Karin Wang is the Vice-President of Programs and Communications, where she oversees APALC’s direct services, litigation, policy, leadership development and communications work.
Wang is active in local, state and national organizations that seek to improve the legal system for immigrants and low-income communities. Currently, she serves on the board of OneJustice and is a member of the State Bar’s Council on Access & Fairness. She also is a past president of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Los Angeles County; past board member of the Southern California Chinese Lawyers Association; former chair of the State Bar’s Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services; and past co-chair of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) Pro Bono & Community Service Committee.
In addition, Wang has been involved since 2005 in the struggle for marriage equality in California. She is a founding and current Steering Committee member of API Equality-LA, leading the coalition’s media efforts against Proposition 8 in 2008 and also helping to file several amicus briefs in the California Supreme Court in support of marriage equality, including one brief on behalf of 63 Asian American organizations.
Before her current position, Wang directed APALC’s immigrant rights project and helped file a landmark civil rights complaint against Los Angeles County on behalf of limited English speaking welfare recipients, leading to major reforms to the department’s services to immigrants and payment of $1.7 million in back benefits. Wang also ran the first Los Angeles field office of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Office for Civil Rights, enforcing federal civil rights laws across the Southwest. After law school, she was a litigation associate at Morrison & Foerster LLP in San Francisco.
For her activism and leadership, Wang has received the Lambda Legal “Liberty Award”; the “Pioneer in Community Service” award from the Taiwanese American Citizen League/Taiwanese American Professionals; the “Local Hero” award from KCET in Los Angeles; and the “Woman of the Year” award from California Assemblymember Mike Eng. She also was named by NAPABA as one of its “Best Lawyers Under 40.”
Wang graduated from the UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law, where she was the Editor-in-Chief of the Asian American Law Journal, and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.
Karin Warn is the author of When Litigation Collides with Grassroots Organizing: The Impact of the Perry Lawsuit Through the Eyes of Asian Americans Organizing for Marriage Equality.
N.Y.U. Review of Law and Social Change 