Sandy Lin has always been interested in pro bono and public interest work. Whether as a law student, a practising lawyer, or currently as a partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, she has always had pro bono opportunities readily available to her. That was until she moved to Hong Kong, and she couldn’t find opportunities that were suitable for her.
“I was pretty lucky that early on in my search, I found the Community Connections Program at FSI,” recalled Sandy. “You guys just saved me so much time. And you offer exactly the services I need to find the opportunity that’s right for me, and I can just get to work right away.”
Sandy was soon connected with Claire Naylor-Trein, Executive Director at Wedu. “Coming into Community Connections, I was expecting to get one person and I ended up getting access to this whole global network, which has been absolutely wonderful,” said Claire. “I’ll just say a vote of thanks to FSI for doing this work. Honestly, it’s been such a gamechanger to have Sandy and her team involved. And I really don’t see a different pathway to having connected with them outside of Community Connections.”
Read on to learn more about the global team of vision-aligned subject matter experts that Sandy amassed to help Wedu move forward with an important project, how Community Connections’s service exceeded Claire’s expectation and helped build a community within Sandy’s law firm around social impact work.
When Vision-aligned Community Partners and Skilled Volunteers are Connected
Wedu is a social impact organization committed to nurturing and investing in women’s purposeful leadership journeys across Asia and fostering catalytic allies and communities towards a feminist future. However, like many high-impact organizations, Wedu’s ambitions were unmatched by its resources. That prompted Claire Naylor-Trein, Wedu’s Executive Director, to join Foundation for Shared Impact’s Community Connections Program.
“For me, Community Connections was a really great way to access the talent, subject matter expertise, and knowledge we need for our priority projects,” said Claire.
Initially, Claire thought she would be connected with only one skilled volunteer. The final outcome far exceeded her expectations. None of this would have been possible without Sandy Lin, whose passion for public interest and pro bono work dates back to her childhood. “There was a period of time when my family was really struggling financially,” said Sandy. “Having the privilege and fortune to have the resource to emigrate to Canada from Taiwan and go to law school in the US, I started getting involved in public interest work when I was in law school, through Georgetown Law’s public interest programs.”
Sandy would continue to do pro bono work when she was practising in big law firms in the US and mainland China. To quote Sandy, pro bono work opportunities were handed to her, until she moved to Hong Kong, where such opportunities are harder to find.
“After I found out about FSI’s Community Connections Program online, I reached out and filled out an application form to participate in the Program as a volunteer. I then had a call with Claudia Anticona, who is the Program Manager at Community Connections,” said Sandy. “Claudia was really helpful. She talked to me about my background, my interests, what my expectations were etc. She came to the call really well-prepared, with a list of organizations that are looking for legal assistance.”
And one of the organizations on that list was Wedu.
A Global Team of Vision-aligned Skilled Volunteers
Wedu’s vision of a world where half of all the leaders are women really resonated with Sandy, so she asked Claudia to make a connection and proceeded to have a conversation with Claire. Before long, the two women decided that Sandy and her team at Weil would represent Wedu as legal advisors.
The first assignment was to write a complicated legal contract for a spin-off project of Wedu that would facilitate a scale-up of its Future Income Sharing Agreements. “I reached out to several law firms based in Thailand to seek legal support the year prior but I kept hitting dead ends,” said Claire. “But after I was connected with Sandy, everything just set in motion so quickly.”
That was largely thanks to the global team of experts amassed by Sandy. “I found two corporate lawyers based in Asia to work on the assignment: Yujing Liu, who is a counsel from our Beijing office, and Yinan Xuan, who is an associate from our Hong Kong office. They’re both very passionate about gender equality issues. Yujing is actually an active feminist for years, so when I reached out to her about this, she was very excited.” Two more of Sandy’s colleagues in the London office, Barry Fishley and Melanie Yu, also joined later to offer support related to intellectual property issues.
Said Claire: “Having access to multiple subject matter experts has just been so beyond my expectations but very much appreciated. I’m impressed by how many people Sandy has mobilized around this project, and how her team has taken the time to understand what our needs and priorities and concerns are, and really center those in their work. I’m just really grateful for the time and care that they put into this process.”
A Corporate Community for Public Interest Work
“Giving back to society just gives you that strong sense of satisfaction and purpose. I think I would not have been connected with Claire and also built that team around me, who’s passionate about gender equality as I am, without Community Connections.” Sandy Lin
Like many engagements enabled by Community Connections, the one between Sandy and Claire proved to be mutually beneficial.
“Our team has found it so rewarding to be able to work on this,” said Sandy. “Giving back to society just gives you that strong sense of satisfaction and purpose, and our team is particularly interested in gender equality and women empowerment.”
And the experience was an eye-opener for Sandy’s team as well. “Before we started on the actual legal work, Claire actually invited us to an online program that Wedu hosted about income sharing agreements as a feminist funding tool, which has been just eye-opening and educational for us. Overall, it’s just been really beneficial for our team in many different respects.”
What Sandy didn’t expect was just how many people in her workplace are interested in social impact work. “On a day-to-day basis we are just doing what we do, we rarely talk about these things. When I reached out to the wider network of Weil attorneys to gauge interest in working on this assignment, I got overwhelming responses from people. So this assignment has really created another community within our firm around public interest work and around gender equality causes, which is amazing. I think I would not have been connected with Claire and also built that team around me, who’s passionate about gender equality as I am, without Community Connections. So thanks a lot!”
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Whether you are a corporate, individual, or social impact organization interested in learning more about how Community Connections can help you actualize your corporate philanthropy initiatives, personal leadership goals, or organizational growth, get in touch with us at communityconnections@shared-impact.com!
