Karen Kithan Yau, Esq. is the Director of Membership and Capacity Building at NYIC, and is responsible for overseeing membership services and capacity building efforts that strengthen our member agencies, including the Immigration Navigator training program. Karen brings to the not-for-profit sector over twenty years of experience in law, teaching, mediation, and community organizing. Karen was a long-time workers’ rights lawyer, serving as an Assistant Attorney General at the Labor Bureau in the Office of the New York State Attorney General and served as the Executive Director of the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families, a pan-Asian advocacy organization. Karen began her career as an organizer for MFY Legal Services. She was the recipient of a Skadden Fellowship at the National Employment Law Project and a Robert M. Cover Teaching Fellowship at Yale Law School, and held an assistant professorship at Syracuse University College of Law. Karen received a J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law, and a B.A. from Stony Brook University. She emigrated from Hong Kong and speaks fluent Cantonese Chinese.