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Thanks to everyone who came out on February 26, 2014, to celebrate AABANY’s 25th anniversary with us at Cipriani Wall Street. More than 850 guests registered to attend, setting a new record. AABANY also reached its goal of exceeding 1,000 paid members. Mike Huang, in his Outgoing President’s speech, publicly announced the Don Liu Scholarship to award $15,000 to APA law students who apply and meet the requirements. Significant pledges have already been rolling in.
Congratulations to our 2014 honorees: AALDEF, recipient of the Public Advocacy Award; Randal Milch, GC of Verizon, recipient of the Corporate Counsel Leadership Award; and Vernon Jordan, recipient of the I4 (Icon, Ideals, Impact, Inspiration) Leadership Award. Congratulations also to Julie Kwon, our Mentor-Mentee Program Coordinator, for winning the AABANY MVP Award.
AABANY was joined by about 30 past honorees from past annual dinners. Each was brought up to the stage during the dinner for special recognition.
MSNBC reporter Richard Lui once again expertly took us through the proceedings as MC.
Guests continued to celebrate upstairs in the mezzanine during the after-party, with open bar and live DJ.
Happy 25th anniversary, AABANY, and we are looking forward to 2014 and the next quarter century!
Thanks for Coming to Fall Conference 2011: Diversify
Thanks to everyone who came to AABANY’s Second Annual Fall Conference on September 17, 2011, at Skadden. We are grateful for the hospitality of Skadden and its entire team for hosting us so well throughout the day. Special thanks go to our anchor sponsor Wells Fargo for its generous support. We thank also Sprint and Veritext as additional sponsors.
Thanks to our hard-working Committee Chairs and program organizers for bringing in some excellent speakers and moderators covering a diverse range of topics that truly defined what it means to “Diversify” as an attorney. Thanks to the Fall Conference Planning Committee for putting in long hours, participating in meetings and conference calls and doing all that was needed to pull off an event of this magnitude. Thanks to all the volunteers, mostly law students, who assisted tremendously in the smooth flow of everything from registration to checking attendees in and out of each program and making sure that everyone was getting proper CLE credit. Thanks to our AABANY Legal Interns, Melerie Shih and Hyunjoo Kim for running our BlackBerry PlayBook sweepstakes. Congratulations to Judy Tsang (@soapdishes) on winning the drawing for the PlayBook.
Thanks especially to everyone who registered to attend the Fall Conference. All told we had more than 210 attendees througout the day, from morning until evening.
During the luncheon, Sharon Hom, Executive Director of Human Rights in China, delivered inspiring and compelling remarks covering a wide range of subjects from Asian American attorneys to attorneys in China and the struggles and challenges that both have faced and continue to face. At the end of the luncheon, President Linda Lin announced the launch of the AABANY Law Review and introduced its first Editor-in-Chief Jen Yue Connor Yim. (Read the AABANY press release announcing the AABANY Law Review here.)
After the end of a long day, many of the attendees stayed for the cocktail reception. During the reception, James Hong, Civic Participation Coordinator at MinKwon Center, spoke about the work that MinKwon has been doing to mobilize the Asian American community in New York to engage in the re-districting process. MinKwon is the lead organization behind ACCORD (Asian American Community Coalition on Redistricting and Democracy) of which AABANY is a member.
Also during the cocktail reception, AABANY officially kicked off its inaugural Mentorship Program, with Julie Kwon, Mentorship Program Coordinator, introducing the program and inviting the first class of AABANY mentors and mentees to meet each other in person for the first time.
Fall Conference 2011: Diversify was a wonderful event, and it would not have been as successful without your involvement and participation. Thank you all for being a part of it. If you have any feedback, good, bad, big, small, please share it with us by emailing your comments to [email protected].