Like many good things in life, the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Colorado began in a kitchen.
“We reached out to people we knew, then we met in homes,” Fay Matsukage recalled, with the original gathering in 1990 around a kitchen table.
Senior counsel at Doida Crow Legal today, Matsukage is in her 46th year practicing law, having built a career that spans securities work, mentorship and decades of bar service.
“When we started the bar,” she said, “there were about a dozen of us. We decided that was good enough.”
She added, “We wanted to have a place where attorneys of Asian descent could gather, could share our experiences and basically lend support, saying, ‘You’re not crazy. We’re all there to help each other out.’”
In the early years, they devoted themselves to networking and professional development.
Early Isolation in Colorado
Matsukage came to Colorado College in 1973 after growing up in Hawaii, where she attended a rigorous and exceedingly diverse high school.
“I remember I was going to a football game at Colorado College, and I looked around in the bleachers, thinking, ‘I’m the only one here with black hair,’” she said.
She was one of three Asian students in her class at Colorado College; at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, the demographics were much the same.
As she moved through college, law school and then her early practice years, assumptions were often made before she had a chance to speak. “I didn’t understand it,” she said. “People judged us before they got to know us.”
She remembered being questioned about the legitimacy of her payment method when shopping and, more than once, being ignored in a professional setting.
Building a Career and Founding the Bar
Despite those experiences, Matsukage remained focused on her practice. After a stint in litigation at a small Cherry Creek firm, she shifted to transactional work and securities law.
“It was just a great marriage of what I enjoyed doing,” she said.
By the late 1980s, she and fellow attorneys began discussing the need for a formal network for Asian attorneys in Colorado. The effort expanded from informal conversations into organized meetings and eventually the establishment of the APABA.
“It allows us to be very proud and honored of our ethnic heritage,” she said, “while at the same time really providing a service to the legal profession that maybe the mainstream bars can’t cover.”
Expanding Impact Beyond Law
Over time, the organization’s work expanded beyond professional networking. Members engaged in outreach to law students, educational programming and partnerships with community organizations such as the Asian Pacific Development Center, which supported refugees via culturally competent care.
The bar association also supported legal clinics, voter registration efforts and scholarships through its foundation arm.
“We would meet with the kids and help tutor them,” she said, referring to a program serving students who needed help with English-language schoolwork. “That was really rewarding.”
Recognition and Reflection
Matsukage’s many honors include the 1999 Trailblazer Award from the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, the 2006 Minoru Yasui Community Service Award from the APABA, the 2006 Mary Lathrop Trailblazer Award from the Colorado Women’s Bar Association and the 2010 Outstanding Alumni Award from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. She was inducted into Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame in 2018.
Yet she downplayed the idea of individual distinction: “When you’re one of the early ones, it happens.”
Instead, she framed her work as part of a shift in visibility and opportunity for Asian American attorneys in Colorado’s legal community. As evidence of the growing changes, she loves to call out colleagues who have become judges, leaders in the bar and public officials.
“I am so proud of what our attorney members have accomplished,” she said.