Speakers
William Hernandez
Executive Director of the Center for Global Leadership, UCI Paul Merage School of Business
Professor William Hernández has a Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University Law Center, in Washington D.C., and a Master's Degree in Spanish and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine.
Professor Hernández is the Executive Director of the Center for Global Leadership at UC Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business. He also consults in the areas of international management, international business development, international negotiations, and organizational development.
Professor Hernández has taught or is presently teaching at UC Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business and the Instituto de la Empresa (IE) School of Law in Madrid, Spain. His courses include Advanced Negotiations, International Business Negotiations, International Trade Regulation and the WTO, International Expansion, and international Marketing. In addition to teaching, Hernández also was the founding Director of the Asturias Business School, a joint venture between the Spanish government and California State University, San Francisco. As a result of his efforts, a degree from ABS is recognized in the U.S. and Europe. Recently, Professor Hernández was named an international expert by the United Nations Development Program in Cuba in the area of Foreign Investment Negotiations.
The Honorable Joseph Kang
Superior Court of California, County of Orange
Honorable Joseph Kang is currently an Orange County Superior Court Judge, serving on the Juvenile Dependency Panel at the Lamoreaux Justice Center. He was appointed to the bench by Governor Gavin Newsom on February 17, 2023, and sworn in on March 13, 2023. Prior to Judge Kang’s appointment, he was a Deputy Public Defender IV with the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, assigned to felony trials, and was with the Office for over 23 years.
Judge Kang’s family immigrated to the State of Hawaii from South Korea in 1976. After high school, he moved to California and later graduated from UCLA with a BA degree in Political Science and received his law degree from Southwestern Law School.
Judge Kang’s pastime and hobbies include spending time with his family, listening to jazz and other music albums, and practicing Kendo with his son.
Sung Eun (Summer) Kim
Professor of Law, Faculty Director UCI Law Korea Law Center
Professor Summer Kim is Professor of Law, and Faculty Director of the Korea Law Center, at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law. Professor Kim’s primary research and teaching interests are in corporate law, corporate governance, financial regulation, and contracts. Her scholarship examines how legal and market structures create and deepen inequities in our society, and her work aims to close these gaps. Prior to law teaching, Professor Kim practiced law at Kirkland & Ellis and Shearman & Sterling, where she specialized in the areas of debt finance and capital markets. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her B.A. in Economics, summa cum laude, from Seoul National University. She is a member of the New York and California bars.
Song Hwan Kwon
Former Deputy Consul General, Korean Consulate General in Los Angeles
Song Hwan Kwon is a former senior diplomat of the Republic of Korea with more than two decades of experience in diplomacy, international affairs, and public policy. He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea in 1998 after passing the 32nd High Diplomatic Service Examination and subsequently served in a variety of leadership positions involving U.S.-Korea relations, international security, diplomatic protocol, and global engagement.
Throughout his diplomatic career, Mr. Kwon held assignments in several offices within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including the North American Affairs Bureau, where he focused extensively on issues related to the ROK-U.S. alliance and bilateral cooperation. His overseas postings included Los Angeles, Boston, Istanbul, and Caracas. He also served as Assistant Secretary to the President in both the Office of Protocol and the Office of National Security at the Blue House, the Executive Office of the President of the Republic of Korea.
Mr. Kwon earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea. He later pursued graduate studies in the United States, earning a Master of Pacific and International Affairs (MPIA) from the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego, and a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from the University of California, Irvine School of Law. His professional and academic work has focused on diplomacy, international cooperation, international human rights, public diplomacy and U.S.-Korea relations.
Today, Mr. Kwon frequently shares his insights on international affairs, leadership, public policy, and the evolving relationship between the Republic of Korea and the United States.
Rob Lindquist
Adjunct Professor of Law, UC Irvine Law
In his legal career spanning more than four decades, Professor Lindquist has served as the Chief Compliance Officer of two multinational corporations, the General Counsel of a $16B unit of a major technology distributor and a partner in a national law firm, specializing in antitrust litigation and counseling. Lindquist has represented a man sentenced to death in Georgia in his habeas corpus petition and served as a temporary prosecutor with the City of Los Angeles. In 2016 he received the award of Global Counsel of the Year for Competition Law from the Association of Corporate Counsel. Lindquist has held the position of Chair of the Antitrust Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, Vice Chair of the State Bar of California Antitrust Section and President of the Southern California Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel. Since 2020 he has guest lectured annually to the Law School of the University of Paris. He is a 1977 graduate of the University of Texas School of Law.
Dave Min
U.S. Representative, California's 47th District, United States House of Representatives
Representative Dave Min was elected in 2024 to represent California’s 47th Congressional District in the heart of Orange County, which includes the cities of Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Laguna Beach, Newport Beach and Seal Beach, as well as parts of Laguna Hills and Laguna Woods.
Dave is the child of Korean immigrants and a product of California public schools, who lives in Irvine with his wife Jane and their three children. He previously served as a California State Senator from 2020-2024, where he focused on affordable housing, gun violence prevention, climate action and small business development.
Before becoming an elected official, Congressmember Min was a law professor at UC Irvine, where he taught and researched in the area of business law. At that time, he was considered one of the country’s leading experts on banking and housing policy, and testified six times before Congress on these issues.
Dave is a proud alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned degrees in the College of Arts and Sciences (B.A. Philosophy) and the Wharton School of Business (B.S. Economics), and Harvard Law School, where he earned his Juris Doctorate. Dave began his career prosecuting Wall Street fraud at the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he served as an Enforcement Attorney.
Vanessa Oh
Adjunct Professor of Law, UC Irvine Law
Vanessa Oh is a corporate attorney and incoming adjunct professor of law with experience in both BigLaw and in-house practice. Most recently, she served as Senior Corporate Counsel at Yelp, where she advised on corporate governance, securities, and M&A matters. She previously practiced M&A at White & Case and Skadden. Beginning this fall, Vanessa will teach legal writing to LL.M. students at UC Irvine School of Law and Business Associations at Western State College of Law. She is especially passionate about mentoring law students and junior attorneys and building meaningful professional communities. Vanessa is also active in the Orange County Korean American legal community through the Orange County Korean American Bar Association (OCKABA) and the OCKABA Foundation, where she serves on the board and volunteers regularly at pro bono clinics.
Austen Parrish
Dean and Chancellor’s Professor of Law, UCI Law
Austen Parrish joined University of California, Irvine School of Law in August 2022 as its third dean. Previously, Dean Parrish was the Dean and James H. Rudy Professor of Law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law. Dean Parrish’s research and teaching interests focus on transnational law, transnational litigation, and the role that national courts and domestic institutions play in solving global challenges. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles published in leading law reviews and is the co-author of two books. He has particular expertise in legal and policy issues related to the extraterritorial application of domestic law. Over his career, he has taught a variety of courses, including Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, Transnational Law, International Environmental Law, and Public International Law. Dean Parrish received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington and his law degree from Columbia University, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar.
Jinny Suh
Founder, K Legal Advisory
Jinny Suh is a Korea and U.S. dual-qualified attorney and founder of K Legal Advisory, a consulting practice focused on cross-border legal matters involving Korea and the United States. She has more than 18 years of experience advising clients across private practice, entrepreneurship and in-house legal roles.
Prior to launching K Legal Advisory, Jinny served as Associate General Counsel at McKinsey & Company, where she advised on complex commercial engagements and AI-related initiatives. Earlier in her career, she practiced at Kim & Chang and founded T Legal Service, an alternative legal services firm in Korea. Her recent work focuses on artificial intelligence, legal innovation and practical ways legal teams can integrate AI into their daily workflows.
Jinny is the author of Korea Law 101, a guide written to help international lawyers and business professionals understand Korean law in plain English. She regularly speaks on AI, cross-border legal issues and the evolving role of lawyers in an AI-enabled world.
She holds law degrees from UCLA School of Law and Seoul National University.
Maryam Zomorodian
Executive Director of Global Programs, UC Irvine Law
Maryam Meechka Zomorodian is the Executive Director of Global Programs at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, where she also earned her J.D. and served as the Senior Diversity and Outreach Editor for UC Irvine Law Review and a leader for Saturday Academy of Law, a pro bono project dedicated to promoting diversity in the legal profession. She currently volunteers for the ABA Afghan Legal Professionals Scholarship and Mentoring Pilot Program, which seeks to restore the professional lives of Afghan judges, lawyers, and prosecutors after the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021. Prior to studying at UC Irvine Law, Zomorodian was an academic advisor at the University of Notre Dame, where she also taught courses for the College of the First Year of Studies; the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre; and the University Writing Program. Additionally, she had the privilege of teaching for the Balfour-Hesburgh Scholars, a merit-based program for students from groups historically underrepresented in higher education. Zomorodian received her B.A. in English literature from the University of California, Los Angeles, her M.A. from the University of Chicago, and her Ph.D. in early modern English literature from the University of Notre Dame.