THOMAS ROBBINS MILLER

 725 Washington Street, Suite 300

 Oakland, California 94607

 Tel: 510 891-0616/Fax: 510 839-9857/e-mail: milltom@gmail.com 

1979 to present - Senior Partner in the law firm of Miller & Ngo, providing a variety of legal services primarily to the Asian communities from Viet-Nam, Laos & Cambodia. First U.S. attorney to open post-war office in Viet-Nam, providing business and legal assistance to foreign firms doing business in Viet-Nam, including a farmer cooperative project to produce organic fertilizer and Vietnam's first "fair trade" gourmet coffee. Also negotiated the release of Vietnamese held in "re-education" camps and an American held prisoner in Vietnam long after the war. As Director of the Association for Fair Trade with Cuba I provide business and legal assistance with respect to Cuba and am aiding various U.S. educational institutions establish programs there.  I also represent pro bono scores of U.S. citizens being fined by the U.S. government for exercising their Constitutional right to travel to Cuba and other "forbidden" countries.   I have also engaged in general practice, personal injury litigation, business law and established limited partnerships in such areas as food products, micro-brewing, manufacturing, book investments and computer software, and  have engaged in book and software packaging and licensing with major publishers and computer hardware manufacturers such as Bantam, Microsoft, Dow Jones, Epson and Kyocera.  I am co-founder of California Beer Works and Bison Brewing Company, a micro-brewery in Berkeley, California. I also serve as pro bono legal counsel to non-profit institutions including Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org), Nautilus Institute (www.nautilus.org), The Thanh Phong Village Memorial Fund, The South & Meso American Indian Rights Center ("SAIIC"), Cuban-American Alliance Education Fund, Send a Piana to Havana, World Capoeira Association and La Pena Cultural Center.  With my wife, journalist T.T. Nhu, and the assistance of Women's World Banking, in 2003 helped establish Parwaz, the first Afghan-run microlending institution in Afghanistan (www.parwaz.org) which provides small, low-cost loans to widows and poor families there.  Sponsor of numerous public service ads (www.millerngo.com/ads) which have received national attention in The New York Times and other publications.

1997 to present - Principal attorney IPO Corporate Law Group providing comprehensive legal and consultative services for businesspersons and entrepreneurs with small or start-up companies.

1979 to 1988 - Publisher, Lancaster - Miller Publishers and Asian Humanities Press. Published over 100 books, including titles in the areas of computer hardware and software, art, Asian philosophy and general audience books.

1976 to 1979 - Deputy Director and staff attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance.  Responsible for the administration of thirteen law offices with 70 attorneys and 90 support personnel providing legal assistance to farmworkers and the rural poor in California.

1975 to 1976 - Volunteer attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights.  Worked full time pro bono on lawsuit filed against Henry Kissinger, the U.S. Government and adoption agencies to return 1975 Vietnam "orphan airlift" children to their Vietnamese families.

1974 to 1975 - West Coast Director, Council on Economic Priorities, a public interest research organization formed during the Vietnam War devoted to analyzing corporations' military involvement, discrimination, pollution and misuse of natural resources.  Directed a staff of 10.

1973 - Consultant, UNICEF.  As a member of a four person task force I participated in laying the foundation for a $100,000,000 United Nations aid program in Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia, as well as evaluating existing programs there.

1968 to 1973 - With plastic surgeon Arthur J. Barsky, former chief surgeon of the Hiroshima Maidens Project and Abraham Lincoln Brigade ambulance driver, established largest hospital for plastic and reconstructive surgery in the world in Vietnam to treat war injured children.  Recruited and directed staff of 112 as well as the design, construction and implementation of hospital and country-wide support clinic system under war conditions.  Over 7,000 children were treated during the war (including Kim Phuoc, the little girl running down the road, clothes burned off by napalm, whose photo brought home to the world the war's horrible consequences).

1965 to 1968

• Associate with the New York City law firm of Webster & Sheffield, where I engaged in general corporate and estate practice.  
• Consultant to the late Senator Robert Kennedy on apartheid law of South Africa in preparation for his historic trip there.

Before 1965

• As a faculty member of the University of California at Berkeley, participated in the organization of the Peace Corps and the training and placement of  the first group of Volunteers.
• Secondary school teacher in Dormaa Ahenkro and Koforidua, Ghana, West Africa
• Legal Intern, Africa Division, Office of the Legal Advisor, U.S. Department of State.
• Worked as prospector in Alaska and laborer in logging camps in California and on railway gangs in Alberta and Saskatchewan Canada,  as a "laborer-teacher" for Canada's Frontier College, the organization which inspired President Kennedy to establish the Peace Corps.

OTHER ACTIVITIES:

Assisted with the production of  "Daughter from Danang", a saga of an "Orphan Airlift" child's search for her mother in Vietnam. It won the Grand Jury Award for best documentary at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and was a 2003 Oscar nominee for best documentary (happily losing to Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine").  Produced for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and NBC, films on the peoples of Vietnam and Colombia by academy award winning filmmaker Pierre Dominique Gaisseau ("The Sky Above, the Mud Below") and participated in the production of other CBC and Channel 4 (England) documentaries on Vietnam and Cuba, including "Sonata for Left Hand" and "Trading with the Enemy" - films on my client and Jessica Mitford's son, Ben Treuhaft and his U.S. embargo defying "Send a Piana to Havana" project.

Conducted health system evaluation projects in Indonesia and Iran.

EDUCATION

Parker School of Foreign & Comparative Law, Columbia University, Certificate, 1966.
Stanford Law School, LL.B., 1965
Yale University, B.A., 1960

New Trier High School, Winnetka, Illinois.  Diploma, 1956
The Farm School, Northbrook, Illinois. Primary school

BAR ADMISSIONS - New York (1966) California (1974)

OTHER

Named "One of the Ten Outstanding Young Men in the United States" by U.S. Jaycees in 1974.

Co-founder Thanh Phong Village Memorial Fund - a project to establish a suitable memorial in Thanh Phong Village, Vietnam, where a massacre of civilians took place by  U.S. soldiers under the leadership of former Senator Bob Kerrey.

Advisor, East Meets West Foundation, established by Le Ly Hayslip, author of "When Heaven & Earth Changed Places", subject of the recent Warner Brothers Film "Heaven & Earth".

Director, Association for Fair Trade with Cuba, an association of businesspeople who advocate free and fair trade with Cuba and the lifting of the U.S. embargo.

Legal Counsel to Global Exchange, a non-profit people-to-people human rights organization; and Board Chair The Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development, a non-profit Macarthur Award winning organization conducting research into environmental protection, the advancement of peace and the reduction of nuclear armaments. Member, Community Advisory Board, listener sponsored public television station station KQED.

Articles published in The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune Syndicate, The Christian Science Monitor and other publications.

PERSONAL

Born:  Winnetka, Illinois, March 8, 1938

Married to T. T. Nhu, journalist and formerly  Knight Ridder columnist and press secretary to Oakland mayor and former California Governor Jerry Brown.   We have two sons and two daughters.