Chen serves as Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld’s Houston office hiring partner and women’s initiative chair. She also serves on the recruiting and diversity committees and as a member of the firm’s women’s resource group.

Born in Taiwan and raised by her grandparents in a rural area, Chen worked as a child in the rice fields, sewed shoes in a factory as a child laborer and cared for her younger brother and cousins. In 1990, at the age of 12, she and her parents moved to Houston, Texas where she started school without knowing any English. Following a trip to Washington, D.C. when she was 16, Alison decided to become a lawyer. In 2012, she was named partner at another large law firm.