As an entrepreneurship fellow with the University of Alaska Center for Economic Development before law school, she helped organize over 60 events for Alaska Startup Week and moderated a panel on startup law basics. Learning how vital it was for entrepreneurs to gain meaningful access to resources as well as a robust network — “Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” she says — Wang saw that many of the entrepreneurs experienced failures before successfully launching their company.

That resonated strongly with her when she struggled acclimating to law school as a 1L.

“The adversarial nature of litigation seemed antithetical to who I was and how I interacted with the world,” Wang says. “For the first time in a long time, I didn’t know how to approach my work with the creativity and collaboration I’d learned to rely on in my other roles.”

Helping early-stage companies navigate the startup landscape enabled Wang to rediscover her identity as a problem-solver and adviser. The Business Community Legal Advice Workshop she founded assists small business owners through office hours and legal basics workshops with community partners.

Wang relishes seeing 1Ls get to engage in meaningful hands-on transactional work with clients who are low-income small business owners in California’s Central Valley. Running a small business with limited resources is extraordinarily difficult, she notes.

The startup landscape is rich at UC Berkeley — which ranks No. 1 among U.S. law schools for generating startup founders, companies, and female entrepreneurs — and at the law school.

“The student-run groups do a fantastic job of finding clients who really benefit from the students’ services, and organizations like the Berkeley Center for Law and Business truly go above and beyond in connecting students with resources,” Wang says. “Berkeley Law alums are also so integrated — you can even say ingrained — in the Bay Area startup ecosystem. I’m always very impressed by their leadership in the community and eagerness to talk to students and give thoughtful advice.”

Wang strives to mirror that leadership model, pushing to create safe, productive environments for people to be their most authentic selves.

“Being kind and understanding goes a long way anywhere you are,” she says. “I’ve learned to prioritize connections over differences, and that makes me better in my transactional work. Meeting so many different people and having friends from very different backgrounds has helped me realize that my purpose — the thing most fulfilling to me — is to build rich, rewarding relationships in the workplace and in life.” — Andrew Cohen