Jenny Wang grew up in her family’s shoe manufacturing business. She ultimately parlayed her business expertise into a general counsel position at Irvine-based MerchSource. The company designs, develops, imports and distributes consumer goods, such as electronics and toys.
Wang was one of five recipients of the Business Journal’s General Counsel Awards on Nov. 8 (see other profiles, pages 1, 6, 8 and 10).
Wendy Peterson, general counsel at Irvine-based law firm Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear LLP, said Wang deserves to be honored.
“Jenny is … the perfect combination of sharp legal skills, confidence, great business and legal judgment, and calm demeanor,” she said. “She has well-earned the admiration of her executive management team and her peers.”
Parents’ Dream
Becoming a lawyer was her parents’ dream for her, Wang said. It also aligned with her own passions. She was a curious child who loved to read and thrived on academic success.
“So it made [me] a very studious student who did well in the rigorous requirements of law school education,” she said. “I was also a chatty, eloquent kid growing up who was comfortable talking to adults, and that’s helped me grow into a confident legal and business leader today.”
After private practice for six years at Latham & Watkins in Los Angeles, she took her second maternity leave in two years and moved to Orange County.
Her new child and the move inspired her to “take a leap of faith” and transition into in-house practice. She became corporate counsel at Sybron Dental Specialties in Orange and “never looked back” over more than a decade as in-house counsel for various OC companies.
She started at MerchSource last year. She oversees its legal department, which also includes one associate counsel and the product quality and compliance departments. She handles acquisitions, corporate governance, litigation, finance, risk management and licensing. She supervises the associate counsel in the management of the company’s IP portfolio and product development reviews.
Year Like No Other
Back in March, MerchSource President Kirk McLean told the Business Journal, “Right now, we are popping at the seams. We never saw it coming.”
What came—unexpectedly—was a flurry of moves in five months: into new headquarters in the Irvine Spectrum—the former home of Mazda North America—in a $42 million deal in July; an October 2016 buy for $45 million of venerable toy brand FAO Schwarz; and the $100 million December purchase of Sharper Image. Not much of a holiday for the in-house counsel.
“I closed my Sharper Image deal in Taiwan, 2 a.m. conference calls, lots of all-nighters,” Wang recalled, still smiling. “We needed to close before year-end.”
The audience of her fellows at Hotel Irvine gasped when John Sganga, partner at Knobbe Martens, detailed the workload, but Wang was all energy at the podium, sounding very much like a businessperson who happens to be an attorney.
“We need to bring back the magic,” she said. “We have FAO Schwarz, a 200-year-old company.”
Wang also beamed for the home team. “We’re an Orange County company started by OC grads from UCI. Go Anteaters! All you young people, UCI, Chapman, Fullerton—stay here, start a company here.”
From Where She Came
The family business, Long Li Group, had factories in Taiwan, China and Vietnam. She grew up listening to family members talk business at home. She never worked for the company but said she grasped the challenges associated with labor and manufacturing operations.
She’s on the advisory board of Asian Americans Advancing Justice. The nonprofit provides legal assistance to in-need immigrants who recently arrived from Asian countries.
“This is an organization near and dear to my own life experience as a child of immigrants who came to the United States with no support network, speaking no English, and struggling to adapt, so that we could pursue the American dream,” she said. “I’m living the American dream that my parents envisioned when they gave everything up to come to the United States so their kids could be better educated with greater opportunities. Today I can give back to the country that shaped me, raise my two wonderful children to pursue their own dreams and achieve their own success.”
Wang said she wants to share her story and mentor young attorneys to pursue their dreams to go in-house and “succeed in [an] environment where legal and business acumen are married into a unique and powerful tool to add value to businesses.”
