Elizabeth Yang
President
W Strong, LLC.
Elizabeth M. Yang is a founder and President of WStrong LLC. She is a seasoned executive with more than 20 years of management experience, including strategic planning and budgeting, volunteer mobilization, board relations, grant administration, program and staff management, and fund development. She excels at building local, state, and national relationships and networks. Her career is best seen through the lens of public service and the critical need for access to and equal justice for all members of our society. She is a national expert in election law and is currently a member of the American Bar Association ("ABA") Standing Committee on Election Law and also serves on the Council of the Section of State and Local Goverment Law and chairs the Section's inaugural Committee on Elections and Voting Rights. ?
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Prior to founding WStrong LLC, Elizabeth served as the Deputy Director of ABA Division for Public Services for over two decades. In this capacity, she focused on programming, policy development, and initiatives that highlighted the important role of the legal profession in the field of election administration and voting rights, bioethics, and disaster response and preparedness. Elizabeth also managed a portfolio of public interest entities related to homelessness and poverty and immigration law. She is an innovative and accomplished author, public speaker, and team builder who believes in mentoring and creating paths of advancement and well-being for her colleagues and associates. ??
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Elizabeth earned her BA in Rhetoric and Communications Studies from the University of Virginia and a JD from Syracuse University College of Law.
Amber Maltbie
Partner
Nossaman LLP
Amber Maltbie is a campaign finance and election law attorney, providing strategic counsel to individuals, nonprofits, agencies, and organizations engaged in political and lobbying activity. She has advised clients at the federal, state, and local levels and across all 50 states. Amber’s practice includes advising on campaign rules, government ethics, lobbying compliance, and all aspects of nonprofit entity formation. Additionally, she leverages the resources of Nossaman’s other practice groups to provide campaign organizations and nonprofit entities with assistance for their related employment law, tax law, and insurance needs. Amber has been recognized as an expert witness on campaign finance in both civil and administrative proceedings. She also is a frequent speaker and panelist on trending issues nationally.
In addition to her legal practice, Amber serves the community in a variety of capacities. In 2016, she was elected to the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council (DLANC), which helps shape the Los Angeles City Council’s agenda to reflect the priorities of the City’s neighborhoods. In 2019, Amber chaired the DLANC Election Committee, exercising oversight on such decisions as polling location, preparation of voter information guides, and voter outreach to ensure a high turnout election. For the past six years, Amber has served on the board of Emerge California, an organization that has trained over 500 women to run for office in California. She chaired the board during the 2018 election, which saw a record number of women run and win in California and across the country. Amber is currently on the board of APIs Mobilize, a 501c.3 nonprofit that encourage young Asian and Pacific Islander leaders to step into civic roles at all levels of government. Finally, Amber teaches Election Law at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento.
Prior to her legal career, Amber spent more than a decade working in politics. She served as Communications Director to a member of the California State Legislature and Campaign Manager and Political Director for a Member of Congress. For two election cycles, Amber worked in targeted congressional districts developing and implementing voter engagement programs around the country.
Amber’s background as a seasoned political and communications professional, combined with her leadership positions within nonprofit organizations, positions her to truly partner with clients to achieve their advocacy goals.
Amber also excels in matters at the intersection between U.S. and international election law, gender issues, and women's political participation. She has been widely recognized as a leading expert in gender and elections. Her work on women's voting rights in emerging democracies has been cited in United Nations Development Programme reports and published by international NGOs. In addition to her scholarly work on women's voting rights, Amber has worked with the International Foundation for Electoral Systems in North Mitrovica, Kosovo during Kosovo’s first Parliamentary elections in 2010.
Jason Kaune
Partner
Neilsen Merksamer
Jason Kaune leads the firm’s political law section. His practice focuses on government ethics, including the election, lobbying disclosure, conflict of interest, gift and gratuity, and campaign finance laws of federal, state and local governments. He additionally has administrative oversight of the firm’s San Francisco Bay Area office.
Mr. Kaune advises clients on the complex government regulation of the political intersection of the public and private sectors in the United States. For twenty years, he has pioneered the firm’s national compliance practice, building client-oriented resources and innovative systems with his political law colleagues that have served as benchmarks in the regulated community. As a recognized expert on corporate political compliance, his clients include the nation’s largest technology, pharmaceutical, energy, telecommunications, media, publishing, investment and consumer product companies.
He represents clients in regard to their dealings with federal, state and local government ethics agencies across the country, associating with local counsel as necessary. His expertise includes “pay to play” restrictions on government contractors, the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA), Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), California’s Political Reform Act (PRA), and similar laws at every level of government.
He is one of the leading political attorneys in California, advising individuals, entities and government agencies on complex election law and conflict of interest matters. He serves as counsel and treasurer political action committees, advocacy groups, social welfare organizations, independent expenditure committees and ballot measures on topics ranging from land use restrictions to government reform.
He is a past president of the California Political Attorneys Association and member of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws and other professional associations. He co-chairs the Practicing Law Institute’s widely regarded annual conference on Corporate Political Activities and has been appointed to the Standing Committee on Election Law for the American Bar Association. He serves as an elected trustee of a California public school district.
Before joining Nielsen Merksamer, Mr. Kaune worked in the private and non-profit sectors, as a speechwriter in Washington, D.C., on a presidential campaign, and as an extern for a U.S. Federal District Court Judge and for the California Law Revision Commission. He received his degrees from Yale University, Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the University of California Hastings College of the Law.
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