For More Information, Contact: Brett Schuster, Communications Manager [email protected], 202-775-9555
Navdeep Singh Appointed as NAPABA’s Policy Director
WASHINGTON — The National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) has named Navdeep Singh as its new policy director, announced NAPABA Executive Director Tina Matsuoka. As policy director, Singh will be responsible for developing and implementing strategies and programs to support NAPABA’s policy priorities.
An expert in strategic legal policy and civil rights, Navdeep Singh brings important experience as a policy advocate to NAPABA. Prior to joining NAPABA, Singh served as policy director at the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF), where he co-authored “Turban Myths” – the first study on implicit bias and the Sikh American community – with researchers from Stanford University, advised the FBI on the implementation of expanded hate crimes categories, and developed the first national Sikh American television public service announcement. Singh is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the George Washington University Law School.
“Navdeep Singh is a proven leader in the Asian Pacific American community and I am excited to bring him on board as NAPABA’s new policy director,” Matsuoka said. “We look forward to working with Navdeep to enhance NAPABA’s national presence and expand our coalitions within the legal profession and the broader community to support diversity and inclusion.”
“It is a tremendous honor to join NAPABA,” said Singh. “I am excited to support NAPABA in its continued efforts to address the civil rights issues confronting Asian Pacific American communities, and to help ensure a robust, dynamic, and successful future for NAPABA and the Asian Pacific American community.”
The National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) is the national association of Asian Pacific American attorneys, judges, law professors, and law students. NAPABA represents the interests of almost 50,000 attorneys and approximately 75 national, state, and local Asian Pacific American bar associations. Its members include solo practitioners, large firm lawyers, corporate counsel, legal services and non-profit attorneys, and lawyers serving at all levels of government.
NAPABA continues to be a leader in addressing civil rights issues confronting Asian Pacific American communities. Through its national network of committees and affiliates, NAPABA provides a strong voice for increased diversity of the federal and state judiciaries, advocates for equal opportunity in the workplace, works to eliminate hate crimes and anti-immigrant sentiment, and promotes the professional development of people of color in the legal profession.
Contact: Yang Chen, Executive Director (718) 228-7206
NEW YORK – October 14, 2015 – The Asian American Bar Association of New York (“AABANY”) is proud to announce that Peggy Kuo has been appointed United States Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of New York. Ms. Kuo was sworn in on October 9, 2015.
Before her appointment as United States Magistrate Judge, Peggy Kuo was Deputy Commissioner and General Counsel of the New York City Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings. Before that, Ms. Kuo was Chief Hearing Officer at the New York Stock Exchange, counsel at WilmerHale, an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and Acting Deputy Chief of the Civil Rights Division Criminal Section at the U.S. Department of Justice. From 1998 to 2002, Ms. Kuo was a prosecutor with the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, where she investigated and prosecuted war crimes and crimes against humanity. Ms. Kuo is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. She clerked for Hon. Judith W. Rogers, then Chief Judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals. She is President-Elect of the Federal Bar Council Inn of Court. In 2010 she was honored by AABANY at its Annual Dinner.
“AABANY congratulates Ms. Kuo on her selection as a Magistrate Judge of the Eastern District of New York and is proud to have supported her candidacy,” states AABANY President William Wang. “With her appointment, Ms. Kuo joins the growing number of distinguished Asian Pacific Americans who are serving in our Federal courts. Although Asian Pacific Americans remain under-represented at all levels in the judiciary, AABANY commends the Eastern District of New York for its efforts to increase diversity on the Federal bench. Ms. Kuo’s appointment represents a step forward in creating a judiciary that reflects the diversity of the communities that it serves.”
For more information, please contact Yang Chen, AABANY Executive Director, at (718) 228-7206, or direct any inquiries to [email protected].
The Asian American Bar Association of New York is a professional membership organization of attorneys concerned with issues affecting the Asian Pacific American community. Incorporated in 1989, AABANY seeks not only to encourage the professional growth of its members but also to advocate for the Asian Pacific American community as a whole. AABANY is the New York regional affiliate of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA).
The rise of Asian economies, and in turn Asian investors, has proven to
be on the most significant developments in global real estate over the last decade. Enormous sums of money are flowing across borders in all
directions. According to the Knight Frank Wealth Report, in 2014, New
York was the number one city globally for cross-border investment. In
2013, Asians investors spent $92.9 billion. According to the Wealth X Global Luxury Residential Real Estate Report real estate is an investment,
an asset and a lifestyle. East Meets West explores these topics.
Date: Monday, November 2, 2015
Venue: The Waldorf Astoria, 301 Park Avenue, New York NY 10022
Speakers:
Ilan Bracha
(Founder, Keller Williams, NYC),
Mary
Chan (Managing Director & Relationship Manager, First Republic Bank),
Lawrence Cohen (Partner &
Hospitality Group Leader, Marks Paneth), Martin
A. Edelstein (Senior Tax Manager, Marks Paneth),
Nikki Field (Sr. Global Advisor & Associate Broker, Sotheby’s
International Realty),
Jeffrey M. Finn
(Founding Partner, Pavonia Group),
Louise
Phillips Forbes (Associate Broker, Halstead Property),
David Friedman (Co-Founder & President, Wealth-X),
Gordon H. Hoppe (Executive Vice
President, Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group – Corcoran),
Kenneth S. Horn (Alchemy Partners),
Gang Hu (Executive Director of Construction & Marketing, Greenland
Forest City Partners),
Michael P.
Kerchaval (CEO Emeritus, International Council of Shopping Centers),
Kathy A. Korte (President & CEO,
Sotheby’s),
Pamela Liebman (President
& CEO, Corcoran),
Janice Liu (Vice
President & Client Service Manager, East West Bank),
Michael Meyers (President, F&T Group),
Shaun Osher (Founder & CEO, CORE),
Raj Rajpal (Mortgage Consultant, Wells Fargo),
Diane M. Ramirez (CEO, Halstead Property),
Lezley Shad (CEO, Keller Williams NYC),
Leonard Steinberg (President & Corporate Broker, Compass),
Kevin Swill (COO, The Carlton Group),
Sam Suzuki (CEO, Suzuki Capital LLC),
Clem Turner Esq. (Homeier & Law,
P.C.),
Mandy Wong (Branch Manager,
Cathay Bank),
Stephen Yale-Loehr
(Miller Mayer LLP),
Susi Yu
(Executive Vice President of Development, Forest City Ratner Companies),
Christina Zhang (Bank of China) and
others
Attendees: CEO’s of Real Estate Firms, Luxury Real Estate Brokers and Associates,
Commercial Brokers, Developers, Attorneys, Lenders, Accounting Firms,
Architects and Design Professionals, Economists, National and Local
AREAA Members, Press and Media.
AREAA: Founded in 2003, the Asian Real Estate Association of America (AREAA)
is a national professional trade organization dedicated to promoting
sustainable homeownership opportunities in the Asian American
communities by creating a powerful national voice for the housing and
real estate professional that serve this dynamic market.
The Portrait Project: A Portrait of Asian Americans in the Law
“The Portrait Project: A Portrait of Asian Americans in the Law,” is the first comprehensive study of its kind examining how Asian Americans lawyers and law students are situated within the legal profession. The Portrait Project – led by California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu, Yale law professor Ian Ayres, and three Yale law students – will be conducting focus groups during the annual NAPABA Convention this year from Nov. 5-8, 2015, in New Orleans.
As of now, 100 of you have volunteered your time to participate in these focus groups sessions. We would love to hear from more of you, and we especially encourage legal academics, public defenders, prosecutors, and nonprofit attorneys to sign up for these sessions. Each focus group will last one hour and engage participants in conversations about law school experiences, career choices, and experiences as lawyers. These small-group conversations of about eight to ten participants each will yield rich insights into the opportunities for and obstacles to advancement of Asian Americans in the legal profession. Your narratives and experiences will help us create a comprehensive portrait of what it means to be an Asian American in the legal profession today.
As a token of our appreciation, we will be giving away the choice of a 4th Generation Apple TV (to be released in October) or a Keurig K45 Elite Brewing System to one randomly selected participant in each focus group.
If you are willing to participate in a focus group, please fill out this form by Monday, Oct. 12.
This is our last call for participants, and we hope to hear from more of you soon. Please free to reach out to us by email at [email protected] if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
The Portrait Project
Justice Goodwin Liu California Supreme Court
Professor Ian Ayres Yale Law School
Eric Chung, Xiaonan “April” Hu, Christine Kwon Yale Law School Class of 2017
AABANY members are encouraged to attend the following fun events happening in this month and November. Big thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Multicultural Audience Development Initiative (MADI) for sharing these events with us.
Upcoming Events:
Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom MADI Viewing and Reception Wednesday, October 14, 2015 6:30 – 8:30 PM RSVP: madiegypt.eventbrite.com
Teen Night: Teens Take the Met! (Ages 13–18) Friday, October 16, 2015 5:00 – 8:00 PM
Vijay Iyer – Holding It Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project Performance in the Met’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium Thursday, November 12, 2015 7:30 PM
Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom College Group at the Met Viewing and Reception Thursday, November 12, 2015 8:00 – 11:00 PM
Diwali Family Festival Sunday, November 15, 2015 12:00 – 5:00 PM 2:30 PM – East-West School of Dance will tell the Story of Diwali The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
For More Information, Contact: Brett Schuster, Communications Manager [email protected], 202-775-9555
Update: NAPABA Announces 2015 Daniel K. Inouye Trailblazer Award Recipients
WASHINGTON — The National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) has selected five exceptional attorneys to receive NAPABA’s highest honor — the Daniel K. Inouye Trailblazer Award. This award recognizes the outstanding achievements, commitment, and leadership of lawyers who have paved the way for the advancement of other Asian Pacific American (APA) attorneys. These Trailblazers have demonstrated vision, courage, and tenacity, and made substantial and lasting contributions to the APA legal profession, as well as to the broader APA community.
The 2015 Daniel K. Inouye Trailblazers Awards will be presented on Nov. 6, 2015, at a special ceremony during the 2015 NAPABA Convention in New Orleans, to the following recipients:
Captain Benes Z. Aldana — United States Coast Guard Assemblymember Rob Bonta — California State Assembly David Louie — Kobayashi Sugita & Goda LLP Justice Sabrina Shizue McKenna — Supreme Court of the State of Hawai’i Judge Amul Thapar — United States District Court, Eastern District of Kentucky
The 2015 Trailblazers class is represented by a diverse and impressive group. Captain Aldana serves as the Staff Judge Advocate (Chief Legal Officer) of the Eighth Coast Guard District, the largest district in the Coast Guard, and is responsible for providing legal advice to the district commander and oversees the provision of legal support to Coast Guard operations spanning 26 states, including the outer continental shelf of the Gulf of Mexico. Additionally, he is currently a judge on the U.S. Coast Guard Court of Criminal Appeals. He is believed to be the first Asian Pacific American to be appointed as a military trial judge (2005) and as an appellate judge (2015) in the U.S. military. As a leader in the American Bar Association, he is currently a board member of the ABA Rule of Law Initiative and on the ABA Commission on Diversity and Inclusion 360.
Assemblymember Bonta is the first and only Filipino American ever elected to the California State Legislature in the 165 year history of the state and has led a number of significant legislative efforts to empower the APIA community, including: Assembly Bill (AB) 7 to establish a state day of recognition to honor Filipino American labor leader and California hero, Larry Itliong; AB 123 to require the state public school curriculum to include the contributions of Filipino Americans to the farm labor movement in California; and AB 817 to assist the nearly 2.6 million eligible voters in California who are not yet fully proficient in English by providing them with language assistance at the polls.
Mr. Louie most recently served as the attorney general of the State of Hawai‘i from 2011 to 2014 — the first Chinese-American attorney general in the nation. As attorney general, Mr. Louie was the chief law enforcement officer for the state, providing advice, counsel, and representation to all aspects of state government (including the Governor) on all legal matters for the state, both civil and criminal. Mr. Louie helped to pass and defend Hawai’i legislation legalizing same sex marriage, settled 30-year-old claims of Native Hawai’ians against the State for $200 million, negotiated a $40 million conservation easement on 665 acres of ocean front land, and worked with other state attorneys general on the national mortgage foreclosure settlement, Internet safety and consumer protection.
Justice McKenna was a trial judge for 17 years before joining the Hawai’i Supreme Court in 2011 as its third woman and as the first open member of the LGBT community of Asian Pacific heritage to serve on a state court of last resort. Throughout her career, she has pursued civil rights, social justice, and equality in access to justice for all. As a young associate in the early 1980’s, she successfully advocated for her firm to provide 50 hours of annual billable hour credit for pro bono time, a policy that was also later adopted by other Hawai’i firms. Justice McKenna oversaw implementation of Hawai’i’s court interpreter certification program, instituted a policy requiring free language access for all participants in Oahu’s family courts as the then presiding judge, then advocated for adoption of the same policy for the entire judiciary. As an appellate and trial judge over the last 22 years, she has ruled in many high profile and important cases.
Judge Thapar was nominated by President George W. Bush to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2007, making him the nation’s first South Asian American Article III judge. Prior to his confirmation, Judge Thapar served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. While U.S. attorney, Judge Thapar was appointed to the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (AGAC) and chaired the AGAC’s Controlled Substances and Asset Forfeiture subcommittee.
NAPABA congratulates the 2015 Daniel K. Inouye Trailblazer Award recipients and thanks them for paving the way for Asian Pacific American attorneys.
The National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) is the national association of Asian Pacific American attorneys, judges, law professors, and law students. NAPABA represents the interests of over 50,000 attorneys and approximately 75 national, state, and local Asian Pacific American bar associations. Its members include solo practitioners, large firm lawyers, corporate counsel, legal services and non-profit attorneys, and lawyers serving at all levels of government.
NAPABA continues to be a leader in addressing civil rights issues confronting Asian Pacific American communities. Through its national network of committees and affiliates, NAPABA provides a strong voice for increased diversity of the federal and state judiciaries, advocates for equal opportunity in the workplace, works to eliminate hate crimes and anti-immigrant sentiment, and promotes the professional development of people of color in the legal profession.
This year’sNetwork of Indian Professionals (NetIP) 25th Anniversary National Conference will be supporting the Girl Rising Global India Fund. In addition to having a screening of the new Bollywood version of the movie “Girl Rising,” the Conference Gala on Sunday evening, October 11th (which also happens to be “International Day of the Girl”) will be raising money for the charity through a Silent Auction and Raffle. It should be an entertaining and inspiring evening with emcee Nina Davuluri (2013 Miss America), a performance by the internationally acclaimed Bollywood dance spectacular Mystic India, a performance by the comedian Hari Kondabolu, and a Keynote Speech by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
This Conference will truly offer something for everyone – from the Sunday Evening Charity Gala and the movie screening to dynamic sessions and speakers (on topics as diverse as Current Trends and Developments in Immigration Law (organized by SABA-NY) and Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing and the new film “Meet The Patels”) to the Fast Pitch Startup Business Competition to a Health Fair organized by AAPI (the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin) to social events such as a Casino Night, a Fashion Show, and a Comedy Show – there will be much to choose and gain from. And to accommodate people’s schedules, registrationis possible for individual events such as the Sunday evening Gala for those who cannot attend the entire Conference.
Congratulations to Consovoy McCarthy Park on celebrating their one-year anniversary! AABANY’s very own Michael Park, who is a Co-Chair of the Career Placement Committee, is a named partner at the firm.
“This firm really is a team,” said Park. “We draw on the experience and expertise of each member and rely on each other a great deal. And since we are also good friends, we are having a blast working together.”
