Liberty Chats
Liberty Chats, Season 2, Episode 2: Lily Tang Williams, Entrepreneur/Educator
Jun 22, 2023
The Steamboat Institute
Host Karl Honegger, member of The Steamboat Institute's Emerging Leaders Council Alumni Board interviews entrepreneur and educator, Lily Tang Williams. She is fighting to prevent the country she loves from becoming the country she left.
Lily Tang Williams was a law school assistant professor at Fudan University, Shanghai, China who became an American entrepreneur and an educator. She is currently co-chair of the New Hampshire Asian American Coalition, elected Supervisor of the Checklist in Town of Weare, NH. She has been married to John Williams for 31 years and they have three adult children.
Born to illiterate working-class parents in China’s western Sichuan province just before Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Lily Tang Williams grew up experiencing extremely poor living conditions, food rationing, social chaos, and Communist indoctrination.
She learned to work hard, persevere, and be grateful for the opportunities she was given. Eventually, she graduated from Fudan University in Shanghai with an undergraduate law degree. After graduation, she was selected to continue as part of the law school faculty, as well as practice corporate law in Shanghai as China began to rebuild its economy.
In 1988, Lily Tang Williams decided to study in the U.S., leaving her position with only $100 in her pocket and $1200 in debt to her American sponsor, a Fulbright professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Though she could not speak English fluently she was determined to achieve success in this country, earning a Master’s degree in Administration and Planning from the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin.
Subsequently, Lily started work for Wyoming Home Health as a medical social worker, and later she worked as an executive for corporations in both Hong Kong and the U.S. Eventually, she went into business for herself, providing consulting and expert witness services in China-related business and legal cases. She and her husband also manage residential real estate properties they own.