Yale Career Panels: A Candid View of the Legal Profession

This event is the 49th in a series covering different professions and career issues. Organized 9 years ago by a group of Yale alumni volunteers, these panels strive to provide candid, unvarnished views of the featured profession. The lawyers for this panel represent different careers in the practice of law: in house counsel to a financial services company, a Federal Judge and an expert in a non-profit, nonpartisan institute devoted to equal justice and the rule of law.

The panel discussion will be broadcast via an interactive streaming video system and will allow Yale students and alumni to ask questions of the panel and interact with each other. There will be a networking period after the one hour panel has ended.

Topics:

Where is the profession heading (good and bad)?
How do you get into the profession and what is the typical career path?
What are the myths versus the realities?
What are the characteristics of people who tend to do well and are happy in the profession?
What types of people tend not to do well or end up unhappy and why?
If you don’t stay in the profession until retirement, what are the exit routes to other professions?

This series is jointly supported by various organizations at Yale University and Yale Alumni organizations, including the Yale Office of Career Strategy, the Yale Alumni Association (YAA), the Yale School of Management, Students and Alumni of Yale (STAY), the Junior Class Council (JCC), the Yale.nyc (the Yale alumni association in New York City), and the Association of Asian American Yale Alumni (AAAYA).

The recorded Yale Career Panels and Fireside Chats can be viewed at www.yalecareerpanels.com.

Panelists

Henry Chen

Henry Chen is a Director and Counsel in the General Counsel's Organization at American Express. He supports the Amex digital products and artificial intelligence teams, and helps direct data management initiatives for the organization. Henry provides support for digital partnerships and leads the preparation and negotiation of agreements with technology partners.

Before joining Amex, Henry served as the chief legal counsel for Text IQ, an artificial intelligence company that delivers data analytics solutions to Fortune 500 companies and AmLaw 100 law firms. Prior to that, he practiced intellectual property law in the New York offices of Baker Botts and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.

Henry obtained his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Cornell, along with a B.A. in Political Science from Yale.

Peggy Kuo

Peggy Kuo is a U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of New York. Prior to that, she was Deputy Commissioner and General Counsel of the New York City Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, Chief Hearing Officer at the New York Stock Exchange, counsel at WilmerHale, an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and Acting Deputy Chief of the Civil Rights Division Criminal Section at the U.S. Department of Justice.

From 1998 to 2002, Ms. Kuo was a prosecutor with the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, where she investigated and prosecuted war crimes and crimes against humanity. She clerked for Hon. Judith W. Rogers, then Chief Judge of the DC Court of Appeals.

She is a graduate of Yale College (B.A. in History – 1985) and Harvard Law School (J.D. 1988).

Joanna Zdanys

Joanna Zdanys serves as counsel in the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. Her work focuses on advancing reforms in the area of money in politics. Zdanys provides policy advice to lawmakers across the country and has testified before state and local legislators.

Before joining the Brennan Center, Zdanys clerked for Hon. LaShann DeArcy Hall in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Before her clerkship, Zdanys was a litigation associate in the New York office of Morrison & Foerster LLP.

Zdanys earned her JD from Fordham University School of Law, where she was the editor in chief of the Fordham Urban Law Journal and a Stein Scholar for the Public Interest. She holds a master’s degree in English and comparative literature from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in English from Yale College.

Peter Young

Peter Young (Moderator and Organizer) is CEO and President of Young & Partners, a leading boutique investment banking firm focused on the life science and chemical industries. He manages the firm and is actively involved in client transactions and financings.

Prior to founding Young & Partners, Peter was head of various related industry groups at Salomon Brothers, Schroders, and Lehman Brothers, a private equity investor with J.H. Whitney & Co., and a strategy consultant with Bain & Company serving life science and chemical companies. Peter received an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School (Baker Scholar), an M.S. in Accounting from the New York University and a B.A. in Economics from Yale University. He is a member of the Committee of 100, has served on the board of Societe de Chimie Industrielle since 1990 (and is currently the President) and has served for 29 years on the Editorial Advisory Board of Pharmaceutical Executive.