Author Bio

My name is Stephen Chahn Lee, and you may already have heard part of my family’s story, which was featured on This American Life’s “No Coincidence, No Story” episode.

I am the son of two immigrants. My father came to the United States because he was a doctor, and my mother came to the United States because of her sister, who was already married to a U.S. citizen. I was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Michigan, where my father worked as a doctor before passing away in 1990.

I was a newspaper reporter in the 1990s for the Chicago Tribune and the Dallas Morning News. I created and ran the now-defunct website FootnoteTV in the 2000s.

I grew up in a mostly-white area and did not expect to marry another Korean-American. But, to my mother’s delight, my wife is Korean-American. We now have a son and a daughter.

I was a federal prosecutor in Chicago for 11 years. I led or co-led the prosecution teams in 18 trials, winning convictions in every case. I once appeared before the United States Supreme Court (though another lawyer actually argued the case).

I am now a lawyer in private practice in Chicago.

Since 2011, I have organized a lot of great events for Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, including multiple events and speakers for my old office (the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois) and articles about two important cases in Asian-American legal history (the killing of Vincent Chin and a murder case that led to an infamous 1854 California Supreme Court decision).

This year, I wanted to do something even better. This is what I decided to do.