Helen Wan

Sharing anecdotes from her real-life experience as a young woman navigating the culture at a powerful law firm, Helen Wan provides insights and advice for chasing our ambition while also living authentically at work, and remaining true to ourselves and our values.

Helen Wan is a media lawyer, educator, and author who writes about our complicated relationship with career ambition and the idea of "success." Helen's debut novel, The Partner Track (Macmillan), 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 workplace.

The Partner Track was adapted for television and is now an original TV series on Netflix. The book has been translated into five languages and is often taught in colleges and law schools, and used by many companies, schools, and other organizations in initiatives to advance equity and career success in the workplace and academic settings.

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

Helen 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 and memoir at The Asian American Writers' Workshop and elsewhere.

When not writing or lawyering, Helen enjoys 90s nostalgia, Hitchcock films, SNL, reading all kinds of books, and making her young kid laugh. After years in NYC, Helen and her family now live in the wilds of New Jersey, where she is at work on a new book.

Books & Movies

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