Paying it Forward

HOW ONE CA ALUMNA IS GIVING THOSE IN NEED ACCESS TO NEW OPPORTUNITIES

When Suhi Koizumi ’96 was in middle school, she traveled from her hometown in Korea to Los Angeles to visit her cousins. That trip left a deep impression on her about how life in the United States was and the apparent amount of freedom her relatives had.

Today, Koizumi fights for the freedom of others as a partner at Minami Tamaki LLP, a San Francisco-based law firm serving clients in the areas of consumer and employment rights, corporate and nonprofit counseling, immigration, personal injury, and entertainment. Koizumi leads Minami Tamaki’s Immigration Practice Group, advising clients on all aspects of immigration matters.

Koizumi was admitted to practice law in 2005 and has since represented countless clients. She’s proud to work pro bono for clients, with her honor code and trust in the goodness of people — formed at Cheshire Academy and later grown at the collegiate level — helping to guide her decisions.

“The whole purpose of going to law school was to help people,” reflected Koizumi. “My purpose in life is to make the world a little bit of a better place for myself and the next generation. It’s such a privilege to be able to go to schools like Cheshire Academy, like Wesleyan University, and to become a lawyer. Most people can’t afford lawyers, so it’s our duty to give back and pay it forward.”

“The immense privilege that we enjoy as being part of a particular socio-economic class and having an education, we forget when we’re in a bubble, like Cheshire, that the world is not like Cheshire. It’s our job to share what we have been given; if we hoard it, then all the systematic problems we have just get worse.”

Coming to Cheshire Academy to start her high school education was not a simple task. After her trip to Los Angeles, Koizumi, who is half Korean and half Japanese, returned to her family and declared that she wanted to attend high school in the United States. She was met with refusal from both her mother and father, despite her pleas that being an international citizen would be important as they entered the 21st century.

Instead, they moved to Japan.

As a 14-year-old, Koizumi lived, for the most part, alone in an apartment in Tokyo as her parents traveled often for work. She attended an independent school there and spoke little Japanese or English. Rather than give up, Koizumi strived to seek an American education.

“I started looking for summer schools because I knew that my parents were always supportive of me going to school in whatever form it was, and going to America for summer school would be much more palatable,” Koizumi recalled.

At her school’s library, she found some pamphlets and brochures for American summer schools. Cheshire Academy was one of them. Something about the pictures of the historic campus and students having fun spoke to her. She applied, was accepted, and prepared for her trip.

Koziumi’s summer school experience was so positive, she told her parents that she was staying and that she already paid the deposit to attend CA that fall. She returned to speak with her parents, received their blessing, and landed in New York before the start of the fall semester. High school is a formative time for any student; for Koizumi, it also served as a launching pad to the United States. And she quickly realized — thanks to James “Butch” Rogers and many others — that she made the right decision.

“It was one of the first midterms, an in-class test or exam, and Mr. Rogers handed out the blue book and exam, and he introduced the concept of the honor system, which I had never heard about,” Koizumi said. “He said that we would be under the honor system and that he was leaving the room. He said he trusted that we would write the exam honorably and that he would come back at the end of the hour. Looking back, that moment had a tremendous impact on me and my general outlook on life.”

Generally speaking, Koizumi was of the mindset that if you give students an inch, they’ll take a mile. They’ll find loopholes. They’ll cheat. To have that support in Mr. Rogers’ class broke that stigma and sparked something in her.

“It was so refreshing to be trusted,” she said. “I felt so grown up and adult. I felt like I was being treated as an equal.”

Mr. Rogers’ class was only one of many places where Koizumi was able to express herself and her creativity. In Bob Gardiner’s English class, for example, she was able to perform a piano recital for her classmates in return for a letter grade.

“Looking back, I don’t know if that would fly at any other school, because you can’t grade it,” Koizumi said. “The motion of setting a goal for yourself, systematically working toward it from nothing to being able to perform — I think that process, not the result itself, but the journey — is really instrumental when you think about how we want our children to learn: loving every step of the process.”

As a boarding student, Koizumi also learned about American culture. Mrs. Rogers taught her how to bake brownies and she visited Laura Longacre and hung out with her Siamese cats. Another dorm parent, she continued, would take her and another student out for sushi — which was nice, because Koizumi missed some of her hometown’s food.

Now in her professional life, Koizumi is able to tap into her experiences, her dreams, and her aspirations when helping clients. “When you have lived in a place for a long time and you call it home, but you don’t have the papers to officially live there for as long as you want to, it is a terrifying and unsettling thought,” she said. “My work allows them to pave a permanent path so that they can live the life that they dream, that they want.”

And during her time, she’s helped some tremendous people. North Korean refugee clients, for example, shared stories of losing children to starvation, fleeing their country due to dire circumstances, persecution, religion, and gender. She found them asylum in the United States.

In another instance, a mother had a child who was about to be classified as an adult and did not have her Green Card due to a technical error made a few years back. Koizumi was able to resolve the issue, expediting the case, to ensure her daughter could remain in the United States. That family, Koizumi continued, later vacationed in San Francisco, California, and made it a point to visit and thank her in person.

Another case involved a 19-year-old Mongolian girl who was pregnant out of wedlock and persecuted, the former of which would allow the father to honor kill. The girl managed to flee Mongolia and was applying for asylum in the United States.

“That was when I was in law school working at a nonprofit,” Koizumi reflected. “Working with her, I didn’t have an office; we would meet at a park and talk, and I really got to know her. When she got her case approved, I saw her face show this sign of tremendous relief and safety. By then, she had her baby, and knowing her baby would have this whole life of opportunity in a place that’s so different from where she came from, that made me feel my work was really worth it.”

Being able to help those in need reminds Koizumi of when she received support from everyone at Cheshire Academy. The connections alumni make with one another is just one of the many reasons she says the CA community needs to stay involved.

“It’s your community, and with schools like Cheshire, the community doesn’t end because you have graduated. It’s always there,” Koizumi said. “It’s your village, your home, that you can always come back to, that you’re always a part of … It’s a privilege to have received so many gifts from classmates and teachers. Many teachers have passed away, some of my classmates have passed away, but the Cheshire Academy identity still continues. Enriching the community by giving back the gifts that I receive for future generations is important.”