Wednesday, 19 March 2008

• i disabled the rss feed, so the only people who read this blog should be friends :)  critique harshly, if necessary.  it's for a job app.
  
  Experience Working with Multi-Cultural Ethnic Groups
  
      I was made aware of my status as an ethnic minority at a very young age.  For the first nine years of my life, I resided and attended schooling in the Richmond District of San Francisco, California, where I ate daily lunches provided to low-income children and attended birthday parties amongst Black, Latino, Filipino, and other Chinese peers.  My very first best friend was the only Caucasian girl at our bilingual English/Chinese preschool.  At the age of nine, however, my father received a company promotion with a transfer to East Bay, and I found myself the only Asian-American girl at an elementary school in Lafayette, California amongst very wealthy white peers.  Fortunately, my family and I were readily accepted in this neighborhood and I was never exposed to any overt racism.  Still, I made it a point to remain close to my roots and to remember the plight of most ethnic minorities.  During high school, I performed community service in San Francisco, California, serving as the official emcee for the San Francisco Chinese Music Society.  I also participated in many Chinese Speech and Debate contests and represented Northern California in the state championships during my high school years.
  
      This background assisted me in reaching out to my community when I attended college at University of California, Davis.  During my first year of college, I became a domestic violence counselor at the Yolo County Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Center, where the clientele was predominantly Latino.  I learned about this population through regular cultural sensitivity trainings and experience during actual crisis calls.  My minor in Asian American studies later motivated me to create the first Asian Outreach Program for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault in this Sacramento/Yolo County area.  I directed this program until I graduated from college.
  
      When I moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California School of Law, I served as a volunteer law clerk in the Asian/Pacific Islander Unit of the Los Angeles Legal Aid Foundation during all three years of law school, providing legal assistance to low-income families in areas of housing, family, government assistance, and employment law.  I advocated on behalf of low-income Chinese families, drafting briefs and appearing at administrative hearings.  I attempted to steer our unit toward impact litigation as we retained cases representing multiple Chinese laborers whose rights were violated by larger corporations such as Hong Kong Supermarket.  Following my graduation from law school, I was hired as an attorney here and continued to serve as the Chinese liaison for one year.
  
      Because my true passion lies with criminal defense work, I joined the Los Angeles County Office of the Public Defender.  I have remained here for close to three years, representing primarily Black and Latino clients on a daily basis.  I truly believe that my unique upbringing has provided me with the privilege of understanding how the environment in which one is raised, his ethnic membership, and his economic status have a direct impact on his perspective in life and ability to assimilate to societal norms.
  

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