Robert & MeiLi Hefner Foundation fund projects to build long term positive relations between USA and China, a relationship we believe to be the defining global relationship of the 21st Century. Our areas of interest are Energy, Culture and Foreign Affairs." - MeiLi & Robert A. Hefner III