After a comprehensive national search, we are pleased to announce the appointment of Stella Ngai as the chief counsel for UC Merced. Ms. Ngai will serve full-time for UC Merced beginning on Aug. 16, succeeding Elisabeth Gunther, who retires June 29.
Ms. Ngai has worked for UC Office of the President since 2006, first as director of public records and liaison to the UC police chiefs, and then as an attorney for UC Legal since 2010. She has expertise in employee, student, and donor privacy, ethics, conflicts of interest, and education affairs. Ms. Ngai is a former chair of the Office of the President’s Advisory Committee on the Status of Women.
Prior to her UC work, she was an assistant district attorney in San Francisco, and also practiced law for the minority-owned law firm, Minami Tamaki. Ms. Ngai is the chair of the State Bar Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation, and in that capacity, she has worked with legal communities throughout California, including the San Joaquin Valley. She looks forward to embedding herself in the Valley.
A native of California and daughter of an immigrant from Hong Kong, she is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Santa Clara University School of Law. We believe she will be the first female Asian American chief counsel in the history of the University of California.
Please join us in welcoming Ms. Ngai, and in thanking Ms. Gunther for her 13 years of service during a particularly critical period of UC Merced’s growth.
Juan Sánchez Muñoz, Ph.D.
Chancellor, UC Merced
Charles F. Robinson, Esq.
General Counsel and Vice President, Legal Affairs
University of California
