P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans

KOY SAEPHON is the Founder and Director of Operations at Excel Interpreting, LLC - a California focused interpreting and translating company. 

Koy is a member of the Mien, a pre-literate community of Southeast Asia. Born in the highlands of Laos in 1970, she and her family fled and were war refugees, spending five years in camps in Thailand before eventually resettling in California.

Married when she was 17, Koy had two children before entering University of California at Los Angeles, where she obtained her BA. She completed her JD at Lincoln Law School in Sacramento.

Koy taught early education in Tulare County and then worked at the district attorney's office to promote accommodation and reform of Mien tradition and local legal practice regarding issues of domestic violence, statutory rape and child abuse.