Karin Wang is a long-time civil rights and immigrant rights advocate and currently serves as Executive Director of the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, the nation’s oldest training program for future social justice lawyers. Before joining UCLA in 2018, Karin was Vice-President of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles, overseeing programs and communications for the nation’s largest Asian American civil rights legal group, and previously directed its immigrant rights project. From 2000 to 2002, she served as Deputy Regional Manager for the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, launching its Los Angeles field office. Karin began her legal career at Morrison & Foerster LLP in San Francisco.
As a civil rights advocate and enforcer, Karin focused on immigrant access to health care and public benefits for many years, including significant work on language rights in Los Angeles County and the state of California. She has devoted much of her professional career to advocating for Asian American and immigrant communities and has received numerous honors for her activism, including alumni awards from both of her alma maters and a “Best Lawyers Under 40” award from the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association. Karin received her BS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her JD from UC Berkeley School of Law.