She attended Southern Illinois University and graduated summa cum laude. She graduated from the University of Houston Law Center and earned her Master of Laws from Harvard Law School. She currently serves as a professor of corporate law at the University of Denver.
She served as an associate municipal judge and magistrate in Texas. At age 24, she became the first Asian American woman appointed by the Houston Independent School District to an executive position. She and her family left South Vietnam when their capital city was under siege by the invading North Vietnamese Army during the fall of Saigon to the Communist forces in April 1975, when she was sixteen years old.
