Whenever Francis Chin visits a new city in the United States, the first thing he does is scope out the local PBS station. “I’m so proud of GBH and I like to see what other PBS stations are doing, what their programming is like,” he said.
A donor since he graduated from law school in 1978—he started giving $25 a year—he is devoted to GBH as “not just a local treasure, but a national resource. It’s remarkable that GBH provides more than a third of the national programming to PBS.”
A Charlestown, Mass., native, he attended Boston Latin School and Middlebury College. He returned to Boston after graduating from New York University School of Law, eager to find diversions from the “professional, quotidian” reading he did as an attorney.
“I became absorbed with GBH’s vast and interesting series of stories that provided intelligent entertainment,” he said. He loved MASTERPIECE, starting with Upstairs, Downstairs, The Jewel in the Crown and I, Claudius, and before long was watching NOVA with his young son and captivated by AMERICAN EXPERIENCE and FRONTLINE.
Chin majored in German literature at Middlebury. After college, a pivotal conscience-raising experience while volunteering with poor, resettled migrant farm workers in upstate New York changed his career plans. “I realized I wanted to learn more about the migrant experience of overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia.”
And then, his path took another turn.
“In Hong Kong, I met some Yale students, one of whom had gone to law school,” he recalled. “I decided that was an occupation I would explore.”
He went on to found Chin & Curtis, LLP, a Boston law firm specializing in corporate immigration law. His commitment to the immigrant community spanned the decades, as he represented corporate clients and also worked with migrant farm workers, assisted asylum applicants and supported unaccompanied minor immigrant children in removal proceedings. He concurrently became deeply involved in the Asian community in Boston.
Throughout those years, GBH and its events were an anchor.
He has elevated his giving to the Beacon Circle level and serves on the planning committee of GBH’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month events and on the Board of Advisors.
“GBH recognizes that it is embedded in its context in Boston and its communities, and that’s laudable,” he said. “That’s why I couldn’t be more proud of my local PBS station.”
Learn more about becoming a member of the Beacon Circle by emailing Megan Stokes at megan_stokes@wgbh.org or visit the Beacon Circle website.
