A Chat with Helen Wan | Virtual Water Cooler Chat Podcast — Empowering Voices (Episode 105)

This episode of Virtual Water Cooler Chat features Helen Wan, Deputy General Counsel at Jazz at Lincoln Center, where she advises on entertainment, media, intellectual property, business, and technology matters. 

Helen is a media lawyer, educator, and author who writes about our complicated relationship with career ambition and the idea of "success." Her debut novel, “The Partner Track," is the story of an Asian American lawyer at an elite global firm who is pursuing the American Dream. Her novel was a Book Club selection of REAL SIMPLE Magazine and The National Association of Women Lawyers, and became the subject of a Washington Post Magazine cover story about Asian Americans shattering glass ceilings in the corporate workplace. “The Partner Track” was adapted for television and is now streaming as an original TV series on Netflix.  

Wan is a graduate of Amherst College and The University of Virginia School of Law, where, as a student, she wrote a column for The Law Weekly and where, more recently, she served as the Commencement Speaker in May 2023. After graduation, Wan practiced law in New York City at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, the entertainment law firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, and as in-house counsel at media companies including Time Inc. (then a division of TimeWarner), A+E Television Networks, and Hachette Book Group USA, where she was VP & Associate General Counsel. 

She currently teaches Media Law at NYU, and serves on the Board of Trustees of The Vermont Studio Center and the Board of Advisors of the New York Women's Bar Association Foundation. She has also served on The Amherst College Executive Committee and the Board of Advisors of The Asian American Arts Alliance, and taught fiction-writing at The Asian American Writers' Workshop and The Writers' Circle in New Jersey. 

When not writing or lawyering, Wan enjoys 90s nostalgia, classic Hitchcock films, SNL, reading all kinds of books, and making her young kid laugh. After many years in Brooklyn, she now lives in New Jersey with her family, where she is at work on a new book. 

Connect with Helen on LinkedIn.  

Virtual Patent Gateway (VPG) reduces overhead costs by providing PTAB attorneys with on-demand and affordable paralegal support services. Virtual Patent Gateway Founder Ashley Cheung has a passion for supporting the next generation in the workplace and is committed to developing a growth mindset within VPG.   

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Legal Disclaimer: This podcast is posted for educational purposes and does not constitute legal advice.