Cecily has taught in Japan, China, and the U.S. since 1989, and has also lived in Germany and Canada. She holds a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Berkeley, where she received the Prosser Prize in Constitutional Law. She was an editor of the Berkeley Journal of International Law and served as an extern for the Honorable Claudia Wilken, U.S. Federal District Judge for the District of Northern California. An opinion she authored for Judge Wilken on a novel issue of federal preemption was selected for publication in the Federal Register. She also studied law at Beijing University. She worked for major firms involved in international commercial litigation and served for three years at the San Francisco Legal Aide Employment Law Center as an intake counselor and hearing representative. She has also volunteered with the San Francisco General Hospital Family Health Center Program for refugees, mentored at-risk youth at Newcomer High School, taught senior women and children at the Chinatown YWCA, served as an employment counselor at Jacob’s Ladder in North Carolina, and provided post-release legal aide services to convicts through the ReLeSe program in Newark.

Prior to law school she was a doctoral student and Chancellor’s Fellow in the UCLA Languages and Literatures program, where she published on the development of language, studied Qing to mid-20th century Chinese opera and French and Russian, and received several research grants. She holds a Master of Eastern Classics from St. Johns, and received a Nike Fellowship to attend the Nanjing University-Johns Hopkins University Centre for Chinese and American Studies. She went on to do graduate work in history and at Nanjing University under the auspices of a National Security Fellowship. She has published and presented papers on language, trade and economic disparity, and Chinese law at international conferences around the world, including the Brooks Global Poverty and Capital Conference. Most recently, she has completed three years of coursework in life sciences and laboratory work in biotechnology.

She enjoys boating, hiking, and camping, and has camped across the North American continent from Eastern Canada to Oregon, visiting Native American sites with her children. Her current interests are raising her four children to be responsible global citizens, farming, and working for a sustainable ecosystem.