Tag: community ambassador

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Celebrating the 2026 NAPABA President’s Award Honorees

The NAPABA President’s Award recognizes individuals and organizations that demonstrate an exceptional commitment to the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander community. Selected annually by the NAPABA President, the award celebrates those whose leadership and service have made a meaningful impact on our community.

This year, NAPABA honors Wilson Chu and Sandra Yamate, two longtime leaders in the AANHPI legal community. Over the course of their careers, Wilson and Sandra have contributed their time and leadership to NAPABA and initiatives serving the legal profession and AANHPI community. Their decades of service reflect a longstanding commitment to supporting and uplifting others in the legal community.

NAPABA is honored to celebrate Wilson and Sandra and recognize their achievements at the 2026 NAPABA Convention in Los Angeles on Friday, November 13, at the President’s & Trailblazer Awards Reception.

Wilson Chu
Senior Counsel, Dechert

Wilson Chu is a strategic advisor to boardrooms and C-suites, known for a collaborative, creative, business-minded approach to complex transactions and corporate governance. His practice is heavily weighted toward technology, especially superintelligence. Matters include advising Tesla’s Special Committee on Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar pay package, serving as Texas counsel on Amazon’s $13b acquisition of Whole Foods, and advising a 50% co-founder in Mailchimp’s $12b sale to Intuit.

He chaired the ABA M&A Committee (world’s largest), under which he created the game-changing Deal Points Studies and The MAC Cup national law student competition.

With his partner-in-crime, Don Liu, he co-founded many of NAPABA’s cornerstone initiatives, including the Best Under 40 Award, IHC and Partners Networks, and the 50×30 Initiative/Pipeline Program, as well as The Alliance for Asian American Justice (delivering over $10m in pro bono to victims of anti-Asian violence).

Sandra Yamate
Chief Executive Officer, Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession

Sandra S. Yamate is the CEO of the Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession. She was a founder of both AABA-Chicago and NAPABA, where she was the first Central Region Governor and organized NAPABA’s first regional conference.

Currently, Sandra is the 99th President of the National Association of Women Lawyers (“NAWL”), the first Asian American in its 125+ year history. As President, she wrote/produced a video on the history and achievements of Asian American women lawyers, launched an Activation Summit in Honolulu, and spearheaded the renewed and expanded joint advocacy effort by the national affinity bars.

Sandra serves on the Board of the Chicago Bar Foundation and as DEI columnist for Chicago Lawyer magazine. By special appointment, she is a member of the New York City Bar Association’s DEI Committee. Sandra designed a law school course, “Diversity and Inclusion: A Social and Professional Responsibility” that was awarded the E. Smythe Gambrell Professionalism Award by the ABA Standing Committee on Professionalism.

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DACA & DAPA Trainings – Be Sure You’re Ready to Help!

Registration is now open!

A judge in Texas may have delayed the implementation of Administrative Relief, but he hasn’t stopped it! We need to continue preparing our communities so that when the court injunction is lifted, as many people can be ready to apply for expanded DACA or DAPA as possible.

The time is now to learn how to be fully prepared – to engage in outreach, respond to questions, and to learn how to pre-screen for eligibility and prepare cases for legal review. Since community groups are the trusted first point of contact for many immigrant New Yorkers, it is our aim to empower you with the tools and trainings needed to make sure you are ready for Administrative Relief.

To that end, we have developed a series of trainings for community partners. We encourage you to select a training that best suits your organization’s capacity and ability to work on Administrative Relief (specifically expanded DACA and DAPA):

Community Ambassador Training (3 hour training):
This is the ideal training for partners looking for a basic understanding of what President Obama’s November Executive Actions means and for instruction on how to educate our immigrant communities through public education, workshops and referrals. This training will teach groups how to answer basic questions on Administrative Relief, offer informational workshops, and help direct community members to local Community Navigators and legal service providers. We will discuss the difference between administrative relief and immigration reform, the substance of DACA and DAPA, and ways to prepare today.

Examples of participating organizations may be small CBOs that may not want to participate as full Community Navigators, or may be large social service agencies not set-up to provide immigration services but that interact with immigrants daily.

Upcoming Ambassador Trainings:

  • Rockland County: April 17th from 2pm to 5pm at the Rockland County BOCES Conference Center (65 Parrott Rd., Bldg. 10, West Nyack, NY)
  • New York City, Brooklyn: April 21st from 9am to 12pm at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Main Branch, (10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, NY)
  • New York City, Manhattan: May 5th from 9am to 12pm – Location TBD
  • Westchester County: May 8th from 10am to 1pm at the White Plains Public Library (100 Martine Ave, White Plains, NY)
  • Suffolk County: Tentatively May 22nd in Central Islip.
  • Nassau County: Tentatively June 12th in Garden City.

Community Navigator Training (full day training):

This is the ideal training for partners seeking to engage more deeply by conducting pre-screenings and referrals as well as by assisting in case preparation and document collection. This workshop will cover the basic track’s content but will also include an in-depth exploration of what role “community navigators” or non-attorneys can play in administrative relief preparation, the benefits of seeking BIA recognition and accreditation, and what requirements we expect for expanded DACA and DAPA. Groups will leave able to conduct basic eligibility pre-screenings, make direct referrals to legal providers, and help community members collect documents to submit with their application.

Examples of Participating organizations may be small to medium-sized CBOs looking to take a more active role in preparing communities for administrative relief, or organizations with limited legal capacity looking to play an expanded role in administrative relief that stresses community preparedness.

Upcoming Navigator Trainings:

  • New York City, Manhattan (& via livestream): April 1st from 9am to 5pm at New York Law School (185 W. Broadway, New York, NY)
  • Westchester County: May 19th from 9am to 5pm at Neighbors Link (27 Columbus Ave, Mount Kisco, NY)
  • Dutchess County: June 5th from 9am to 5pm at Catholic Charities Community Services Office for New Americans (218 Church St. Poughkeepsie, NY)
  • Suffolk County: Tentatively July 10th

We are currently planning our calendar for further trainings later this Spring, including more outside of New York City.

All trainings will include access to a Community Provider Toolkit, and ongoing technical assistance and training opportunities from the NYIC.

Visit www.Ready4Relief.org for future dates, locations, resources and additional information.

Beyond our partnerships for these trainings, all workshops and materials will be jointly conducted and released by the New York Immigrant Assistance Consortium, a partnership of immigrant-serving providers, community-based non-profits, state and local government agencies, and other stakeholders jointly convened by the New York State Office of New Americans and the New York Immigration Coalition. The aim of the Consortium is to ensure a coordinated strategy to reach, educate, and assist every New Yorker eligible for administrative relief. For more information about NYIAC and Administrative Relief please visitwww.Ready4Relief.org.

Should you have any questions, particularly around which training might be most ideal for your organization, please contact:Betsy Plum at [email protected] or (212) 627-2227, x240.

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