Emily
Chiang

An experienced changemaker, creative problem solver, and strategic thinker deeply committed to equity, Emily Chiang brings more than twenty years of advocacy and policy reform experience to her role as principal in Raben's Issue Campaigns practice area, along with deep ties to the social justice sector. 

She is a trusted thought partner who specializes in co-creating campaigns that help her clients better serve the communities they care about.

As the legal director of the ACLU of Washington, one of the country’s largest ACLU affiliates, Emily oversaw all litigation filed in Washington state and coordinated advocacy efforts with government agencies and other nonprofits. She led the office’s legal strategy on everything from criminal justice reform to free speech, immigrant rights, reproductive freedom, LGBTQ rights, and racial justice. Emily’s department worked in community, with community, and on behalf of community. One of her proudest achievements was leading the legal team that helped end the Trump administration’s ban on refugees.

Emily has also served as a public policy manager with Facebook. There, she worked to understand how the technology of the future will impact our lives — while also building connective tissue across teams and advocating for ethical, equitable, and privacy-oriented innovation. Her work supported the advanced research teams at Facebook Reality Labs, including augmented reality, hyper-realistic avatars, and human-computer interfaces.

During her tenure as an associate professor at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, Emily created and directed the Public Policy Clinic and taught a number of courses, including Constitutional Law; and Equality, Race, and the Law. Her clinic made the issue of shutting down the school-to-prison pipeline a topic of state-wide conversation, and her students provided legal analysis and testimony on a number of bills before the state legislature.

Prior to her stint in academia, Emily also worked at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, where she was the lead associate on the team that successfully sued for public defense reform in Montana; the Brennan Center for Justice; and the ACLU’s National Legal Department, where she was a staff attorney with the Racial Justice Program. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Yale University and her Juris Doctor from Harvard University School of Law, where she was also an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Emily has watched every single movie in the Fast and Furious franchise.