Committee_

• Arsal Awan
• Betty Hung
• Chirag Shah
• Hamid Khan
• Hardeep Singh
• Hossein Fateh
• Julie Su
• Sentayehu G. Silassie
• Shafiq Ahmed Sufi
• Steve Zrucky
• Zahid Butt

Bios_

Mohammad Arsal Awan was born in Pakistan in the state of Punjab. He finished his B.A. in Punjab University. Then Arsal graduated from Karachi University in Pakistan earning a law degree. Arsal has also worked for Pakistan International Airline. He has also been involved in organizing the workers and was President of a labor union for five years. Arsal moved to the United States and worked with South Asia Network a grass-roots organization for 15 years. Most recently he is a proud organizing committee member of Los Angeles Taxi Workers Alliance.

Betty Hung is the Directing Attorney of the Employment Law Unit at the Legal Aid , representation, advocacy, and community education in seven priority areas, including employment, housing, immigration, consumer, and family law. The Employment Law Unit utilize Foundation of Los Angeles ("LAFLA"). Established in 1929 to ensure that the poor have access to the civil justice system, LAFLA provides free counsels community education, direct services, advocacy, and community collaborations to inform and empower low-wage workers to fight to uphold their basic workplace rights.

Prior to joining LAFLA, Ms. Hung served as a staff attorney/echoing green fellow at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, where she represented garment workers in individual cases and impact litigation. She also worked as a community organizer with Cambodian high school girls in Long Beach, CA, and as a litigation associate at the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers LLP where she initiated several diversity efforts. Additionally, Betty serves on the boards of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, Fund for a New Los Angeles of the Liberty Hill Foundation, California Committee on Occupational Safety and Heatlh, and the Sexual Assault Crisis Agency. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.

Hamid Khan is the Executive Director of the South Asian Network (SAN). A first generation immigrant from Pakistan, Hamid came to the United States in 1979.

In 1990, Hamid gathered a group of fellow south Asians and colleagues to explore the idea of creating an organization that would address a broad array of social, economic and political issues affecting persons of South Asian origin living in southern California. The first meeting, and those that followed, generated discussion on issues of mutual concern including worker’s rights, immigration, civil rights, healthcare, domestic violence, identity, gender and sexuality.

Hamid Khan’s vision of a progressive South Asian American community had led SAN to turn the very issues that have traditionally divided the South Asian community into the agency’s driving force. Embracing the model of shared leadership, board and staff members, who reflect the community’s ethnic and linguistic diversity, have created multilingual, culturally appropriate approaches to community organizing encompassing community education, services and policy advocacy. Such internal diversity has enabled SAN to reach out more effectively to the broad South Asian American community - positively affecting the lives of thousands of people.

In addition to his role at SAN, Hamid also participates as a spokesperson on community issues at numerous town halls, meetings, interfaith forums, university seminars, nonprofit conferences, local media programs, and Federal Congressional and California Assembly hearings. He was selected for the 2003, LA Stories: The Power of One by the Facing History and Ourselves, an organization whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice and anti-Semitism. He has been a leading advocate for the peace movement, speaking up against the current wave of occupation and violence.

Chirag Shah is a labor lawyer who practices in ERISA and employee benefits law. He serves as plan counsel to a wide variety of retirement and health and welfare programs, and regularly advises sponsors, trustees, fiduciaries, service professionals, and personnel of single-employer and multi-employer (collectively-bargained) benefit programs in all aspects of administration and compliance. Chirag is also active in a number of bar associations and community organizations and serves on the governing boards of Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County (a nonprofit legal service provider) and East West Players (a Los Angeles theater company); he has served as a volunteer at SAN for about ten years.

Julie A. Su is Litigation Director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California (APALC). Founded in 1983, APALC works to protect and advance the civil rights of the Asian American community through impact litigation, direct legal services, community education and policy work.

For the last decade, Su has worked with and represented garment workers to call for corporate accountability and an end to sweatshop conditions. She was lead counsel in the historic case of Thai garment workers, who had been held against their will, who allied with Latino garment workers in Los Angeles and sued the manufacturers and retailers for whom they had worked, winning over $4 million in settlements. Su and APALC have represented hundreds of Asian and Latino garment workers against such companies as Bebe, BCBG, and Forever 21. Under Su’s leadership, APALC’s approach to litigation, which combines organizing with access to the courts, has received national recognition.

Su has also been a leader in the battle to preserve affirmative action and equal opportunity. She represented Asian American, African American and Latino students challenging discriminatory admissions at UC Berkeley and race-based employment practices at clothing retailer, Abercrombie & Fitch.

Su has been recognized with various awards. She was named in Ms. Magazine’s 25th Anniversary issue as one of the 21 young women to watch out for in the 21st century and by the American Lawyer as the youngest of 45 public interest lawyers whose work has made a difference. In 1995, the Los Angeles Times called Su "Los Angeles’ most celebrated, young, non-O.J. lawyer." She is a 1996 Reebok International Human Rights Award winner. Her story is featured in the book, Women of Spirit: Stories of Courage by the Women Who Lived Them (ed., Katherine Martin 2001). In March 1997, President Clinton acknowledged her and three other women in his proclamation of Women’s History Month. In 2001, Su was one of 23 individuals in the United States to win the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship "Genius" Award and in 2005, she was one of the Daily Journal’s "Top 75 Women Litigators" in California. She received her law degree from Harvard Law School in 1994 and her undergraduate degree from Stanford University in 1991.

STEVEN ZRUCKY