Joseph C. Tsai joined Alibaba in 1999 as a member of the founding team and has served on the board of directors since the company's inception. He was chief financial officer until 2013 and executive vice chairman until September 2023, and currently serves as Chairman; he is a founding member of the Alibaba Partnership and a board member of affiliate Ant Group. Before Alibaba, Tsai was a private equity investor with Sweden's Investor AB (the Wallenberg family) from 1995 to 1999, general counsel of the New York management buyout firm Rosecliff, and a tax-group associate attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. He holds a bachelor's degree in Economics and East Asian Studies from Yale College and a juris doctor from Yale Law School, and is qualified to practice law in New York.