Zenobia Lai, Esq.

Executive Director
zenobia.lai@apalrc.org
(202) 706- 7150 x10

Zenobia has two decades of legal services experience.  As Managing Attorney at the Greater Boston Legal Services, she directed the Asian Outreach Unit, which provides linguistically and culturally appropriate legal services to low-income, limited-English proficient Asian Americans, and developed a national model for connecting student resources to maximize legal assistance available to immigrant communities, who face linguistic and cultural barriers in accessing mainstream legal services.  Zenobia also worked with regional and national funders to advocate for resources to support community-legal services collaboration, and to advance social change through the practice of community lawyering.

In addition, Zenobia served as Executive Director at the Asian Law Caucus, a civil rights legal organization that provides civil rights advocacy and civil legal services to the Bay Area Asian American community, and built coalition with community-based organizations and other advocacy groups to maximize resource-sharing and strategy coordination on key issues impacting Asian Americans, including redistricting, hate violence, racial profiling, immigrant rights, and workers’ rights.

Zenobia served as the President of the Board of the Harry H. Dow Memorial Legal Assistance Fund, and supported innovative efforts and projects that provided much needed legal assistance to emerging needs of the growing Asian immigrant communities.  She was honored as “Community’s Unsung Heroine of 2007” by the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women, recognized as one of the “Best Lawyers Under 40” by the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, and awarded “Community Service Award” by the Asian American Lawyers Association of Massachusetts.  Zenobia holds a J.D. from University of Minnesota Law School and a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin- Madison.