Tom Miller

Tom with his Havana barber

Tom with his Havana barber

tmiller@millerngo.com

Founder
Personal Injury, Non-Profit, Business Law (concentration in Cuba and Vietnam), Contracts and Trusts and Wills.
Tom grew up north of Chicago, Illinois, attending The Farm School and New Trier High School.  Prior to attending Yale College he prospected for gold in Alaska and worked in logging camps and railway gangs in California, Oregon and Western Canada.  At Yale he established the Yale Man Abroad Program with Chaplain William Sloane Coffin and, after graduating, he helped establish the Peace Corps and train the first group of Peace Corps Volunteers, spending two years as a secondary school teacher in Ghana.  He then attended Stanford Law School, where he founded the International Law Society and served as an intern in the State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor.  After admission to the New York Bar, Tom joined the Manhattan firm of Webster Sheffield, where he founded Children’s Medical Relief International and traveled to Vietnam to establish, with Professor Arthur Barsky,  the Center for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery to treat war-injured children.  The Center treated thousands of war-injured children during the war, including the little girl, Kim Phuoc, whose image, running naked from her napalmed village, shocked the world.  The Center continues today as a top teaching hospital, and Tom continued his work with Vietnam – working to have the embargo lifted after the war and opening the first representative legal office there after the embargo was lifted.  At the end of the war, when thousands of Vietnamese children were brought to the United States as “orphans”, Tom helped pursue a class action lawsuit to return children who were not orphans to their Vietnamese families.  The story of one of these children became a documentary, “Daughter from Danang” which won the Grand Jury Award as the Best Documentary at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Oscar.  Recently Tom co-founded Green Cities Fund, which has established a number of projects, including Parwaz (www.parwaz.org) the first Afghan-run microfinance organization providing small loans to widows and others in need in war-torn Afghanistan.  Green Cities also established the Vietnam Green Building Council (www.vsccan.org/vgbc/) and is establishing a community-based ecotourism project to help save the Prey Lang forest area in Cambodia, the largest unprotected forest area in Southeast Asia, where some 700,000 Kuy ethnic minority, who have been protecting the forest for generations, face extinction as the forest is destroyed by illegal logging, mining and plantations (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJHEiYmleVo) .
Tom also offers business advice with respect to Cuba, where he has traveled on numerous occasions in the last 15 years as a representative of Global Exchange, a San Francisco human rights organization.  He has helped organize conferences on Cuba at the University of California in Berkeley and has defended, pro bono, scores of  U.S. citizens charged with violating the U.S. travel ban.
Admitted In
California  and New York (inactive)
Awards
United States Jaycees “Outstanding Young Man of the year” 1974
United Nations Association “Global Citizen Award” 2008
Education
Parker School of Foreign & Comparative Law, Columbia University, Certificate 1966
Stanford Law School, LL.B. 1965
Yale University, B.A., 1960
Board Memberships, etc.
Global Exchange, Legal Council
Green Cities Fund, Co-founder & Chair
Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development, Chair
Send A Piana To Havana, Legal Council
Vietnam Green Building Council, Co-founder & Int’l Advisory Board
Participated in the production of documentaries on Vietnam, South America and
Cuba, by Oscar winning documentary filmmaker Pierre Dominique Gaisseau and
Oscar nomineeail Dolgin.
Tom with his Havana barber

Tom with his Havana barber

tom@millerngo.com

Founder

Personal Injury, Non-Profit, Business Law (concentration in Cuba and Vietnam), Contracts, Publishing and Trusts and Wills.

Tom grew up north of Chicago, Illinois, attending The Farm School, which taught the fundamentals of organic farming, and New Trier High School.  Prior to attending Yale College he prospected for gold in Alaska and worked in logging camps in California and Oregon and, as a Frontier College “laborer-teacher” on railway gangs in Western Canada.  At Yale he established the Yale Man Abroad Program with Chaplain William Sloane Coffin, was captain of the freshman and varsity wrestling teams, a member of the Board of Deacons, supervised undergraduate social welfare activities in the New Haven community and a member of Scroll & Key senior society.  After graduating,  he spent two years as a secondary school teacher in Ghana and, joining the University of California/Berkeley faculty, helped train the first group of Peace Corps Volunteers.  He then attended Stanford Law School, where he founded the International Law Society and served as an intern in the State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor.  After admission to the New York Bar, Tom joined the Manhattan firm of Webster Sheffield Fleischman Hitchcock & Chrystie, where he founded Children’s Medical Relief International and traveled to Vietnam to establish, with Professor Arthur Barsky,  the Center for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery to treat war-injured children.  The Center treated thousands of war-injured children during the war, including a little girl, Kim Phuoc, whose image, running naked from her napalmed village, shocked the world.  The Center continues today as a top teaching hospital.  Tom continued his work in Vietnam – working to have the embargo lifted after the war, mediating the release of political prisoners and opening the first U.S. representative legal office there after the embargo was lifted.  At the end of the war, when thousands of Vietnamese children were brought to the United States as “orphans”, Tom helped pursue a class action lawsuit to return children who were not orphans to their Vietnamese families.  The story of one of these children became a documentary – “Daughter from Danang” – which won the Grand Jury Award as the best documentary at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Oscar.  Recently Tom co-founded Green Cities Fund, which has established a number of projects, including Parwaz (www.parwaz.org) the first Afghan-run microfinance organization providing small loans to widows and others in need in war-torn Afghanistan.  Green Cities also established the Vietnam Green Building Council (www.vsccan.org/vgbc/) and is establishing a community-based ecotourism project to help save the Prey Lang forest area of Cambodia, the largest low land semi-dry evergreen forest area in Southeast Asia, where the Kuy ethnic minority, who have been protecting the forest for generations, face extinction as the forest is destroyed by illegal logging, mining and plantations (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJHEiYmleVo) .  As publisher of Lancaster Miller Publishers, he published over 100 books on Asia and contemporary subjects.  He also has served as Deputy Director of California Rural Legal Assistance  and West Coast Director of the Council on Economic Priorities.  He is co-founder of the award winning Bison Brewing Company, one of the first modern microbreweries in the United States.

In addition to Vietnam, Tom offers business advice with respect to Cuba, where he has traveled on numerous occasions in the last 15 years as a representative of Global Exchange, a San Francisco human rights organization.  He has helped organize conferences on Cuba at the University of California in Berkeley and has defended, pro bono, scores of  U.S. citizens charged with violating the U.S. travel ban.

Admitted In

  • California  and New York (inactive)

Awards

  • United States Jaycees “Outstanding Young Man of the year” 1974
  • United Nations Association “Global Citizen Award” 2008

Education

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

Board Memberships, etc.

  • Global Exchange, Legal Counsel
  • Green Cities Fund, Co-founder & Chair
  • Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development, Chair
  • Send A Piana To Havana, Legal Counsel
  • MAPlight, Advisory Board & Legal Counsel
  • Vietnam Green Building Council, Co-founder & Int’l Advisory Board
  • Participated in the production of documentaries on Vietnam, South America and Cuba, by Oscar winning documentary filmmaker Pierre Dominique Gaisseau and Oscar nominee Gail Dolgin.