Charles Jung

 Candidate for Vice President for Programs  and Operations

  Endorse Candidate

Personal Statement

I love NAPABA, and I am grateful for the incredible work that it does every day to serve our community of attorneys and advance civil rights. I still remember how it felt walking into the Los Angeles JW Marriott in November 2010 for my first NAPABA Convention. I met the smiling eyes of countless other attorneys, and felt welcome. Over the course of that weekend, and for one of the first times in my professional experience, I sensed a genuine openness, broad connection, and warm community. For someone who grew up in Detroit and Flint, Michigan at a time when there were few other people who looked like me, this was a memorable experience. Since that time, I’ve been hooked, and try to share my passion for community building with other APA attorneys and NAPABA affiliates around the country.

Last year was a challenging time for many in our community. The Southern Poverty Law Center counted 867 cases of hate crimes and incidents in the 10 days after the November 8 election. Anti- immigrant sentiment was reported as the most frequent motivation for the incidents—perhaps not surprising given the anti-immigrant rhetoric during the campaign.

Six weeks before the election, a Sikh American father and IT specialist was assaulted in Richmond, California, a few miles from my home in San Francisco. He was stopped at an intersection, when several men in a white Ford F-150 pickup truck pulled up next to him. They shouted, and threw a beer can at his car. After he rolled down the window to talk to them, they pulled his head through the open window, punched him, knocked off his turban, and used a knife to hack off his religiously-mandated top- knot. NAPABA made the Bay Area affiliates aware that the District Attorney’s office appeared hesitant to charge the incident as a hate crime.  I helped mobilize the affiliates to issue a press statement and demand that the DA do so. Soon after, the DA’s office brought both assault and hate crime charges against the attackers. Last month two men were found guilty of both assault and hate crimes and sentenced to three- year terms in California state prison.

With the spike of hate crimes, some in the community suspected that incidents against APAs were underreported. After discussions with community members, I launched a website, www.standagainsthatred.org, to collect and report hate crimes and incidents against Asian Americans.This website was donated to Asian Americans Advancing Justice, and Advancing Justice uses it to track hate crimes nationally. (See NPR, First-Ever Tracker of Hate Crimes Against Asian-Americans Launched; see also HUFFINGTON POST, After Trump Deemed China Foreign Enemy, Anti-Asian Hate Crimes in LA Surged: Expert.)

I am also proud to help organize the 28 California NAPABA affiliates, representing the interests of California’s 14,000 APA attorneys, into a statewide Lobby Day. I modeled this program after NAPABA’s successful national Lobby Day, and I hope this will be a template that other affiliates can use in the future to mobilize our APA attorneys nationwide.

As an At-Large Board Member, I’ve focused on programs that increase community engagement and service to our members, which are goals consistent NAPABA’s strategic plan.  I created the NAPABA Affiliate Best Practices Webinar Series, which gives real world advice to NAPABA’s 70+ Affiliates. This new program has trained many dozens of our leaders nationwide on officer and director best practices, how to create a program to advocate for diverse judicial appointments, and how to establish a rapid response policy (coming in July). I’ve also partnered with former NAPABA leaders to create a NAPABA Post- Practice Network to serve the needs of attorneys transitioning out of full time practice.

I’ve been a member of the NAPABA Programs Task Force, where I’ve worked on a NAPABA mini- MBA program and also worked to improve NAPABA’s ties to the National APA Law Students Association (NAPALSA). I co-chaired the Solo & Small Firm Network for two years, helping substantially increase membership and referrals and launching the SSF Webinar Series. This year, I will focus on continuing to refine NAPABA Connects (formerly the Pitch Sessions), creating a NAPABA endowment, and creating an LCLD-type leadership program for in-house and law firm attorneys.

I look forward to continuing to move the needle for our community, and I would be honored to serve as NAPABA’s Vice President for Programs & Operations.

Candidate Bio

Charles Jung is passionate about community mobilization and public policy. His day job is as a trial lawyer at Nassiri & Jung LLP, where he both defends wage and hour/employment cases and represents in- house lawyers and executives in their workplace disputes. Charles is a frequent commentator in the legal press on the topics of class actions, arbitration, and employment law. He graduated with Distinction from Stanford Law School, where he was an Articles Editor for the Stanford Law Review. He earned his B.A. from Duke University, graduating Magna Cum Laude. He earned his Master’s from the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a Kennedy Fellow. His honors and awards include: being named a Top 100 Northern California Attorney every year since 2013, and inclusion in the list of Super Lawyers® or Rising Stars by Northern California Super Lawyers every year since 2009. Charles is Peer Review Rated AV Preeminent® (5.0 out of 5.0) by Martindale-Hubbell® in Litigation, Labor and Employment, and Class Actions. He serves as an At-Large Board Member for NAPABA, an officer of AABA Greater Bay Area, a Co-Chair or Executive Committee member for the SSF sections of both the Bar Association of San Francisco and the California State Bar, an IAKL Regional Governor, and an Elections Commissioner for the City and County of San Francisco.

Endorsements

*All work or organizational affiliations disclosed are for identification and disclosures purposes only, and do not constitute endorsements by those institutions.