​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.