On August 13th IANGEL celebrated its seventh anniversary at our virtual gala, “In It To Win It” and was honored to present the Amel Zenoune-Zouani Rights & Leadership Award to
Joan Haratani for her unwavering commitment to equality and justice.
A transcript of Joan’s acceptance speech is below and you can listen to it by clicking the play button above. The Amel Zenoune-Zouani Rights & Leadership Award was presented by IANGEL Vice-President Rebecca Hooley. (Scroll down to see Ms. Haratani’s condensed biography below the transcipt of her speech.)
Full Audio Transcript:
Rebecca: Congratulations Joan.
Joan: Thank you so much, I’m so thrilled.
Rebecca: So before I formally present you with the award, I wanted to spend a moment talking with you because you have a very interesting personal and family history, and I wanted to know how that history informs your views of the world currently, specifically with respect to issues confronting women and people of color.
Joan: That’s a great question Rebecca and great insight, but first and foremost I want to thank you, I want to thank the tremendous IANGEL organization, as well as all of you spending your evening tonight viewing this program and supporting us. Thank you for your support, recognition, and voice over the years. I do have to give a special shoutout to my 93-year-old mother Claire, my dad Don, My sister Lea, nephew Holden and niece Kamila. They are my core support team. Thanks guys!
But to answer your question: You know one very interesting feature of COVID-19 is that it has caused many people to experience, probably for the first time in their lives, what marginalized people have known as reality for centuries. Time drags, overshadowed by the fear, anger, frustration, loneliness and isolation of living surrounded by an oppressor. All of us here in this virtual safe-space know what it feels like to not be seen, to be forgotten, to not be heard.
That literally happened to my own family. 78 years ago the US government gave my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles 24 hours to abandon their homes, taking only what they could carry, and herded them off to a destination and a fate unknown. It was the beginning of the mass evacuation of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Now, these were the least threatening people you could imagine. My mom’s family ran a grocery store, and they were farmers. My paternal grandfather was a methodist minister opening up churches all along the west-coast. My mom, just 14, vividly remembers her beloved dog Patty running after her, running after the families, as the authorities took them away, forcing them out of their house.
Her older brother, proud to be on the Stanford basketball team, remembers something different. He remembers going to his final practice, sad but excited to at least see his coach and his beloved player-friends for the last time to say good-bye, only to find out that none of them would show up because he was a “traitor”.
After nine months jammed into a horse stall in the Santa Anita racetrack, the entire family in a stall that reeked of the stall’s former inhabitants, they were then put on a train not knowing where they were going, and ended up in Heart Mountain, Wyoming, to a stall again, one family, with chamber pots and cots. They were surrounded by barren mountains, attacked by blistering winds, and the only real life? The prisoners, the people housed in the camp, and the oppressors, those carrying weapons along the barbed-wire perimeter to keep them there.
All the time, the refrain continued in their minds, kept prioring in their minds: We are American citizens. How can this be happening?
Despite this horrifying treatment, my dad Don and my uncles joined the US Army- all of the men did. My uncle Joe, in fact, was in the legendary 442nd Battalion, the most highly decorated unit of its size in US military history.
Now I grew up hearing these stories. They left a sense of betrayal, shame, guilt, anger, and disillusion. But cutting through all that however, was the bright light of hope. The light of hope that the world can change. The history of my relatives provides a huge and powerful reservoir of courage for me that I can draw upon to speak truth to power and to try to do one thing, just one thing, everyday to build equality and justice; and that one thing includes today, and our celebration of what we have accomplished because we are in it to win it.
And that means we must not stop working, as Nancy said. It is the 100th anniversary of suffrage. We must continue the struggle for gender equality. This means that women’s health issues are taken as seriously as men’s. This means equal pay so that mothers can provide education, healthcare, and healthy food for their children. It means more options in the face of domestic violence, and control and ownership of our bodies. That is what this celebration supports.
Rebecca: Thank you so much for such a difficult but yet with a silver lining type of story. How does this background translate into advice that you can offer other women leaders?
Joan: That’s another great question and I think this one applies to the men in the audience as well. Leaders need to reach back and pull up those who are following them. They need to pull them up as they are climbing that ladder of success.
I’ve had the benefit of being sponsored and mentored by so many greats. Kamala Harris, for example, who is making all of us super proud right now, was the driving force behind my becoming the first female minority President of the Bar Association of San Francisco. It took us 134 years to get there, but with Kamala’s sponsorship, encouragement, and her huge support of me, we did it.
Jami McKeon, my chair, the only woman chair of a global big law firm Morgan Lewis, convinced me to join Morgan Lewis over 15 years ago by telling me that she and the firm support strong women like me. Civil rights giants Dale Minami, Don Tamaki mentored me every step of the way. The list goes on and on.
So my advice? Be practical. Put in a good word. Listen and open your heart. The point is, have conversations with those you would like to have follow in your footsteps, because eventually they will no longer be following – they will be leading. For the younger women here tonight, listen and soak it all in. Because you deserve every bit of success that this world offers you. You deserve a seat at the table. You add value and your insights are necessary. That means you have to take informed risks, which also means you have to believe in yourself and have the courage to take those risks. At the same time, do not hesitate to reach out to your mentors for advice. We are here to support you. Watch and learn, and then act.
And one more thought for everyone: Let’s get out the vote. So thank you again. I am so humbled by the acknowledgement and the presence of all of you, and please reach down in your hearts and donate to IANGEL.
Joan Haratani
As a Morgan Lewis partner based in San Francisco, Ms. Haratani represents Fortune 500 companies in commercial and mass tort litigation. Known for her work as a California litigator, Joan has been recognized as one of the “Top 100 Lawyers in California” and as a “Top 75 Women Litigator” by the Daily Journal. She was selected by the corporate members of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association as a “Female Litigator on the Rise” in Diversity & the Bar. She was also named one of the 500 most influential Asian Americans in America by Avenue Asia Magazine. Ms. Haratani is a founding member of CAPA21 Leadership Council, an Asian American Pacific Islander political action committee that invests in progressive candidates and projects to improve AAPI participation in the political process.
Joan plays an active role in the legal community. She has served as a member of the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates and as president of the Bar Association of San Francisco, the first woman of color to hold that position. Ms. Haratani is also a past president of the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area, as well as past regional governor of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association. She is a past board member of several philanthropic organizations, including The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) of Northern California. Notably, she was the first runner-up in the 2017 LLS Bay Area Woman of the Year campaign and is also an Elite Athlete with its Team in Training program.