Candidate for
Member of the State Assembly; District 21

ABOUT VIRGINIA

Community Leader, Businesswoman, Parent

Virginia represents the "American Success Story" that has made our country "The Land of Opportunity." Her parents emigrated from China to the U.S. in 1956. By 1982, Virginia had graduated from high school and was considered one of the best young pianists in Texas. She entered the University of Texas at Austin and earned her degree in Government with a Minor in Economics. She then embarked on a law degree, with a clerkship with the California Attorney General's Office, but quickly realized that a business career was more alluring. During the next 15 years, she worked with several of the nation's leading financial institutions, including Drexel Burnham Lambert, Alex. Brown & Sons, Bear Stearns, and PaineWebber, concluding at the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Since 2002, she has focused her time on her family and community organizations as a past board member of The Tech Museum of Innovation and the Asia-America MultiTechnology Association (AAMA), a current board member of Cultural Initiatives Silicon Valley, President of the Friends of the Palo Alto Junior Museum & Zoo, President of the Las Lomitas PTA, and a sustainer of the Junior League of Palo Alto*Mid-Peninsula. These volunteer opportunities have enabled her to work with people in a nonpartisan way to benefit children, engage businesses to be involved with community service, and create fiscally responsible solutions, such as building public-nonprofit partnerships.

Virginia is married and a mother of two boys, both of whom attend public schools. Her husband, Ken, is an entrepreneur and software architect. For fun, she owns and operates a small business designing high-quality customized knitted accessories.