Anna Y. Park

Meeting of July 15, 2009 – Age Discrimination in the 21st Century-Barriers to the Employment of Older Workers

Anna Y. Park is the Regional Attorney for the Los Angeles District Office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"). Ms. Park is responsible for overseeing and directing all litigation on behalf of the EEOC in the district comprising of Southern and Central California, Southern Nevada, Hawaii, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. She manages not only the District office, but litigation out of four local offices in San Diego, Hawaii, Fresno, and Las Vegas. Her territory is not only vast geographically but densely populated with over 24 million people in Southern California alone.

Since joining the EEOC, Ms. Park has aggressively litigated cases in federal court against private and public employers, receiving large monetary awards and aggressive injunctive relief remedies. She has been recognized by the EEOC for her work on cases like EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch, resulting in a $50 million recovery and EEOC v. Rivera Vineyards, et al., recovering over $1.05 million for sexual harassment, retaliation, and job segregation on behalf of farm workers.

Ms. Park has been recognized for her dynamic speaking and training abilities and has been awarded the Chair's Opportunity to Reward Excellence Award for several years running. Ms. Park has served as a speaker and trainer for the American Bar Association, National Employer Lawyer's Association, Society of Human Resource Managers, the Labor and Employment Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, the State Bar of California, the California Association of Equal Rights Professionals, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to name a few.

Ms. Park received her Juris Doctorate from the UCLA School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from UCLA. Prior to joining the EEOC, Ms. Park was a civil rights litigator and managing senior associate with the prominent civil rights law firm of Litt & Associates, formerly known as Litt & Stormer. Notably, she worked on a class action lawsuit challenging the Los Angeles Police Department's practices relating to sexual harassment, sex discrimination, and the code of silence. She also represented African American officers who were allegedly discriminated, harassed, and retaliated against because of their race by the Ventura County Sheriff's Department.

Ms. Park has received numerous awards for her community and pro bono activities. She was awarded the Pro Bono Award by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center for her commitment to pro bono work. She was formerly a board member of the Korean American Bar Association, the Japanese American Bar Association, and the Asian Pacific American Bar Association. Ms. Park is the former president of WORK (Women's Organization Reaching Koreans), the former president of the Korean American Inter-Agency Council, and a board member for the Korean American Family Center. Ms. Park continues to remain active with community based organizations, emphasizing inter-agency and inter-ethnic tolerance and collaboration.

She was recently recognized as one of the "Top 20 Lawyers Under 40" in California by the Daily Journal.