Cyndie Chang
Managing Partner
Duane Morris Los Angeles
Cyndie Chang is a Committee of 100 member, the Duane Morris Los Angeles Managing Partner and member of its Partners Board. Chang represents national and international businesses and litigates complex business and class action disputes. She advises and partners with clients to enforce their rights, resolve business challenges, mitigate exposure, and litigate their commercial disputes involving contracts, securities, licensing, products liability, product safety and recall, unfair competition, business torts and fraud, trademarks, trade secrets, insurance coverage, and real estate. Chang has obtained favorable results serving as first chair in jury and bench trials and arbitrations, and leading joint defense groups in complex cases. Her services have spanned various industries, including manufacturing, retail, fashion, consumer goods, financial services and banks, healthcare, insurance, cannabis, education, energy, utilities, telecommunications, auto and transportation.
She served as President of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA), representing more than 60,000 Asian American attorneys and 80 local, state and national bar associations. She led NAPABA during its advocacy efforts and amicus briefs to SCOTUS on immigration issues and initiated programs for minority women in the profession and lawyers’ self-care/mental health. She was also President of the Southern California Chinese Lawyers Association, which awarded her its inaugural Trailblazer award based on achievements in her legal career, championing of issues affecting immigrants and other marginalized communities, and overall dedication to the APA community. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Loyola Law School, LA and received its Board of Governors Grand Reunion alumni award, and serves as a board member of the National Association of Women Lawyers. She was a Commissioner on the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession and a board member of the Asian Pacific Community Fund, which helps fund Los Angeles API non-profits.
Chang has been recognized with the “Super Lawyers” distinction for many years, including Top 50 Women of Southern California and the Daily Journal’s Top 100 California Women Lawyers. Her honors include: NAPABA’s 2010 Best Lawyers Under 40; Council on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO) inaugural EDGE Greater Equality Award; inaugural fellow to the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD); Asian Americans Advancing Justice LA Pro Bono Award; a LA Times “DEIA Visionary”; one of Los Angeles Business Journal’s “Most Influential Minority Lawyers,” “Champion of Women Finalist,” “Community Impact Award Finalist,” “Most Influential Women Lawyers,” and “Leader in Law”; The Recorder’s “Lawyer on the Fast Track;” Minority Corporate Counsel Association’s (MCCA) “Rising Star”, and one of 15 women profiled in Best Lawyers Magazine in 2016 as leading the charge for achievements in the practice and policy on both local and national levels. She is an elected member of the Chancery Club (Los Angeles’ association of distinguished lawyers who have held position of honor and responsibility in legal, judicial, academic, governmental and civic organizations) and serves on the Joint Committee of Law Firm Partners and Corporate Counsel for the National Judicial College (NJC). Ms. Chang is a Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, a trial lawyer honorary society composed of less than one-half of one percent of American lawyers, and a Fellow to the American Bar Foundation. Ms. Chang previously served as judicial extern to the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Chang has led high profile pro bono impact litigation for national non-profits, on issues concerning reproductive justice, racial profiling, and immigrant business rights. Specifically, on behalf of Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Los Angeles, she advocated and challenged the constitutionality of a proposed ordinance that could have restricted the use of Asian characters on business signs in the City of Monterey Park, California. She was featured in, “An Asian American Family’s Story of intergenerational Courage,” by AARP and “Opening the Door: Personal Stories of Groundbreaking Los Angeles Lawyers and Judges” for LA Law Library’s Pro Bono Week, sponsored by Cal Humanities. Ms. Chang has also been featured in the Los Angeles Business Journal, Above the Law, Ms. JD, The American Lawyer, the ABA Journal, Best Lawyers, Diversity Journal, the LA times, Diversity Executive, the Daily Journal and other legal publications. She is a frequent speaker and presenter at numerous national and local professional, bar association, and community events.
Peggy Kuo
Magistrate Judge
United States District Court
Eastern District of New York
Magistrate Judge Peggy Kuo was appointed on October 9, 2015. She received a B.A. summa cum laude in history from Yale University in 1985 and a J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1988.
Judge Kuo clerked for the Honorable Judith W. Rogers with the D.C. Court of Appeals. From 1989 until 1993, she served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia. From 1994 to 1998, she was a trial attorney and then Acting Deputy Chief of the Civil Rights Division Criminal Section at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she investigated and prosecuted hate crimes and allegations of police misconduct throughout the United States. From 1998 to 2002, Judge Kuo prosecuted war crimes and crimes against humanity at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands. Her historic trial regarding mass rape in Bosnia became the subject of the documentary film, “I Came To Testify,” part of the series Women, War & Peace.
Upon her return to New York, Judge Kuo became litigation counsel at Wilmer Hale, LLP. In 2005, she was appointed Chief Hearing Officer at the New York Stock Exchange, where she presided over hearings involving violations of federal securities laws. From 2011 until her appointment to the bench, she was Deputy Commissioner and General Counsel of the New York City Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, the largest municipal tribunal in the country.
Judge Kuo was born in Taiwan and moved to the United States at the age of three. She was awarded a German Chancellor Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1993 to study the German criminal justice system. She is a former President of the Federal Bar Council American Inn of Court, an active member of the Asian American Bar Association of New York, and former Vice-Chair of Manhattan Legal Services.
Alice Young
Founder
Alice Young Advisory LLC
Alice Young is a Committee of 100 member and the Founder of Alice Young Advisory LLC, where she advises clients on Asia business strategies and potential business partners and resources. She retired as Partner and Chair of the Asia Pacific Practice of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP after over 40 years of international law practice there and previously at Coudert Brothers, Graham & James (now Patton Squire Sanders), and Milbank & Tweed. She served for 30 years as an Independent Director and on the Executive and Examining Committees of Mizuho Trust and Banking Co (USA) and its predecessor bank and also as Independent Director and on the Audit, Risk Management and Corporate Governance Committees of AXIS Capital Holdings Limited, a NYSE-listed company.
Young was based in Hong Kong in the pioneering early 1970’s, did her first China deal in 1979, and in 1981 was the first woman, minority and youngest partner to found and head a New York branch law office. She has been lead advisor on projects throughout Asia and is conversant in Japanese, Mandarin Chinese and French. She is a Trustee Emeritus of the Asia Foundation and Lotus Circle Advisor; Lifetime Trustee of the Aspen Institute; Associate Fellow of Davenport College, Yale University; and a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Young has received numerous awards for her civic and business leadership. She was honored by the Boy Scouts of America (NY Councils) “Distinguished Woman of the Year” Award, “New York Doers” Award, the New Jersey “Best Women in Business” Award and the New York Women’s Agenda Star Award. She received the “Justice in Action” Award from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the “Most Influential APA New Yorkers” Award from the National Association of Asian American Professionals, the Yale Medal (2020) and the Yale Asian American Alumni Leadership Award, and the ASCEND “Inspirational Leadership” Award. She was listed by Crain’s as one of the “Top 100 Minority Executives” and by Harvard Law Bulletin as one of the top 50 women graduates of Harvard Law School.
She frequently lectures on business, law and foreign policy issues at various organizations, including Harvard, Yale, Aspen Institute, Moody’s, and Asia Society, and has appeared internationally on CNN, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, The Charlie Rose Show, PBS, ABC Nightline, Fuji TV, and China Television Network on these subjects. She has been featured in The New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, Newsweek, The National Law Journal, Where They Are Now: The Story of Women of Harvard Law 1974 (Doubleday, 1986) and Working Women for the 21st Century (Williamson Publishing, 1991). Young was in the first class of women graduates of Yale College, where she majored in East Asian Studies and received a Bates Fellowship to study in Japan under Yasunari Kawabata, the first Japanese Nobel Prize Winner in Literature. She was one of the first Asian American women to graduate from Harvard Law School.
