Director, Minami Tamaki Yamauchi Kwok & Lee Foundation

For nearly 40 years, Don Tamaki has specialized in providing value-driven legal counsel to entrepreneurs, privately-held companies, and nonprofit corporations, with special focus on commercial leasing, personnel and employment law, corporate governance and other internal practices, licensing, acquisition, and other business transactions.

Mr. Tamaki also has extensive experience in entertainment law, representing Olympic ice skating gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi, and various television news anchors, reporters, and weather persons.

In keeping with the firm’s tradition of community service, Mr. Tamaki served on the pro bono team that reopened the landmark Supreme Court case of Korematsu v. the United States, overturning Fred Korematsu’s conviction for refusing as an American citizen to be incarcerated on account of his racial ancestry. Mr. Tamaki is past member of the board of Glide Foundation.

Mr. Tamaki is President of the board of director of the San Francisco Japantown Foundation. He helped create the foundation in 2006 to support cultural, community, and educational activities for San Francisco Japantown.

Mr. Tamaki has been recognized with the 1987 State Bar of California Loren Miller Award and the National Asian Pacific Bar Association 2003 Trailblazer Award.

He received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 1976 and his B. A. from UC Berkeley, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1973.

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