Alumna
Lawyer Leontine Chuang has been committed to service work ever since her primary school days at HKIS. From an early age, HKIS taught her to have compassion for the plight of others and to do service work for those less fortunate than her.
When Leontine started her corporate legal career after gaining a law degree from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, she made it a point to spend time representing the underprivileged pro bono. While doing corporate deals worth millions of dollars, Leontine also represented victims of domestic violence in Family Court and represented an asylum seeker in Immigration Court to get refugee status.
In 2005 she left the corporate world to become a public interest lawyer. At the time,she started working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Office in Hong Kong (UNHCR). She spent 10 years at UNHCR providing protection services to asylum seekers and refugees in Hong Kong and helping to arrange resettlement for refugees. In that role, she was able to use her legal knowledge to give hope and a new life to individuals who were fleeing persecution in their home country.
In recognition of her work with the UNHCR, Leontine was a worthy recipient of the Bob Christian Alumna of the Year Award in 2010/11.
Now, she manages the Hong Kong program of the global non-profit organisation, PILnet: The Global Network for Public Interest Law (PILnet). PILnet seeks to inspire more lawyers and law students to practice law for the public interest and the community. At PILnet, she designs programs to build capacity in the public interest law field.
Leontine attributes her interest in service work to the 13 years she spent at HKIS, from kindergarten until graduation. “The activities I was involved in at HKIS really helped show me the importance of helping people and showed me how even as one person, I can make a big difference in another person’s life. I know that my devotion to service to others was born out of the things that I learned at HKIS and I am forever grateful to HKIS for giving me that.” she said.