Madison College and Women LEAD invite you to join us as we celebrate heritage months with Judge Kristy Yang. Coming to America as a child refugee, she was elected to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court becoming the second Hmong-American judge in the nation.
Yang will speak about her aspirational backstory. She came to the United States as a 6-year-old refugee from Laos with her parents. She grew up in Sheboygan with 10 siblings, married young, divorced and worked her way through college as a single mother. Yang earned a computer science degree with honors from Lakeland College, then worked six years in customer service and supply chain logistics at Kohler, a job that required travel around the United States and abroad before going to law school. After about 10 years apart, she remarried her ex-husband and moved to the Milwaukee area. Yang ran a TV spot that featured how she came here at age six with her family from Laos via a refugee camp in Thailand, and the only English she knew was, "Pepsi, please." She said she got "overwhelmingly positive" feedback from voters about the spot.
