While a love of policy and a balanced legal background help make any good labor and employment lawyer better, California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) Director Phyllis W. Cheng’s perseverance and dedication to justice for all have much deeper roots than that.

By her own account, Cheng was born on a midwife’s kitchen table in Hong Kong during a typhoon that just so happened to take place on the Fourth of July. “You can say I was meant to be a Yankee Doodle Dandy,” Cheng quips.