Les Jin

Topics:

1. Senior Management Leadership
2. Not-for-profit Leadership
3. Civil Rights
4. Lawyers as Leaders and Managers
5. Role of Senior Political Appointee Leaders and Relationship with Career SES and Other Career Staff
   
   

Biography

Les Jin recently retired from the federal government, where he first served as a career lawyer in Chicago for many years and subsequently as a senior executive service (SES) political appointee leader and senior manager in Washington, DC for two administrations, spanning 15 years. Most recently, he was deputy director and chief operating officer for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs at the U.S. Department of Labor, a civil rights enforcement agency. Previously, Mr. Jin had acquired significant civil rights, legal, and managerial experience, working for several not-for-profits and for other federal agencies. Among his experiences, he was a senior counselor in the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division; and served as General Counsel for the U.S. Information Agency and as executive director for the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA). Mr. Jin has an extensive record of community involvement. He is the founding director of the Asian Legal Services Program in Chicago, which provides free legal services to Chicago's low-income Asian American communities. Mr. Jin also served as General Counsel for the Organization of Chinese Americans. He is a graduate of the University of Oregon Law School, has an undergraduate degree from the University of California at Davis, and also earned a Master's degree in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Mr. Jin is a member of the State Bar Associations of California and Illinois.