Sally Yu Leung is an author, independent scholar, curator, and collector specializing in Chinese material culture and decorative arts. She founded the James Cahill Asian Art Study Center at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley. She previously served as a Commissioner of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, appointed by the Mayor of San Francisco, and was a founding trustee of the Chinese American International School. From 2000 to 2020, she taught at Pixar University, where she encouraged creative observation through art and material culture. She currently serves as an International Advisor to the Tracing Patterns Foundation and as a Cultural Ambassador for the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

Her research explores the cultural afterlives of Chinese textiles and embroidered objects in global circulation, with particular interests in dress, embroidery, collecting, museum interpretation, and cross-cultural exchange. Through objects, she examines how traditional Chinese textiles continue to acquire new meanings across time, place, and cultures.