Tao, Jerry, 1968-

Born in Taiwan, naturalized citizen and District Court Judge Jerry Tao's family exemplifies the ways political systems affect people on the ground. Tao's grandfather wrote speeches for Chiang-Kai-shek until the mid-1960s, when Mao Zedong's Communist party began purging leaders of the previous regime. As a high-ranking government official, Tao's grandfather left China under threat of death and settled in Taiwan. Tao's father, a university professor, sought a politically stable environment for his family and brought them to the U.S., where Tao was raised mostly in Northern Virginia. After earning his B.A. at Cornell University and his J.D. at The George Washington University Law School, Tao followed his grandfather's footsteps, becoming a speechwriter for U.S. Senator Harry Reid and moving to Nevada in 1998. In 2011, Governor Brian Sandoval appointed Tao to the the Eighth Judicial District Court and, in 2014, to the Court of Appeals.