Paul Igasaki - Biography

Biography

Igasaki served as a consultant on equal employment, diversity, legal services, government, and community affairs matters. Clients included the Epilepsy Foundation, Southeast Asian Research Action Center, U.S. Army, and U.S. Air Force.

Igasaki served as vice chair, chair, and commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1994 until 2002. Noted for his management overhaul of the Commission’s case handling system, his initiatives streamlined the process and eliminated the crippling case backlog. Under his leadership, Igasaki moved the Commission to protect the rights of all Americans, regardless of immigration status and he participated in the development of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the establishment of sexual and racial harassment standards in the United States. Igasaki represented the Commission in the announcement and settlement of the landmark Mitsubishi Motors of America case, which involved the largest discrimination award for sexual harassment.

Prior to his appointment to the Commission by President William Jefferson Clinton, Igasaki was the executive director of the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco, the nation’s first Asian Pacific American civil rights legal organization. He also served as staff to the late Rep. Robert Matsui’s campaign for the U.S. Senate in California and as a lobbyist and representative for the Japanese American Citizens League, where he worked on funding for the World War II Japanese American redress claims, immigration reform, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1989-91.

Early in his career, Igasaki served as liaison to Asian Americans for the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and as counsel to the Chicago Commission on Human Relations. Prior to that he was director of an American Bar Association project to increase resources for civil legal services for the poor. In Sacramento, California, he was awarded a Reginald Heber Smith Fellowship to serve as a staff attorney with Legal Services of Northern California representing poor clients on housing, domestic violence, consumer and other matters. He also served as a graduate legal assistant with the chairman of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board.

A graduate of Niles West High School (1973), Northwestern University (1976), and the University of California, Davis School of Law (King Hall) (1979), Mr. Igasaki is licensed to practice law in Illinois and California. He was the chair of the American Bar Association’s Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section, the first Asian American to hold that position and has held numerous other ABA posts. He is a member of the board of the Human Rights Center. He was a principal founder of the Chicago Asian American Bar Association and a founder of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association.