Her focus will be on tech integration into SV, transportation, solving homelessness at its roots, and respecting and celebrating diversity. I am a California lawyer and a community activist. I am a specialist in cross-border intellectual property issues. An early immigrant, Elizabeth had her first job in a Chinese restaurant owned by a family friend. Through hard work and education, Elizabeth succ
eeded academically and became an IP attorney in some of our finest companies. Today, Elizabeth is a community activist bridging the businesses and our downtown residential community, making housing more affordable, and fighting crime and blight in our neighborhoods. She donated countless hours to help develop transportation infrastructure and integrate San Jose into the regional tech ecosystem. She is also helping to advance our next generation as adjunct law professor.As a continuation of my many years of community work in downtown San Jose, I decided to jump in the race for a seat on the San Jose City Council to make some real changes. San Jose has a lot of potential; unfortunately, I do not see that its full potential can be realized without some new blood. Furthermore, one of the foundation principle of the US representative government is that the governing should reflect the governed. Given its high percentage of Asian population, representation has been lacking. San Jose needs an Asian representative to represent the interests of the growing population in education, public safety, and more integration into the high-tech economy.There has NOT been a successful Asian candidate in my district since the early candidates from Japan town. Even so, I decided to be an independent candidate to truly represent the interests of the residents, a continuation of the style of my community work in the past.However, I am up against big machines—Labor Union backed Omar Torres and legacy candidate Joanna Rauh—and these machines have dominated city politics in San Jose for decades. As San Jose transforms itself, I would like to position myself as the candidate of the future who can respond to the changing San Jose: the growth of the city, the changing demographics, the increasing diversity, My undergraduate degree was in aerospace/mechanical engineering. My graduate degree was in computational linguistics/natural language processing, a branch of AI today. I worked many years in the tech industry in various capacities: engineer, in-house legal counsel, private practice lawyer.In addition to my legal training in the US (University of Hawaii and the Georgetown University Law Center), I was also a research scholar at the Peking University School of Law, and a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. I also spent some time working in Hong Kong (Baker & McKenzie), Taiwan (Industrial Technology Research Institute), Shenzhen (frequent travel as the IP coordinator for Apple Inc.) and Shanghai (APAC IP Director for Eaton Corp.)Achievements: Executive Council member of the American Society of International Law, Council Member of the American Bar Association Intellectual Property Law Section
