Lucy Wang will give a talk titled "From Wall Street to Hollywood," on Thursday, March 12, at 4 p.m., at the Asian American Cultural Center.

Wang, who was a Kidder bond trader from 1986 to 1989, wrote the Off Off Broadway play Junk Bonds, about a young Asian American woman who is hired by a Wall Street firm and struggles for acceptance in the face of racism and gender discrimination. Although successful, she finds her talents are poorly rewarded. As the plot unfolds, the play, written in January and February 1994, foreshadows a crisis that occurred in April of that year when Joseph Jett of Kidder, Peabody was dismissed, accused of inventing a multi-million dollar profit and hiding a huge loss.

Her productions include Bird's Nest Soup and Number One Son, and the screenplays Mei-Guo and Labor of Love.

Wang was born in Taiwan and came to the United States at the age of two, growing up in Akron, Ohio. She graduated from the University of Texas with a bachelor's degree in economics and Asian studies and earned an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. She also worked as a research economist at the Chicago Board of Trade.