Meet the Board
Members of our board of directors are experts in community lawyering, nonprofit strategy and communications, advocacy, and much more. Their commitment to systemic change has helped us continue to grow and meet the needs of community members in the Bay Area, California, and beyond.
Michael Ng
Chair
Michael Ng
Chair
Mike is a partner in the San Francisco office of international disputes and investigations firm Kobre & Kim. He serves as a first-chair trial lawyer in high-stakes intellectual property and technology litigation, often for international clients in US disputes. He is also a globally recognized intellectual property strategist, advising companies around the world on monetization, transactions and licensing.
Mike has devoted much of his career to public service, including as a civil rights lawyer and Skadden Fellow in rural Mississippi, and two stints in the New York City government. He served as the National Volunteer Coordinator for the voter protection program of the 2008 Obama presidential campaign. He currently serves as Chair Emeritus of the Board of Directors of the East Bay Community Law Center, and a co-chair of the judiciary committee of the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area.
Mike is the grandson of immigrants from Toisan, China, and grew up in the Bay Area in a family of 13 children, including adopted siblings from Hong Kong, Thailand, India, Korea and Mexico. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and lives in Oakland with his spouse and two sons.
Magan Ray
Vice Chair
Magan Ray
Vice Chair
Magan Pritam Ray is a Principal Shareholder at Greenberg Traurig, LLP where she also Co-Chairs the Asian Affinity Group. Her practice focuses on advising clients on all facets of employee benefits and ERISA matters, including the design, implementation and operation of retirement plans, health and welfare benefit plans, cafeteria plans, fringe benefit plans, and non-qualified deferred compensation programs. Magan regularly counsels clients on the business impact, strategic response, plan design and compliance with the evolving legal requirements and industry changes impacting health care. Magan also advises Fortune 100 companies on benefits issues in mergers, acquisitions, spin-offs and joint ventures. Magan is experienced in representing companies undergoing employee benefits and tax audits before the IRS and Department of Labor. Magan is listed in: Chambers USA Guide, Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation, 2021; The Legal 500 United States, Labor and Employment – Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation, 2015-2021; San Francisco Business Times and Silicon Valley Business Journal, “Forever Influential Leader” 2020; Silicon Valley Business Journal, “Women of Influence” 2018, and San Francisco Business Times, “Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business” 2018.
Magan is active in the community, currently serving as a member of the Board of RIP Medical Debt and a member of the Coastside Recovery Task Force. She is also the immediate past Chair of the Board of the ACLU of Northern California and Chair of the Board of the ACLU Foundation of Northern California. Magan earned her B.A. and M.A. in Japanese History from the University of California, Berkeley and her J.D., with distinction, from Stanford Law School.
Anthony Wan
Treasurer
Anthony Wan
Treasurer
Anthony Wan is the Managing Member and founder of WealthBoost Advisors, LLC.
Anthony has spent the past decade and a half servicing high-net-worth families in wealth and tax matters at institutions such as Andersen Tax, a prominent wealth management firm in Palo Alto, and at Ayco Goldman Sachs. In his current role, he continues to work with families to meet both their personal and financial goals.
Anthony previously served as a Co-Chair of the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area’s Civil Rights Committee (CRC) as well as the Vice-Chair of the CRC’s Corporate Outreach Sub-Committee.
Anthony graduated magna cum laude from Tufts University with a B.A. in Economics. Thereafter, he earned his J.D. with a Tax Law Concentration from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Anthony is also a Chartered Financial Analyst ® charterholder.
Yaman Salahi
Secretary
Yaman Salahi
Secretary
Yaman Salahi served as a staff attorney in ALC’s National Security and Civil Rights Program from 2013- 2016. At ALC, he coordinated legal and advocacy campaign about confiscation of U.S. passports from Yemeni-Americans and represented individuals in FBI interviews or when they were subjected to additional screening while traveling. Since then, Yaman has worked on employment and antitrust litigation at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, including litigating class action cases addressing gender discrimination in technology and accounting sectors, the misclassification of workers, and anti-competitive activities in the pharmaceutical industry.
Yaman clerked for Judge Edward Chen of the Northern District of California. He has received the Kathi Pugh Award for Exceptional Mentorship from U.C. Berkeley School of Law.
Yaman served as the Arthur Liman Fellow, National Security & Law Enforcement at the ACLU of Southern California, Los Angeles. There he conducted legal research and drafted briefs in FOIA and civil rights litigation regarding surveillance of Muslim communities in Southern California and the First Amendment right to take photographs.
He received his J.D from Yale School of Law and his B.A. from University of California, Berkeley.
Belinda Lee
Belinda Lee
Belinda S Lee is a partner in the San Francisco office of Latham & Watkins and a member of the firm’s Litigation & Trial Department. Her practice focuses on cartel matters and complex business litigation.
Belinda regularly represents US and Asian companies in abuse of dominance investigations and price-fixing investigations and private damages actions before regulators and courts in the US, Canada, Europe, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Australia. She also has significant experience representing clients in civil class actions, mass tort actions, and on issues of personal privacy.
Belinda serves on the editorial board of the ABA’s Antitrust magazine and is a frequent author and speaker on legal issues relating to expert witnesses, antitrust compliance and law firm diversity issues. She serves by appointment as the Chair of the Judiciary Committee of the Bar Association of San Francisco.
Belinda also believes it is important to give back to the community, and has served on the Boards of several community and non-profit organizations, including the Bar Association of San Francisco’s Justice & Diversity Center, the NALP Foundation, the Western Center on Law & Poverty, the Constitutional Rights Foundation and the California Heritage Museum. She was recognized as one of the “Most Powerful & Influential Women” by the National Diversity Council in 2015.
Belinda received a JD (cum laude) from Harvard Law School in 1998 and a BSFS (magna cum laude) from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 1995.
Carmen Cheung Ka-Man
Carmen Cheung Ka-Man
Carmen Cheung Ka-Man is Executive Director at the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), an international human rights organization dedicated to working with impacted communities to seek truth, justice and redress for crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, and other core international crimes through innovative litigation and transitional justice strategies. An international lawyer, Carmen specializes in litigating human rights cases in domestic courts, and has acted as counsel in significant public interest cases in the United States and Canada involving torture, extrajudicial killings, and other serious rights violations. She has provided expert testimony before governments and international bodies. Prior to joining CJA, she was a Professor of Global Practice at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, where her research and teaching focused on security and human rights. At the University of Toronto, Carmen also served as Associate Director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace, Conflict, & Justice, as well as Executive Director of the Global Justice Lab. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia Law School.
Chris Kao
Chris Kao
Chris Kao is based in Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP’s San Francisco and Silicon Valley offices, where he focuses on intellectual property and complex commercial litigation. Chris is also the co-leader of Pillsbury’s Taiwan practice. Chris is an experienced first-chair trial lawyer representing technology companies in patent, copyright, trademark and trade secrets litigation, and other high-stakes commercial disputes. He has represented companies in the computer hardware and software, semiconductor, telecommunications, biotechnology, and consumer products industries in federal and state courts throughout the country, the U.S. International Trade Commission, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He has extensive experience litigating Covered Business Method and inter partes review proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Chris also regularly advises clients on privacy and cybersecurity issues and is designated a Certified International Privacy Professional/US by the IAPP.
Before joining Pillsbury, Chris served as a partner at Vinson & Elkins and Perkins Coir LLP, a Director at Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabin, and an Associate at Cravath, Swainer & Moor LLP.
Chris was recognized in The Best Lawyers in America (Woodward/White Inc.), Litigation – Intellectual Property, 2018-2019, Northern California Super Lawyers (Thomson Reuters), 2016-2019, and Northern California Rising Stars (Thomson Reuters), 2009-2015
Chris is a board member of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Silicon Valley. He also is a member of the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, the American Bar Association, the Bar Association of San Francisco, the San Francisco Bay Area Intellectual Property American Inn of Court, and the William A. Ingram Inn of Court (Santa Clara County).
Chris received his J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School and his B.A. magna cum laude from Dartmouth College.
Connie K. Chan
Connie K. Chan
Connie K. Chan is a partner at Altshuler Berzon LLP in San Francisco, California, where her practice consists primarily of representing workers, consumers, labor unions, public interest organizations, and public entities in complex civil, impact, and class action litigation. Connie was selected to the Northern California Super Lawyers in 2022 and 2023 and has been listed as one of Lawdragon Magazine’s 500 leading plaintiff employment and civil rights lawyers every year since 2021. In 2017, Connie was named a “California Lawyer of the Year” in the Worker Health and Safety category for her work on Kilby v. CVS in the California Supreme Court.
Connie received her B.A. from Yale College and her J.D. from Yale Law School. She served as a law clerk to Judge Michael Daly Hawkins of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and to Judge Lucy H. Koh of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Connie previously served as a councilmember on the California Fair Employment and Housing Council, and as a deputy city attorney in the Affirmative Litigation Division of the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office.
Darren S. Teshima
Darren S. Teshima
Darren Teshima is a partner at Covington & Burling LLP, where he represents corporate policyholders in insurance coverage disputes. Darren has served on the Caucus board since 2013. In addition to serving on the Caucus’s board, Darren currently serves on the board of Legal Services for Children and is a former board member of the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area. In 2015, Darren was recognized as one of NAPABA’s Best Lawyers Under 40.
James Kan
James Kan
James Kan is a partner at Goldstein Borgen Dardarian & Ho, based in Oakland, California. Beginning as a Civil Rights Fellow, he has focused his legal career on protecting the civil rights of workers and those marginalized by society. James specializes in representing employees and plaintiffs in complex employment and consumer class/collective/representative actions in California and nationwide. He also represents employees in executive and professional severance negotiations.
James previously served on the Advisory Board for the East Bay Community Law Center and volunteers with the Legal Aid at Work Workers’ Rights Clinic and the Caucus’ Workers’ Rights Clinic.
James received his B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his J.D. from Columbia University School of Law. Prior to law school, James taught Sixth Grade in Paterson, New Jersey with Teach for America.
Jina Choi
Jina Choi
Jina Choi is an Assistant U.S. Attorney and the Chief of the Corporate and Securities Fraud Section in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Jina was a Partner in the San Francisco office of Morrison & Foerster, LLP where she is a member of the Securities Litigation, Enforcement and White Collar practice group.
Prior to entering private practice, Jina served over 20 years in public service: as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice; an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Texas; a staff attorney at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and she ultimately served as Director of the SEC’s San Francisco Regional Office. She began her career serving a judicial clerkship for the Honorable Robert P. Patterson, Jr., on the Southern District of New York.
In addition to serving on the ALC Board, Jina has been appointed to numerous leadership positions within the legal community including Co-chair of the Public Law Leadership Advisory Council for the Asian American Bar Association, the Thought Leadership Sub-Committee of the Women in White Collar Defense Association, the Women in Securities (WISe) Steering Committee and the Board of Advisors for the SEC Historical Society.
Jina has been a guest lecturer on federal securities and white collar law at Stanford Law School, University of Virginia School of Law and NYU School of Law. She is a frequent speaker at industry and legal symposiums, including those sponsored by Stanford Directors’ College, Bar Association of San Francisco, the American Bar Association, the Directors Roundtable and the Securities Regulation Institute.
Jina is a graduate of Yale Law School and Oberlin College.
Perry Chen
Perry Chen
Perry Chen is a consultant and serves as the Board President and Senior Advisor at the Partnership for Children and Youth, an advocacy and capacity-building organization that champions high-quality learning opportunities for underserved youth in California, with an emphasis on after school, summer learning, children and families in public housing, socialemotional learning, and community schools. For more than two decades, Perry has worked in the field of education and youth development, with a particular focus on equity and quality for children and families in California. Starting out as an undergraduate teacher and executive director for CityStep, a youth arts organization, he has since held leadership roles in nonprofits, school districts, and philanthropy – all driven by the vision of opportunity, access, and quality education for all. Over the years, Perry has been recognized as a leader for education, youth services, and public/private partnerships.
From 2015-2019, Perry was the Chief Strategy & Operating Officer for the Stuart Foundation and oversaw strategic planning, impact and learning, and operations. Prior to joining the foundation, Perry served as the Chief of Staff for several Superintendents of the Oakland Unified School District. From 2000-2005, Perry was the Executive Director of OASES, a community organization based in Oakland Chinatown serving Pre K-12 youth who have limited resources. During his tenure, Perry was awarded the Eureka Communities/LeaderSpring Fellowship for nonprofit executive leadership and later served on itsboard and chaired the alumni board (2005-2011).
Perry is a board member of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP). He has a background in law and social justice, and has served as a litigation attorney (Morrison & Foerster LLP), a policy advocate (Children Now), a political action chair (Gay Asian Pacific Alliance), and a law professor (New College School of Law). For his leadership in the social sector, Perry received the Wells Fargo Community Leadership Award, the Waitt Family Foundation Fellowship, the Hearst Foundation Fellowship, and the 21st Century Future Leaders Award (Alameda County).
Perry graduated with honors from Harvard University and Harvard Law School.
Ronald Lee
Ronald Lee
Ron is currently a Deputy City Attorney at the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, where he focuses on complex and affirmative litigation. Before joining the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, he was a Deputy Attorney General with the California Attorney General’s Office Civil Rights Enforcement Section and a Trial Attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. In these positions, he investigated and litigated matters involving a wide range of unlawful employment, housing, policing, and banking practices, and worked extensively on regulatory efforts advancing civil rights protections in these areas.
Ron is currently a member of the Judiciary Committee of the Asian American Bar Association for the Greater Bay Area. He previously served on the Board of the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center in Washington, D.C. Ron received his B.A. from Yale University, and his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center. After graduation, he clerked for U.S. District Judge Alan S. Gold in the Southern District of Florida.
Samantha Huang
Samantha Huang
Samantha Huang is a Principal at BMW i Ventures, where she focuses on early-stage investments across AI and big data, automotive, Industry 4.0, sustainability, and the next generation of human experiences. Samantha previously worked as Lead Researcher at the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University on research projects centered on innovation, immigration, and entrepreneurship. She also serves as Board Director and Head of Content for the Emerging Venture Capitalists Association, a nonprofit organization for empowering the next generation of venture capitalists. A former historian, she was the recipient of Best Paper Prizes from the World History Association and National History Honors Society for her work on Chinese immigration over the U.S.-Mexico border during the exclusion era. Samantha holds a J.D. from UC Berkeley Law School, where she was a Morrison Foerster Scholar. She also received a M.A. in history from Stanford University and a B.A. in history from UC San Diego, where she graduated summa cum laude.
Shams-Tabraiz Muzaffar
Shams-Tabraiz Muzaffar
Shams-Tabraiz Muzaffar has worked with labor, research, education, and development/humanitarian aid organizations in a range of countries including Pakistan, Eritrea, Ghana, South Africa, and the United States. He is currently a researcher at SEIU – United Healthcare Workers, where he also works closely with The Fairness Project. He is a member of the Bay Area Solidarity Summer (BASS) collective, where he helps organize political education programs for South Asian American youth activists.
Shams formerly taught in the Politics and International Relations Department of the International Islamic University, Islamabad as well as high school mathematics in Eritrea. He is co-director of the forthcoming documentary Son of a Bug, which explores early rock music in Pakistan, and views social justice as the common thread interweaving his diverse work. He received an M.A. in International Relations from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a B.A. in Mathematics and History from the University of Texas at Austin. He loves ice cream, basketball, and rock ‘n’ roll.
Sue Wong
Sue Wong
Sue Wong was formerly the Chief Financial Officer of On Lok, a family of nonprofit corporations serving the elderly in the San Francisco Bay Area. She joined On Lok in 1978 as part of the team that created On Lok’s comprehensive health care model for frail seniors, now known nationally as the PACE (Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly) model of care and locally as On Lok Lifeways. During her tenure, she has managed administrative and financial functions at On Lok and served as the Chief Financial Officer until 2014.
Ms. Wong was also the CFO of CalPACE, the association of California PACE programs from its inception in 2007 until 2014. She served on the Board of Directors of Family Caregiver Alliance as Treasurer from 2000 to 2010. Ms. Wong holds a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.B.A. from San Francisco State University.
Tiffany Santos
Tiffany Santos
Ms. Santos is Senior Counsel in the Employment Law Group of Chevron Corporation specializing in ERISA and the laws governing employee benefits, including the Internal Revenue Code, HIPAA, COBRA and the Affordable Care Act. Previously, she practiced for 21 years at a specialty employee benefits law firm in San Francisco.
William R. Tamayo
William R. Tamayo
Board member William R. Tamayo (Bill Tamayo) was a staff attorney (1979-1988) and Managing Attorney for the Asian Law Caucus (1988-1995) hand handled cases involving employment discrimination, immigration and nationality law, voting rights and the Census. From 1995 - 2015, he served as the Regional Attorney for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission directing the federal government's employment discrimination litigation program in Northern and Central California, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (1995-2005) and in Northern California, Northern Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Idaho and Montana. He served as the EEOC District Director overseeing investigations and operations (2015-2021). While at the ALC, Bill co-counseled EEOC and Castrejon v. Tortilleria "La Mejor" (holding that undocumented workers are covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) and co-led the legal team that developed the framework for Congress to pass the "Self-Petitioning" provisions of the Violence Against Women Act (1995) through which over 150,000 battered immigrant women and tens of thousands of their children have left abusive relationships and obtained lawful permanent residence. As Regional Attorney for the EEOC his office filed the first farm worker sexual harassment (rape) cases in federal court and recovered millions of dollars for women in California, Washington and Oregon. His office's work on this issue is featured in the Frontline documentary, "Rape in the Fields". He was the 2023 recipient of the ALC's Yuri Kochiyama Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a native and resident of San Francisco, His parents were immigrants from the Philippines.