VIST Conferred Honorary Doctor Degree to MD Senator

Congratulations to Honorable Maryland Senator Susan C. Lee!

Institute President Dr. Martin Ma, on behalf of VIST’s Board of Trustees and Trustees, together with Dr. Sartor (Provost) and Dr. Chang (BoD), awarded Maryland State Senator, Majority Leader,  Susan C. Lee, the Honorary Doctorate Degree, to recognize/commend her outstanding service to the Asian American community, admires her commitment to promoting women’s rights and gender equality, and her outstanding contribution to the establishment of a cybersecurity committee in the Maryland State Assembly.

Susan C. Lee was first Chinese American and first Asian Woman elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 2002 and to the Senate in 2014 to represent District 16, and has been described as the General Assembly’s leader on cyber security and innovation, identity theft, online fraud, and consumer protection issues. As Co-Chair of the Maryland Commission on Cyber Security, Innovation and Excellence, and as Co-Chair of the Maryland Identity Theft Task Force, she has authored and led efforts to pass major laws to protect Marylanders against cyber attacks and terrorism, identity theft, and online fraud, and assist victims of those crimes.

Susan also is a champion of education, the environment, public safety, civil rights, transportation, quality health care, telemedicine, bioscience, clean energy, and emerging technologies. She authored Maryland’s first Telemedicine law as well as the law creating the Maryland Nanobiotechnology Task Force, which she served as its Co-Chair.

Susan is the daughter of a World War II veteran of the US Navy and retired Washington Post artist and a proud product of the Montgomery County public schools, Leland Junior High School, Herbert Hoover Junior High and Winston Churchill High School. She graduated from the Institute of Maryland and Institute of San Francisco School of Law. Susan was a member of the Western Montgomery County Citizens Advisory Board, Jewish Foundation for Group Homes Board, Montgomery County Gang Task Force, and Progressive Maryland and Co-Chair of the NAACP Multicultural Community Partnership. She was appointed to serve on the United States Patent and Trademark Advisory Board during the Clinton Administration.