Center on Asian Americans and the Law Board of Advisors

Kathy Hirata Chin is a Partner at Crowell & Moring LLP, where she is a member of the healthcare and litigation groups. She graduated from Princeton University magna cum laude and Columbia Law School, where she was Editor in Chief of the Transnational Law Journal. She has served on the NYC Planning Commission; the EDNY Federal Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel; Governor Mario Cuomo's Judicial Screening Committee for the First Department; the Gender Bias Committee of the Second Circuit Task Force; Chief Judge Kaye’s Commission to Promote Public Confidence in Judicial Elections; and the Second Circuit Judicial Conference Planning and Program Committee, as well as on the Board of Directors of the NY County Lawyers Association, NY Lawyers for the Public Interest, and the NY City Bar Association.

She currently serves on the NYC Commission to Combat Police Corruption (Acting Chair); the Governor's Judicial Screening Committee for the First Department; the Attorney Emeritus Advisory Council; the Commercial Division Advisory Council; the Second Circuit Judicial Committee on Civic Education & Public Engagement; and the Board of Directors of the Medicare Rights Center (as co-chair). She has received the NYC Bar's Diversity and Inclusion Champion Award, AABANY's Women’s Leadership Award, and the inaugural Hong Yen Chang award from Columbia APALSA and Columbia Law School Association. In 2012, 2014, and 2021, she was nominated for appointment to the New York State Court of Appeals by the New York State Commission on Judicial Nomination. In 2021, she joined the Board of Directors of EmblemHealth, a national not-for-profit health insurer. In 2022 she received the Daniel K. Inouye Trailblazer Award from the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association.

Alex Chu is Principal of Chu Enterprises, a commercial real estate management, leasing, and development firm focused on properties in New York’s Chinatown and Flushing neighborhoods. Born in China, he was educated in the U.S. with a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a master’s degree in urban design from Harvard University, and a JD from Fordham University Law School. After admission to the bar, Mr. Chu practiced commercial law covering real estate, property development, and banking. He went on to form Eastbank, a community-based lender, to increase financial access for Asian immigrants in New York. Most recently, Chu Enterprises developed 50 Bowery, a hotel reflecting today’s Chinatown that draws in visitors from cultures around the world.

Mr. Chu and his family’s dedication to New York’s Asian community spans several
decades across various sectors. He currently sits on the board of Eastbank, was the founding President of the New York Chinese American Banking Association, and served on the boards of The China Institute and New York City’s Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. He was an advisory board member of Wilmington Trust, and a trustee of the Taft School.

Chinh Q. Le is a visiting professor of practice at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he teaches courses on civil rights, poverty law, and public interest practice. From 2011 to 2021, he served as legal director of the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, the oldest and largest general civil legal services program in the nation’s capital. Prior to joining Legal Aid, Le was director of the division on civil rights in the office of the New Jersey Attorney General, where he led the state’s enforcement of state and federal civil rights and family leave laws. Between 2001 and 2006, he served as assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., in New York, the first two years as a Skadden Fellow. Le spent the 2008-09 academic year as a practitioner-in-residence at Seton Hall Law School and an adjunct associate research scholar at Columbia Law School, where he was affiliated with the Center for Institutional and Social Change. He has also worked as a litigation associate at Jenner & Block.

William (Bill) Min is the Executive Vice President and General Counsel for LexisNexis® Risk Solutions (“LNRS”) based in Alpharetta, Georgia. Bill is responsible for all legal, compliance, privacy, and regulatory matters at LNRS and leads a global team of approximately 100 legal professionals. LNRS is a portfolio of brands that provides its customers with information-based analytics and decision tools in multiple industries, including aviation, agriculture, chemical and energy, financial services, commercial property, government and law enforcement agencies, healthcare, human resources, insurance, and tax.

Bill holds a BA in the Biological Basis of Behavior from the University of Pennsylvania, a MA in Liberal Studies from Stony Brook University, and a JD from Fordham University School of Law. Bill’s legal career spans more than thirty years. Prior to joining LNRS in 2019, Bill held in-house legal positions at Western Union, Live Nation Entertainment, Inc., Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Sara Lee Corporation, and Sunkyong America, Inc. He began his legal career as a mergers and acquisitions attorney at two New York City firms.

Outside his work as a lawyer, Bill dedicates his life generously to serving his community. He has volunteered more than 7,000 hours as an Emergency Medical Technician. In 2016, Bill received the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his volunteer service from President Barack Obama.

After graduating from Princeton, Sharon Volckhausen earned an M.St. in Modern History from Oxford University and a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center. After law school, she clerked for Judge Denny Chin in the Southern District of New York. She then worked as an associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and served as an Assistant US Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.

Sharon is currently the Judicial Assistant to Judge Chin in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
She serves on the Board of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, the Brooklyn Children's  Museum, Princeton in Asia, the advisory boards for Riverkeeper, the Trust for Public Land, and the Center for Brooklyn History. She is also the Vice President of the Tiger Baron Foundation.

She lives with her husband and their two children in Brooklyn, New York.