Andy was born and raised in Southern Illinois and graduated from University of Chicago with a triple major in Economics, Physics, and Anthropology. He worked as an economic research assistant at U Chicago and traded stocks before graduating with honors from Harvard Law School. He began his academic career at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law before helping build the first full-time law school in Boise, Idaho. He practiced as a litigator at Greenberg Traurig in Houston before joining Bae, Kim & Lee in Seoul. His practice focuses on cross-border disputes and transactions between the US and Korea.

Andy’s peer-reviewed academic research on the American criminal justice system applies law and economics principles to empirical data and has been published in top-100 law reviews. He is considered an authority on the “China Initiative” and anti-AAPI discrimination. He authored a study that revealed that innocent Asian Americans are twice as likely to be falsely accused of spying as other races. He has given keynote addresses and speeches on AAPI issues for the Committee of 100, United Chinese Americans, State Bar of Texas APIS, NAPABA, the Association of Chinese Professionals, etc.

In Houston, Andy helped lead a team of attorneys that merged Houston’s Korean American Association (한인회) and the Korean American Community Center into a single, unified organization, KAACCH. He was a founding board member of Woori Juntos, which serves Korean American and other immigrant communities in Houston. He worked with community leaders on responses to the barring of Korean-American volunteer translators in Houston polling booths, anti-Chinese land laws, anti-Asian violence, and was invited as a community leader to meet with FBI counter-intelligence at FBI main headquarters. He served for several years as a board member of Korean Americans for Political Action (formerly Korean Americans in Action).

As a foreign attorney at BKL, a leading Korean law firm, Andy works with American companies doing business in Korea and Korean companies doing business in America. He was a founding board member of the Korean American Institute, the first think-tank focused on Korean American issues, and currently serves as its corporate Secretary.