Scholars
Class of 2012
Valerie Brender
Coben Scholar
Valerie graduated with honors in Economics from Wake Forest University in 2006. After graduation, Valerie served in Panama with the Peace Corps for two years where she worked with a rural microfinance cooperative and helped promote sex-education and gender rights in local communities. After the Peace Corps, she was awarded a Fulbright Grant to Spain, where she taught in a bilingual public school and worked with a Spanish refugee group, CEAR, on translations and human rights research.
Valerie spent her 1L summer working for Paul Hoffman on Guantanamo Bay, Alien Tort Statute and other international human rights litigation cases. From 2010-2011 she chaired the Iraqi Refugee Assistant Project’s TCN Project, which filed a series of FOIA requests concerning the labor abuses against and trafficking of third country nationals on U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. She spent her 2L summer working for the ACLU’s Center for Democracy on human rights and national security litigation. Valerie is also an Articles Editor on the Journal of International Law and Politics. She looks forward to continuing to engage in human rights litigation at NYU and beyond and is incredibly thankful for the support of NYU and the RTK program.
Sara Cullinane
WilmerHale Scholar
Before law school, Sara was Senior Health Care Advocate at Make the Road New York, the largest membership-based immigrant rights organization in New York City, where she worked on national health care reform efforts and coordinated a public health insurance enrollment program. She has also worked as a union organizer with SEIU's Justice for Janitors campaign in the Midwest. A Massachusetts native, Sara received her B.A. with first class honors in history from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.
At NYU Law, Sara has participated in the Immigrant Rights Clinic and co-chaired Law Students for Economic Justice. She interned with the Immigration Subcommittee of the House of Representatives' Committee on the Judiciary during her 1L summer and will spend her 2L summer as a law clerk with the General Counsel of SEIU Local 32bj. After law school, she plans to return to work that engages low income people as leaders in building political power and creating fair labor practices and public policies.
Shannon Cumberbatch
Jacobson Public Service Scholar for Women, Children & Families
Shannon graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Spelman College in 2008, where she served a three-year tenor on the Spelman College Board of Trustees, reined as Miss NAACP, was secretary of the Pre-Law Society, and volunteered on the Essence Cares National Mentoring Initiative Steering Committee and UPS Community Service Scholarship Program. This summer Shannon will be interning at the Bronx Defenders for a holistic approach to public defense and participating in the Suspension Representation Project 2L year.
Her legal journey in public service began the summer following high school when she interned with a law partner at Goldberg Katzman, working on criminal defense cases for young indigent clients. During college, she interned at the Mayor’s Office in the City of Atlanta and the Fulton County Public Defender’s Office. Shannon also served as a fellow at the Fulton County Office of Child Advocate Attorneys through the Arthur Liman Public Interest Fellowship from Yale Law School.
Shannon views law as an ideal medium to establish balance on the scales of justice. She is particularly passionate about child-welfare and criminal justice reform and hopes to achieve a system of equality and rehabilitation as a juvenile justice attorney, activist and judge.
Rachael Dizard
Rachael graduated as a University Scholar from the University of Pittsburgh in 2006 with a major in Politics and Philosophy through the Honor’s College. While there she studied abroad in Italy, China, and Central America, and interned with the local ACLU and at the University of Chicago Law and Business Schools.
After graduating, Rachael interned at an affordable housing agency, working on a Family Savings Account Program. She served as a 2007 Summer Fellow with Humanity in Action, studying contemporary minority rights issues in Poland. After investigating an international fraud case with the Government Accountability Project, Rachael returned to Central America as an AJWS World Partners Fellow. While there, she worked with El Comité Nacional de Mujeres Cooperativistas, a women’s community-organizing and human rights group based in San Salvador, El Salvador. After returning, she worked on an affordable housing energy efficiency project based in Pittsburgh.
Rachael spent her first summer working on youth immigration cases with The Door Legal Services. She will be participating in the Administrative and Regulatory State Clinic in the Spring of 2011. Rachael hopes to continue exploring the intersection of immigration, human rights, policy, development and social justice in her remaining time at law school.
Talia Gooding-Williams
Filomen M. D’Agostino Scholar
Talia graduated from Yale University with a double major in English and Ethnicity, Race and Migration. While at Yale, she was a director of the Yale chapter of WYSE, a mentoring organization that works with high-risk eighth grade girls in New Haven, a community organizer with the Illinois Hunger Coalition in Chicago's Back of the Yards and a legal intern with the ACLU of Southern California.
At NYU, Talia participated in the Children’s Rights Clinic and the Juvenile Defender Clinic. She is also an Article Selection Editor on the Review of Law and Social Change, and served as a Teaching Assistant in the Lawyering Program. During her 1L summer, Talia worked at Juvenile Regional Services in New Orleans, LA. She then spent her 2L summer at the Defender Association in Seattle, WA.
Talia is an alumnus of Evanston Township High School, and plans to pursue racial justice and juvenile rights through public defense, with the hope of joining the judiciary some day.
Ashley Grant
Filomen M. D’Agostino Scholar
While pursuing her B.A., Ashley worked with individuals with special needs in a group
therapy clinic and as a director of a campus organization, Best Buddies UCLA. After
graduation, she taught a special education program for elementary students with intellectual disabilities in East Los Angeles for two years before moving to a charter high school for at-risk and court-involved youth where she provided special education services to students in Compton, Long Beach and South Los Angeles.
As a 1L at NYU, Ashley was able to immediately dive into education law and policy work through projects with the Education Law and Policy Society (EdLaw), as an intern at the Door, where she helping immigrant youth enroll in school, and as an intern at Advocates for Children (AFC), where she participated in a wide variety of educational advocacy. As a 2L, she was on the boards of EdLaw, OUTLaw and CoLR, interned with AFC’s Juvenile Justice Project and participated in a fascinating mortgage foreclosure case with the ACLU through the Racial Justice Clinic. She spent her 2L summer at the San Francisco Public Defender’s office. Ashley is particularly interested in the intersection between juvenile justice and special education and is looking forward to representing youth accused of crimes in the Juvenile Defender Clinic this year.
Adam Herling
William and Mary Sterling Scholar
Adam grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he became addicted, at a young age, to green chile in all its delicious forms. He attended the United World College of the Atlantic in Wales and went on to study with a Davis Scholarship at Princeton University. While at Princeton, Adam served on the Executive Board of the Princeton Justice Project. He studied abroad in Buenos Aires and worked over the summers in Peru and Bolivia.
After graduating Cum Laude with an A.B. from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 2007, Adam worked for a year in Kenya and Uganda with the One Acre Fund, an innovative non-profit striving to empower small-scale farmers and end chronic hunger. He returned to the USA to work for the Obama campaign in Florida.
In law school, Adam has tutored jail-house law librarians in legal research techniques with the Prisoner's Rights and Education Project and is on the board of the Law and Social Entrepreneurship Association. Adam is interning over his 1L summer in Cape Town, South Africa with the International Center for Transitional Justice, an international N.G.O. which seeks holistic solutions to promote accountability in societies emerging from mass human rights abuses. He might pursue a career in human rights law and institution building focused on Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, or might change his mind and do something else.
Tyler Jaeckel
Tyler, a 2006 Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Northwestern University, has progressively moved East throughout his life—born in Colorado, attended school in Chicago, and finally arrived in New York City. While at Northwestern, Tyler led a student volunteer organization working in neighborhoods throughout Chicago and chaired the Undergraduate Lecture Series on Race, Poverty and Inequality. Politically, Tyler had the great foresight to work on Barack Obama’s 2004 Senate primary campaign and initiated one of the first Campus Camp Wellstone trainings, a grassroots political and social advocacy training for college students.
After graduating, Tyler moved to New York City to work for the Office of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Within the Office of Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff, he worked on the Mayor’s Commission for Construction Opportunity, PlaNYC, and several large-scale economic development projects in Brooklyn. After the Mayor’s Office, Tyler worked on the Mayor’s anti-poverty programs at the Department of Small Business Services.
During his 1L year, Tyler was a research assistant for the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. Over the summer, he worked for the Senate Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation and Community Development. At NYU, he will continue to pursue a career in community development policy and litigation.
Austin King
Austin, a Wisconsin native, graduated from UW-Madison in 2003. While there, Austin became an activist and organizer, principally around issues of economic justice and sexual assault on campus. As a senior, he won a six-way race to serve on the Madison City Council.
Austin authored and passed a minimum wage of $7.75 indexed to inflation, the nation’s fourth municipal minimum wage. At 24, he was elected Council President by his colleagues, the youngest in city history. In his four years in office, Austin authored numerous progressive policies on affordable housing, tenants’ rights, environmental protection, immigrant rights, and the nation’s first effort at guaranteeing a universal labor standard of paid sick days.
Austin left Madison after his second term in 2007 and moved to New Orleans, where he served as national director of the ACORN Financial Justice Center, the policy hub for ACORN’s campaigns on predatory lending, foreclosures, payday loans, RALs, and other practices that sap wealth from low-income communities. Austin is pursuing a concurrent MPP from the Kennedy School of Government as a Zuckerman Fellow, and plans to use his legal education for social and economic justice advocacy. An Associate Editor of the NYU Law Review, Austin spent the 2010 summer with the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center and the 2011 summer with the Washington office of Cleary Gottlieb.
Philip Kovoor
Filomen M. D’Agostino Scholar
Philip graduated from the University of Chicago in 2007 studying Philosophy. He was inducted into the Maroon Key Society, the College’s honorary society, for his academic excellence and extracurricular leadership. Philip served for three years as a student director at the University Community Service Center, marshalling students in service of the surrounding community. He spent the summer of 2005 in Nepal consulting for businesses, non-governmental organizations, universities, and village development committees. During this time, he co-authored a white paper on environmentally friendly, culturally appreciative, and economically sustainable approaches to community development. In 2006, he worked in Mayor Richard M. Daley’s Office, researching and designing policy initiatives for the City of Chicago. After graduating, Philip founded National Coaching Fellows, a nonprofit committed to closing the educational achievement gap through athletics.
In law school, Philip has researched and written about political corruption through nonprofit fraud through the Criminal Law Scholars Program and is a fellow at the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law. Philip spent his first summer at the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program working on education reform, criminal justice, racial profiling, and voting rights. In the spring, he will participate in the Equal Justice and Capital Defense Clinic in Montgomery, Alabama. After law school, he plans to work on behalf of disadvantaged children by confronting gang violence and promoting educational reform.
Frances Kreimer
Frances’s involvement with immigrant rights advocacy began as an undergraduate at Columbia University. As a student, she worked with non-citizen rights organizations in New York and the Middle East, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in Human Rights and Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures. She subsequently worked as a legal advisor at Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance in Cairo, and an advocate and organizer at New Immigrant Community Empowerment in Jackson Heights.
At NYU, she co-chaired the National Lawyers Guild’s Immigration Court Observation Project and CoLR’s Critical Reading Group. She also participated in the Immigrant Rights Clinic, and is currently an Articles Editor for the NYU Law Review. She spent her 1L summer doing employment advocacy with the staff and members of Make the Road New York, and researching issues of citizenship and immigrant rights for Prof. Cristina Rodriguez. During her 2L summer, she is working with Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing & Feinberg, a civil rights and criminal defense firm in Philadelphia. She looks forward to bringing legal skills to her future work with immigrant rights organizations.
Zachary Orjuela
Lindemann Family Public Service Scholar
Zack graduated in 2006 from Williams College, where he majored in Economics and Political Science and was an NCAA All-American swimmer and the captain of the water polo team. After graduating, he moved to New Orleans to work with the Capital Appeals Project (CAP), a non-profit law office appealing the convictions of death-sentenced Louisiana citizens. He interviewed capital jurors, conducted media research, and supported the attorneys in filing direct appeals, including the recent U.S. Supreme Court case Kennedy v. Louisiana, a decision prohibiting capital punishment for nearly all non-homicide crimes.
In 2008, Zack began supervising the client needs for both CAP and a trial office, the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center. He made frequent trips to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, the Orleans Parish Prison, and other institutions to maintain strong attorney-client relationships and to challenge problematic conditions of confinement.
Zack aspires to serve urban populations as a public defender. Through vigorous representation, he will join a growing movement committed to advocating for prisoners’ rights, instilling confidence in the justice system, and promoting safer communities.
Zack was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and encourages everyone traveling that way to sample the pure bliss of Skyline Chili.
Saerom Park
Sullivan & Cromwell Scholar
Saerom graduated from Williams College in 2004 with a B.A. in American Studies and a Concentration in Environmental Studies. She spent the next five years working on environmental, labor, and fair trade issues. First, she spent a year in Green Corps as an environmental organizer, and then joined Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch in Washington, D.C. where she advocated for more accountability in international trade agreements. Prior to starting law school, Saerom worked on Change to Win’s electoral program in 2008 to mobilize union members, and then with Wal-Mart workers who wanted to exercise their collective bargaining rights.
At NYU, Saerom participates in the Immigrant Rights Clinic. She spent her first summer interning at the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and her second summer with the Service Employees International Union. After graduating, she is committed to working on economic and social justice campaigns, and building a movement to empower workers and immigrants.
Nikki Reisch
Nikki graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude from Yale in 1999. Since then, she has worked on human rights and environmental issues in international development and global economic policy, through direct service, analysis, advocacy and activism. After two years as a health volunteer with the Peace Corps in Senegal, Nikki worked as a medical assistant at a Bay Area clinic serving low income, uninsured patients. From 2002 to 2007, Nikki managed the Africa program of the Bank Information Center, a DC-based organization that seeks to democratize development decision-making, protect human rights and hold the World Bank and other international financial institutions accountable. Nikki moved to London in 2008 to become the climate policy advisor at Rainforest Foundation UK, tracking the UN negotiations and implications of global climate policy for forest-dependent peoples, particularly in Central Africa.
Nikki is spending the summer of 2010 at the Center for Biological Diversity in SF, working on climate law and litigation related to the BP oil spill, and EarthRights International in DC, supporting litigation against corporations for human rights violations. Nikki is co-chair of CoLR, on the boards of NLG, Law SEJ, and ALA, a member of the Sheinberg Committee and a Guarini Public Interest Environmental and Land Use Law summer fellow. As a 2L, she will join the Immigrant Rights Clinic.
Nikki hopes to use her law degree to advance global economic justice and international human rights.
Martha Roberts
Andrew W. Mellon Scholar
Martha received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Stanford University, where she was awarded the Whitley Citizen Scholar Award for her efforts to “bring a sharper focus on issues of the environment and sustainability to the Stanford campus.” She subsequently spent a year as a Luce Scholar at An Giang University in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam, where she researched rice supply chains, wastewater treatment, and karaoke.
Between 2006 and 2009, Martha joined the Colorado office of Environmental Defense Fund. She contributed to efforts to support clean energy and climate policy in the West, improve disclosure of corporate risks from global warming, and integrate the benefits of avoided climate change into regulatory cost-benefit analyses.
At NYU, Martha is a member of the Environmental Law Journal and works as a research and teaching assistant for Dean Revesz. She spent the summer after her 1L year in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Washington, DC headquarters, joining the agency’s department that oversees the regulatory development process. After her 2L year, she returned to DC to work for the litigation team at Earthjustice, joining their efforts to defend EPA's new greenhouse gas regulations and air quality standards from judicial challenge.
Camilo Romero
Camilo works on human rights litigation and organizing as the International Affairs Officer for the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria de Alimentos (SINALTRAINAL) in Colombia and International Rights Advocates in Washington D.C. In 2007, Camilo co-founded BlackBrown Projects LLC, which is committed to bridging the black-brown divide among African-American and Latino communities through mentorship and leadership curricula, including electoral education through Latinos For Obama. Camilo serves on the Board of Directors for Resource Generation and is an adviser to the California Department of Correction’s basketball outreach program through United Students Against Sweatshops. Camilo graduated from UC Berkeley in 2004. He lives in New York and has two younger sisters.
Law school is an unexpected step towards ensuring that his family’s story is not the fortunate exception. He intends to continue organizing with the tools and resources a degree from NYU Law will bring.
Shawn Sebastian
Doris C. and Alan J. Freedman Scholar
Shawn grew up in Ames, Iowa, and went on to major in English and Religious Studies at the University of Iowa. From 2005 to 2007 he worked with the Best Practices Foundation in Bangalore, India, a non-profit that partners with grassroots organizations to research and evaluate development interventions throughout India. From 2008 to 2009 Shawn worked as the Associate Director of Development for Esperanza Community Housing Corporation in South Central Los Angeles. Esperanza works to protect the human rights to housing, health, education, and economic development.
In his first year at law school Shawn worked as a volunteer and then intern with the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice’s ongoing project on the Right to Food in Haiti. After his first year, Shawn joined the United Nations International Law Commission in Geneva, Switzerland for the summer and worked at Sullivan and Cromwell for the summer after his second year. Shawn hopes work with community-based organization to improve the economic conditions of marginalized people.
Amanda Sen
Sinsheimer Service Scholar
Amanda grew up in a small town in Minnesota and attended Wellesley College and Washington University in St. Louis, graduating magna cum laude with a major in history. As an undergraduate, Amanda led Y-Tutor, a volunteer-based tutoring program providing individualized academic support to over 150 middle school students at three sites in the St. Louis, MO area. Amanda also earned a teaching certificate and a master’s degree in education from Washington University. Prior to attending law school, she worked in Harlem at the Children’s Storefront School as a learning specialist. In that role, Amanda worked with students receiving special education services. Her experiences with New York’s Committee on Special Education and with the foster care system have led her to want to become a lawyer so she can represent families floundering in bureaucracy and hopefully change the system for the better.
In the summer between her 1L and 2L years, Amanda worked on human rights litigation in Dhaka, Bangladesh as an intern at Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST) through the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice fellowship program. During her 2L year, Amanda participated in the Family Defense Clinic at NYU. Amanda continued that work during the summer between her 2L and 3L years, interning at the Brooklyn Family Defense Project (BFDP) with the support of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, where she was also a summer associate. Amanda is an Executive Editor for New York University Law Review and will be a lawyering teaching assistant during her 3L year.
Elizabeth Spector
Elizabeth (Liz) graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005, where she majored in Urban Studies. She led a mentoring program at University City High School, called Girl Talk, and founded a writing program at Turner Middle School in Southwest Philadelphia.
After graduating, Liz taught 3rd and 4th grade with Teach for America at an elementary school in the South Bronx and was the school’s cheerleading and gymnastics coach. Liz also served as a School Director and a consultant for Teach for America’s summer training institute.
While at NYU, Liz has served as the Vice Director of the Suspension Representation Project, which matches law students with students facing long-term suspensions from the public school system. Liz worked for the NYC Department of Education after her 1L summer and is working at Proskauer Rose in her 2L summer, focusing on labor and employment issues in the public sector.
She hopes to build a career to serve and represent the needs of schools and students in underperforming school districts across the country. Delighted to be staying in New York, she would also like to drop in on her students’ cheerleading practice every now and again.
Elizabeth grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attended Friends Central School.
Class of 2013
Catherine (Kate) Berry
Kate graduated from Oberlin College in 2006 with high honors in Religion, with a focus on Islam, and a minor in Politics. During college she studied abroad in Beirut, Lebanon, where she examined the rhetoric of the Cedar Revolution and its impact on religious division.
After graduation, Kate worked on domestic civil rights and civil liberties law in the Bay Area at the National Lawyers Guild and the East Bay Community Law Center. She then moved to Washington, D.C., where she participated in impact civil rights cases as a paralegal at Relman, Dane & Colfax, PLLC. For the year prior to law school, Kate assisted Bilgi University’s Human Rights Law Research Center in Istanbul with the development of Turkey’s first and only legal clinic.
During her 1L year, Kate worked as a research assistant for NYU’s Center on Law and Security. Over the summer, she is thrilled to be working at the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program. She hopes to use her legal education to continue to fight civil rights and civil liberty abuses, especially as related to the “War on Terror.”
Yan Cao
Yan left her hometown of Gainesville, Florida in 2004 to attend Simon's Rock College of Bard with an Acceleration to Excellence Program scholarship. After two years of intense study, she transferred to Stanford University where she studied History and Feminist Studies and graduated with honors in 2008.
Yan volunteered in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina during college, and worked at the Eviction Defense Collaborative in San Francisco, and the Beijing Children's Legal Aid and Research Center. She wrote her thesis on the development of legal aid as a model for social change in China.
She won the Stanford Public Interest Network Fellowship upon graduation, which she held while working at the Rackets Bureau of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. She also worked aboard the Clearwater Sloop, for the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, and for the New York City Commission for Human Rights before law school.
Yan continues to be an active member of the Manhattan Borough President's Task Force on Domestic Violence and Building a Better Legal Profession, a student-driven nonprofit based at Stanford Law School that seeks to reform the workplace culture of large law firms.
Yan is excited about studying innovative legal solutions to complex social problems.
Leslie Coleman
Leslie grew up on a farm in northern Illinois. She graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University in 2007, with a B.A. in Environmental Studies and International Development. While at IWU, she co-founded a chapter of the Sierra Student Coalition and led its successful campaign for the university president’s signing of an environmental action plan. Leslie spent her summers reviewing landfills at the Illinois EPA, planting vegetables on an organic farm and helping develop a climate change initiative at the Merck Family Fund. She was awarded the Udall Scholarship in 2006 in recognition of her environmental work.
Following graduation, Leslie served as a Peace Corps volunteer in The Gambia, where she implemented an ecological monitoring program for the Department of Parks and Wildlife and led a social and environmental studies club for high school students. She then spent nine months teaching ESL in South Korea.
Leslie will spend her summer interning at the Environmental Defense Fund. During her second year, she will participate in the Environmental Law Clinic and serve as community liaison for the Environmental Law Society. Leslie is excited about studying environmental law and plans to pursue a career as an environmental attorney.
Francesca Corbacho
William and Mary Sterling Scholar
Francesca graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from CUNY Hunter College in 2010, where she served two terms as the President of the Pre Law Society. At Hunter, Francesca pursued her interest in international human rights issues through research on topics such as the International Criminal Court, extraordinary rendition, and food security as a human right. During her junior year, she interned with Human Rights First’s Crimes Against Humanity Program and explored ways to strengthen the arms embargo in Darfur.
Francesca became interested in protecting human rights through her involvement with Tibet House, US in 2004, where she encountered Tibetan asylum seekers who had suffered rights abuses in their native country.
Before returning to college in 2005, Francesca spent eight years as an electrician in the film industry. She grew up in West Orange, New Jersey.
Matthew Craig
Matt Craig attended the University of North Carolina as a Morehead-Cain Scholar. He studied Political Science and Spanish, earning highest honors for his thesis on the normalization of U.S.-Cuban relations. His undergraduate career was marked by time spent in Cuba, Peru, Mexico, Rwanda, and South Africa, where he undertook research and performed community service. While at UNC, Matt served as executive director of Students for Students International, a non-profit organization that provides scholarships and other educational opportunities to students in Tanzania.
After completing his undergraduate studies, Matt received a Specialization in Armed Conflict and Peace at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia, where he was a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar. He also worked for the University of North Carolina Center for Global Initiatives and the non-profit organization, Carolina for Kibera.
Matt spent his 1L summer working for Paul Hoffman on a variety of Alien Tort Statute and other human rights cases. For 2011-2012, he will be the case manager for the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, which assists in Iraqi refugee resettlement. As a Root-Tilden-Kern and IILJ Scholar, Matt looks forward to a further development of his interests in international law and national security law.
Emily de León
Andrew W. Mellon Scholar
Emily, originally from Bakersfield, CA, graduated cum laude from Yale University in 2004. After graduation, she joined New York City Teaching Fellows to teach in a District 75 special education high school for students labeled emotionally disturbed. This position helped her to understand the intersection of juvenile justice, poverty, mental illness, and special education. After teaching in District 75, she led the special education and at-risk support program at the high performing Excellence Boys Charter School of Bedford-Stuyvesant. This experience deepened her commitment to ensuring that all young people have appropriate education options and effective advocates.
This summer, she is interning at The Legal Aid Society's Adolescent Intervention and Diversion Unit. She will work with lawyers and social workers as part of this unit's interdisciplinary approach to providing representation for adolescents prosecuted in the adult criminal justice system.
Next year, she is looking forward to serving as a case manager for the Suspension Representation Project, a student-run organization that provides representation for students facing long term suspensions. She is also excited to spend her spring semester in Alabama as a student in the Equal Justice Initiative Capital Defender Clinic.
Emily hopes to combine her prior experience as a teacher with her legal training to become an effective advocate for adolescents.
Aisha Dennis
Filomen M. D’Agostino Scholar
Aisha graduated from Harvard College in 2008 with an A.B. in Government. While in college, she was recognized by the Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations for her contributions to campus diversity. She also received a Senior Leadership Award from the Black Men’s Forum for her leadership and commitment to public service. Aisha was an active participant in the Phillips Brooks House for Community Service where she served as a GED tutor for prison inmates and a senior counselor for a summer youth program in Boston’s historic Roxbury community.
Aisha gained valuable public interest experience through internships with her Congressman and now Majority Whip, James Clyburn (SC-6), the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School, and the Honorable Ann C. Williams of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Upon graduating from college, Aisha joined the Teach For America Corps in Atlanta where she taught 12th Grade Economics at George Washington Carver High School of Technology for two years.
Aisha is originally from Columbia, South Carolina, where she graduated from W.J. Keenan High School. She plans to use her law degree to combat issues of racial injustice and civil rights.
Elana Fogel
Lindemann Family Public Service Scholar
Originally from San Diego, California, Elana Fogel is a 2009 graduate of NYU, where she completed a B.A. in Politics with a double minor in Business and Sociology. As a member of the NYU Women's Basketball team she competed in the 2007 NCAA Division III Final Four and was a two-time UAA All Academic Team honoree.
Elana began exploring law and politics through undergraduate internships with Congressman Anthony Weiner and the Kings County District Attorney’s Office. Before coming to law school, Elana worked in immigration law and was involved in policy work and community outreach around the issues of gender- and bias-based violence in schools and on public transportation.
Elana's experiences have reinforced her passion for the pursuit of actualized justice and equality. She is spending her summer at the ACLU’s Initiative to Combat Mass Incarceration and as a 2L will join the Criminal and Community Defense Clinic. Elana plans to continue advocating for individuals and communities in the criminal justice context.
Semuteh Freeman
Coben Scholar
Semuteh graduated from Yale University in 2008 with a degree in Political Science and African Studies, where she founded Yale's first traditional African singing group, Asempa. She spent semesters studying and doing research in Mombasa, Accra, Monrovia, and Kigali.
Semuteh discovered her passion for international human rights through her family's experience during the civil war in Liberia. She returned to Monrovia in the summer of 2007 to intern with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and witness transitional justice in a post-conflict society first hand.
Since graduation, Semuteh has been in the Mississippi Delta teaching Algebra with Teach for America. Her teaching is reminiscent of her work in Budumburum Refugee Camp where she taught Liberian refugees in Ghana, in 2007. Teaching has revealed the social injustice embedded in the education systems both in the US and abroad, and Semuteh sees education as one of the many human rights issues facing impoverished communities.
Semuteh was born in Monrovia, Liberia, and fled the civil war with her family in 1991. She grew up in San Francisco, California, and attended St. Ignatius College Preparatory. She hopes to pursue a career in international human rights law and one day become a judge.
Gabriel Hopkins
Doris C. and Alan J. Freedman Scholar
Gabriel graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Alpha Theta from Johns Hopkins University with a BA in History in 2006.
This summer he is working for Paul Hoffman, a national leader in international human rights litigation, with a particular focus on corporate liability for human rights violations.
In November 2007, Gabriel helped found Digital Democracy, a non-profit dedicated to using information and communication technologies to empower community-based organizations doing vital work in marginalized populations. He worked primarily with Burmese organizations applying his extensive personal experiences living and working in China and Southeast Asia.
He worked with the International Rescue Committee as a youth delegation leader to a program site in Northern Liberia in the summer of 2007, and interned in Western Thailand in the summer of 2010 at the IRC's Legal Assistance Center, a unique program that provides legal aid to refugees fleeing from Burma (Myanmar).
Gabriel was born and raised in Jersey City, New Jersey, and is happy to be living in New York. He plans to continuing working on human rights and humanitarian issues with an international scope.
Julia Kaye
Jacobson Public Service Scholar for Women, Children & Families
Julia spent her 1L Summer in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where she helped develop regulations on the Prison Rape Elimination Act. In her 2L year, she was the Director of the Suspension Representation Project, a city-wide direct service organization that trains law students across New York City to represent public school students at suspension hearings. Before coming to law school, Julia worked as a Health Policy Associate at the National Women's Law Center, focusing on the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid, and coordinated the national expansion of the National Institute for Reproductive Health's "Adolescent Health Care Communication Program."
Julia graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard College in 2007 with a B.A. in Women's Studies. While there, she served as the Vice-President of the Feminist Thought club and as a Writing Fellow, and interned with NARAL Pro-Choice NY.
Julia plans to use her law degree to protect and advance civil rights, including expanding access to health care and education. She grew up in Florham Park, New Jersey, and has been training in capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art, for five years.
Tyler Kinder
Tyler completed a Master’s Degree in Modern Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford in 2009. His thesis examined land policies in rural China and the development of Chinese agriculture, with a particular focus on the ways in which local governments affected land tenure security for subsistence farmers.
Prior to this, Tyler worked for the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., as a Policy and Research Assistant in the Metropolitan Policy Program. He researched and wrote about a wide variety of national and international urban policy issues.
Tyler graduated summa cum laude from New York University in 2006 with a B.A. in Metropolitan Studies. While at NYU, Tyler worked with the Urban Justice Center and the Correctional Association of New York to initiate an oral history project that captured the stories of LGBT young people in the New York State juvenile justice system. He was also active in New York City politics: he served as an aide to two Speakers of the New York City Council, and was asked to sit on the board of the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democratic Club. In 2005, Tyler was named a Harry S. Truman Scholar.
Evelyn Malavé
Filomen M. D’Agostino Scholar
Evelyn graduated from Yale University in 2005 with a degree in English with a Writing Concentration. Her first job after college was at the Yale Child Study Center, where she worked in the Intensive In-home Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Services program, providing in-home therapy to families with children at risk of psychiatric hospitalization or juvenile detention. In 2006, Evelyn decided to dedicate more time to her writing and moved to a farm in upstate New York, where she spent eight months building up a portfolio of short stories while working at both Starbucks and the Children’s Center in Sing Sing Correctional Facility’s Visiting Room.
In 2007, Evelyn joined the Legal Action Center (LAC) as a Legal Assistant. At LAC, Evelyn assisted hundreds of people with criminal records overcome barriers to reentry in employment and housing, and worked on building better public policy for people with criminal records, HIV/AIDS, and drug and alcohol histories.
Evelyn grew up in Queens, New York, and is an alumnus of Prep for Prep. After law school, she plans to work on criminal justice system reform, through both legal services and policy advocacy, with a focus on issues specific to women and girls.
Lindsay Miller
Lindsay graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Washington University in St. Louis in 2007 with majors in Psychology and P.N.P. (Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology). As an undergraduate, Lindsay worked as a psychology research assistant, exploring issues related to racial discrimination and stereotyping. She expanded upon this interest through her senior thesis, which examined the adverse effects of linguistic profiling on minority groups. In 2006, Lindsay served as the External Business Coordinator for Thurtene Honorary. Through grand-scale fundraising and volunteer coordination, Thurtene Honorary sponsored St. Louis SCORES, a non-profit organization that provides students in low-income, urban schools with afterschool literacy programs and organized soccer leagues.
Following graduation, Lindsay joined Teach for America in Miami-Dade, Florida, where she worked as an elementary special education teacher of students with severe emotional and behavioral disabilities, and as a middle school math and science teacher. Her experiences as a teacher motivated and inspired her to attend law school, and she hopes to use her law degree to improve educational opportunities for underprivileged children and families and to promote education reform.
Lindsay was born and raised in Westchester, New York, and is a graduate of the International Baccalaureate program at Dobbs Ferry High School.
Candace Mitchell
Sullivan & Cromwell Scholar
Candace graduated as a John Kluge Scholar in 2009 with a degree in English from Columbia University, where she crafted a rich curriculum around her commitment to empowering marginalized communities. At Columbia, Candace was a resident of the Intercultural Resource Center, which gathered activists, artists, and intellectuals under one roof to create programming around diverse notions of social justice. She was one of the co-founding editors of the proxy magazine, a publication that honored the many voices of the African Diaspora, and a political columnist for Columbia's weekly newspaper, chronicling the University's Hunger Strike of 2008. She relished working for the Chaplain's Office, which embraced a historically activist interpretation of its mission to serve faith communities and engaged the wider New York City community through numerous service projects with a public school, hospital, and jail facility.
After graduating, Candace worked as a New York City Urban Fellow for Programs and Discharge Planning at the Department of Correction. As a Fellow, she helped coordinate services, programs, and resources for those exiting the New York City jail systems.
Candace was born in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and lived in Gainesville, Florida, for thirteen years. Candace’s professional goal is to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline that plagues low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.
Abigail Nurse
Starr Foundation Scholar
Abigail graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in Economics with Distinction and a minor in Women’s Studies in 2008.
Abigail won the Osterweil Prize in Economics, awarded to the most outstanding senior in Economics with a high degree of social awareness, and the Patricia Gurin Certificate for her commitment to social justice.
Following college, Abigail worked as an assistant research economist at Federal Reserve Bank of New York, conducting research on education policy, municipal budgeting, and monetary policy. She chaired the Black History Month and Martin Luther King Day events, and coordinated a team to bring Theodore Shaw, Cory Booker, an Alvin Ailey Dance group and others to the Federal Reserve Bank.
Abigail spent her 1L summer working in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. Participating in the General Crimes, Misdemeanors Unit gave her the opportunity to attend many trials. In preparation for trial she interviewed witnesses, strategized the theory of a case, and wrote motions.
Abigail hopes to participate in conversations aimed at resolving some of today’s vexing social problems. With a legal education, she hopes to lend her voice to advocate for positive social change and serve under-represented communities. She is interested in educational equity and economic justice.
Abigail is a native of the Midwest, and college towns: She is from Madison, Wisconsin, and Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Alison Puente-Douglass
Ali arrived at the University of Texas at Austin as a displaced Jersey native but soon found a home with the political community on campus. During college she was elected to the most consecutive terms as an officer to the University Democrats. She was later selected as a member of the Orange Jackets, an honorary service organization that serves as the official hosts of the University. Additionally, Ali worked as summer faculty with the Breakthrough Collaborative, an organization that seeks to provide a path to college for students who would be first generation college students. This experience sparked a deep interest in education, and Ali worked for Teach for America as part of the recruitment team her senior year.
After graduation Ali started teaching third grade in Newark, New Jersey, for Teach for America, and stayed on an extra year past her two year commitment. She decided to go to law school to better serve her students and their families, specifically in the arena of special education law. She is thrilled to be a part of the NYU law community and honored to be an RTK scholar.
Pierce Suen
WilmerHale Scholar
Pierce graduated with honors from the University of Chicago in 2006 with an A.B. in Political Science. In Chicago, he mentored high schoolers and taught enrichment courses through the Neighborhood Schools Program, co-hosted the Industry Shakedown on WHPK 88.5FM and never quite learned to slip punches at the Hamlin Park boxing gym.
Pierce served with Peace Corps China as part of an education initiative aimed at improving university instruction in China’s impoverished western provinces. Beyond teaching classes and leading community workshops, he also worked as a youth mentor and infant caretaker at a local orphanage. Following his service, Pierce worked with the Tibetan Women's Association in Dharamshala, India, helping to document and publicize the continued struggles of minority groups within China.
Pierce spent last summer with the Zhi Cheng Public Interest Law Center, a legal aid and policy advocacy center in Beijing that works on behalf of marginalized children and migrant workers in China. He is a proud member of the Immigrant Right’s Clinic and looks forward to being one of the cool kids in Furman Hall.
Pierce was made in Taiwan and raised in Akron, Ohio. He hopes to work on human rights issues both at home and abroad.
Relic Sun
Relic was born in sunny Los Angeles, California. She graduated summa cum laude from UCLA with a BA in Political Science, concentration in International Relations, and minor in Chinese. She has been founder and co-president of Americans for Informed Democracy at UCLA, reported on US foreign policy toward East Asia at the US Department of State, served in the US Peace Corps in Romania, and been lead researcher on various political hot-button issues at the nonprofit research organization ProCon.org.
At NYU, Relic is the founding Public Interest Chair of the Asia Law Society. In the effort to encourage fellow Asia-interested students to contribute to public interest work for Asia, Relic is launching this Fall the ALS Pro Bono Program that will connect students with volunteer projects focused on Asian or Asian-American legal issues.
Relic seeks to learn about environmental justice and litigation, through which she hopes to be able to help advance human rights in developing countries. She is spending her summer researching the emergence of environmental public interest litigation in China at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Beijing office. She will join the Environmental Law Clinic in the Fall.
Julia Torti
Filomen M. D’Agostino Scholar
Julia hails from the great state of Vermont, where she was exposed to a rich tradition of civic participation from a young age. While a student at Essex High School, Julia served on the board of directors of Essex CHIPS, a nonprofit focused on providing services for local youth.
Julia graduated from Duke University in 2008 with a degree in Political Science and a minor in Environmental Science and Policy. While at Duke, Julia was involved with various research projects, including a study of international aid organizations' funding sources and a model for public health decision-making in Eastern Africa. She also served as President and Captain of the Duke Women's Rugby team.
After spending time before law school serving as a counselor, educator, and advocate for LGBT youth, Julia spent her 1L summer with the International Lesbian and Gay Association of Europe. Julia is interested broadly in the experiences of marginalized youth and their communities. As a 2L, she will work as a Fellow with the Center on the Administration of Law, serve on the board of OUTLaw, and participate in the Equal Justice and Capital Defense Clinic.
Julia is most interested in working with LGBT youth, women, and other vulnerable groups within the LGBT community.
Class of 2014
Sheila Baynes
Sheila graduated from Harvard in 2003 with a degree in History and Literature. Her studies focused on the meaning of the environment in the American imagination; this interest in the centrality of place to the human experience informed her subsequent career in wilderness education.
Sheila’s work with youth in the outdoors began in earnest in Alaska, where she led at-risk girls on wilderness expeditions. After studying for a Master’s in Teaching, she continued to work with at-risk youth as a high school teacher in a drug and alcohol treatment program for Alaska Native teens. During her summers, she instructed courses for the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), the leading non-profit that teaches leadership on expeditions in many of the world’s most remote and pristine wilderness classrooms. Sheila moved to Wyoming in 2009 to work at NOLS headquarters doing educational research and curriculum development. Her time spent living in rural communities in the American West has reinforced her desire to work toward sustainable and collaborative solutions to their environmental and social challenges.
Sheila was born and raised in Palmyra, NY. She looks forward to using her legal education to advance the mutually dependent issues of healthy youth and healthy public lands.
Wonjoo Choe
Wonjoo graduated with distinction from Cornell University in 2007 with a BA in Government and Economics. He interned at the Korean Public Interest Lawyers Group (Gong-Gam), a non-profit public interest firm in Seoul where he was actively involved in advancing immigration and refugee rights. There, he analyzed the legal status of North Korean refugees in developed countries, and helped translate a book composed of the letters from North Korean refugees to their families and friends in North Korea. Wonjoo is currently working with his brother to develop a social networking website called dooub, in hopes of using it as a channel to connect legal advocates and scholars across the globe.
Wonjoo was born in Daegu, South Korea, and grew up in Seoul and Silver Spring, Maryland. After law school, he hopes to bring about positive change in the political and economic condition of refugees in developing countries, and ultimately benefit those who seek asylum in his home country, South Korea.
Elizabeth DeGori
Starr Foundation Scholar
Elizabeth graduated cum laude from Scripps College in 2010 with a dual degree in International Relations and French Studies. During college, Elizabeth studied abroad in Paris, interning at Confrontations Europe where she studied cooperation between US and EU climate policies leading up to the UNFCCC Conference in 2010. She later developed this to create her senior thesis on the domestic politics and international interactions of these players and China.
Elizabeth also volunteered as a sexual assault counselor and co-led the Criminal Justice Network, creating an on-campus program to support the organization Get on the Bus and send children yearly to visit their mothers in prison for Mother’s Day.
In law school, Elizabeth is interested in studying potential avenues of US-China cooperation on climate and energy law and roadblocks of current partnerships. She is building on previous experience as an intern with the US Mission to NATO and her time after graduation when Elizabeth worked as Climate Change Coordinator for the World Federation of UN Associations, interned for the US Mission to the UN, and spent three months in China studying Mandarin.
Elizabeth grew up in east Tennessee. After law school, she hopes to pursue a career in public international law.
Akiva Fishman
Sullivan & Cromwell Scholar
Having studied the intersection of the environment, economics, and society, Akiva graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Brandeis University in 2009, and was a faculty-selected commencement speaker. During his college career, he worked in the private, non-profit, and government sectors on issues ranging from carbon footprint management and algae-based biodiesel to tropical land use change and urban water quality. He was privileged to participate one summer in a study of NYC street tree mortality by the Department of Parks and Recreation as part of Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC agenda.
After graduating, Akiva moved to Washington, DC to work for the Environmental Law Institute, and has focused primarily on editing and writing for a series of seven books analyzing the role of natural resources in post-conflict peacebuilding. He plans to study environmental, international, and comparative law at NYU to understand how community-driven conservation initiatives operate within national legal frameworks. After then pursuing a Master’s degree in environmental management, he plans to work in an advisory capacity with governments seeking to develop or reform environmental laws and regulations.
Akiva is from the Upper West Side of Manhattan and is elated to be returning to New York.
Brittany Francis
Graduating from Indiana University in 2011 with highest distinction and a degree in Criminal Justice, Sociology, and Communication & Culture, Brittany spent her undergraduate career pursuing her interests in race relations, advocacy, and service. In recognition of the breadth of her academic achievement in the liberal arts and sciences she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society in 2010. As a Cox Research Scholar, Brittany conducted four years of legal research under Law Professors Dr. Jeannine Bell and Kevin Brown on the topics of hate crime, race relations, education law and civil rights law.
When she wasn’t engaged in academic pursuits, Brittany spent her time serving her community as a hospitality volunteer at Shalom Community Center for the homeless and as a storyteller in the children’s program at Middle Way House – a local domestic violence shelter. In 2009, she spent her summer planning special events and procuring financial sponsorship for Indiana’s nonprofit ovarian cancer organization, Ovar’coming Together. The following summer she served Bosma Enterprises, a non-profit organization for the blind and visually impaired, as an AmeriCorp VISTA.
Brittany believes that the world’s problems demand leaders who strive to develop intellectual acumen only matched in magnitude and greatness by a heart for serving others. She is passionate about working towards racial equality in the United States and aspires to use the blessings she has been given to become a civil rights attorney.
Born in Las Vegas, Nevada, but raised in Indianapolis, IN, Brittany graduated from Decatur Central High School.
Amelia Pelly Frenkel
The daughter of two social and political activists, Amelia seized the chance to follow in her parents’ footsteps by working for change on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign while an undergraduate at Georgetown University. Despite working full time for the campaign, Amelia graduated in three years with a degree in government in May 2008.
Following graduation, Amelia saw the 2008 presidential election through as a speechwriter at Planned Parenthood, where she focused on electoral outreach to women voters. Ever the campaign enthusiast, she left Planned Parenthood in January 2009 to join a gubernatorial campaign in her adopted home state of Virginia.
After that campaign ended, Amelia moved on to become the Director of Speechwriting to the U.S. Trade Representative, the Cabinet official in charge of negotiating trade agreements and opening up trade opportunities for Americans abroad. After a year in that position, Amelia moved on to become the chief writer at the Democratic National Committee, where she penned remarks for everyone from grassroots activists to the President of the United States.
Amelia was raised in Asheville, North Carolina and looks forward to putting her law school education to work for political and social change.
Rachel Hoerger
Sinsheimer Service Scholar
Rachel graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College, where she majored in Economics and played on the Amherst softball team. Since college, her work has focused on grassroots organizing, education and development, and her goal is to use the law, in conjunction with community-based action and advocacy, as a vehicle for empowering individuals and communities to actively address the issues that affect them.
After graduation, Rachel worked as a union organizer for the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME), organizing in-home child care providers across the state of Iowa, and then served for two wonderful years as a Peace Corps volunteer in northern Peru. In 2010, Rachel coordinated a statewide community-education program to increase Census participation in farm worker and immigrant communities throughout rural California.
Rachel is a proud native of Oakland, California.
Malika Lubell-Doughtie
Filomen M. D’Agostino Scholar
After graduating from Pomona College in 2008, with a double major in Politics and Gender and Women’s Studies, Malika returned to New York hoping to apply her formal education and personal experiences to work with a social justice oriented organization.
In 2009, Malika accepted two positions with Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS), an organization serving young women who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking. At GEMS, Malika worked as a residential counselor at GEMS’ Transitional Independent Living house and as a street outreach worker, travelling to active “tracks” through out New York City to reach out to young women touched by commercial sexual exploitation.
Continuing to explore how she could contribute to the protection of juvenile rights, in 2010, Malika became the court representative of the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services’ (CASES) Alternative to Detention (ATD) project, Choices. Malika advocated for youth with pending delinquency cases to remain in the community with the support and supervision of Choices ATD.
Malika grew up in Bronx, New York and attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. She is looking forward to providing holistic legal representation to youth and to using her law degree to fight for juvenile justice.
Sara Maeder
WilmerHale Scholar
Sara graduated from Wesleyan University in 2008 with honors in Classics. She was particularly interested as a Classics major in the power of language and myth, and wrote her senior thesis on the use of ancient myth in film to address modern social issues. During her time at Wesleyan, she also developed a strong interest in social justice and constitutional law, which she explored further through an internship at the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia.
After graduating, Sara worked as a legal assistant at Lambda Legal’s New York Headquarters. There, she assisted on LGBT rights cases, such as one involving a voter referendum attempting to exclude transgender people from protection under a Maryland employment nondiscrimination law. She then went on to work as a paralegal at Children’s Rights, a non-profit that seeks to reform failing child welfare systems through class action lawsuits, where she participated in the investigation of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families and the early stages of the subsequent litigation against the Commonweatlh.
Sara grew up in Narberth, Pennsylvania. She looks forward to exploring further in law school the ways in which the law can be used as a tool for social change. Sara plans to pursue a career in advocacy for the rights and empowerment of marginalized communities; she is particularly interested in working with youth and LGBT community.
Annie Mathews
Jacobson Public Service Scholar for Women, Children & Families
Annie graduated from Wesleyan University in 2006 with a degree in Social Studies. Fascinated by the social world and eager to combat issues of social justice, she researched and wrote her thesis on the political impact of a coalition of community organizations in the impoverished, migrant, outskirts of Buenos Aires.
Passionate about immigrant rights, women’s rights and economic development, she worked for 3 years at C.E.O. Women (Creating Economic Opportunities for Women), an Oakland based microenterprise organization. C.E.O. Women helps immigrant and refugee women start businesses through training in entrepreneurship and English language. As an AmeriCorpsVISTA volunteer and then a project manager, Annie led the development of all of C.E.O. Women’s business support programs, including their microequity grant initiatives.
Fueled by her clients stories of success and day-to-day struggles, Annie returned to graduate school to better understand the social and economic phenomenon she encountered on the grassroots level. She is currently a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Annie grew up in Boston, MA. She is eager to combine her grassroots, education in public policy, and legal training to advocate for low-income and immigrant communities in the United States.
Nicholas Melvoin
Coben Scholar
A native of Los Angeles, California, Nick graduated from Harvard University in 2008 with a degree in Government and English. While in college, Nick was an editor of The Harvard Crimson, a member of the Institute of Politics, and a volunteer teacher in inner-city Boston.
After graduation, Nick joined Teach For America and was assigned to Markham Middle School in South Central Los Angeles, where he became a Small Learning Community Principal, leading a group of 350 students to significant academic gains. While at Markham, Nick observed that the devastating effects of teacher layoffs disproportionately affected poor students of color. Consequently, he worked with the ACLU to instigate a successful lawsuit against the state of California and the Los Angeles Unified School District that redressed the situation, allowing thousands of students to enjoy a more stable learning environment. This experience sparked Nick’s interest in attending law school to study civil rights and education law.
While teaching, Nick earned a Masters in Urban Education from Loyola Marymount University, where he received the Urban Education Student Researcher of the Year Award. Most recently, he served as the Assistant to the Executive Director of Teach For America-Los Angeles. Nick plans to return to California after law school to advocate for children in under-served communities.
Evan Milligan
Lindemann Family Public Service Scholar
Evan graduated from Birmingham-Southern College in 2003 with a degree in Religion. Following graduation, Evan spent several months working for a tax-reform campaign, encouraging Alabama voter’s to support a constitutional referendum to modify the state’s regressive tax system. He then studied Theology and Economic Development issues at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar.
Between 2005 and 2008, Evan worked as a community organizer for the Federation of Child Care Centers of Alabama (FOCAL), a child-care advocacy and community development organization. From 2008 to 20011, he worked as a paralegal for the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), an indigent criminal defense organization also based in Alabama.
Born in Houston, Texas and raised in Montgomery, Alabama, Evan aspires to practice indigent defense law in Alabama. He also wants to explore multi-disciplinary, community-based responses to the needs of formerly incarcerated and marginalized people.
Kendal Nystedt
A summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Arizona, Kendal majored in international studies and earned dual minors in Spanish and environmental science. A native of Tucson, Arizona, her concerns for immigrants’ rights and education access were fueled from a young age. While in school, Kendal organized alongside low-income immigrant and other border community members with Border Action Network, campaigned for an affordable, accessible, and quality higher education system as the vice-chair of the Arizona Students’ Association’s Board of Directors, and held fellowships with Young People For, the Young Elected Officials Network’s Front Line Leaders Academy and the Roosevelt Campus Network.
After graduating, Kendal worked as the Collegiate Program Manager for Anytown Arizona, offering leadership development programming with a focus on social justice and diversity awareness. While Kendal’s heart is in Arizona, in 2010 she moved to Brooklyn, NY in order to pursue a career in public interest law. She currently works at the City Bar Justice Center, the 501(c)(3) arm of the New York City Bar Association, as the Coordinator of the Public Service Network and the Veterans Assistance Project.
Kendal is excited to be a part of the Root-Tilden-Kern community at NYU Law as she works toward her goal of founding a multi-issue nonprofit in the Southwest that operates at the intersection of community organizing, policy advocacy, direct legal services, and impact litigation.
Robert Pollack
Doris C. and Alan J. Freedman Scholar
Robert studied philosophy, literature, and the history of math and science in the Great Books Program at St. John's College, where he graduated in 2004. He spent time both on the Annapolis and on the Santa Fe campus and while in Santa Fe was a field-qualified member of the St. John's College Search and Rescue Team.
After college Robert joined the Mississippi Teacher Corps and taught English at a rural public high school in Sardis, Mississippi and then at an urban one in Jackson, where he was a teacher sponsor of the Civil Rights / Civil Liberties after-school club. He earned an M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Mississippi. After three years in the Deep South, he returned to Santa Fe to study Sanskrit and classical Asian literature and philosophy at St. John's College and earned an M.A. in Eastern Classics. He continued working in the public schools and upon completion of the degree began teaching math at a public high school and a community college in Santa Fe.
Robert grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. With his legal education, he plans to continue advocating for a more just and equitable society.
Jesse Rockoff
Sinsheimer Service Scholar
Born in Queens, NY, Jesse was raised in Johnson City, NY and attended college at Washington & Lee University, where he was a Weinstein Scholar. After graduating in 2002 with a degree in Politics, Jesse served as a field organizer on U.S. Sen. Max Cleland's re-election campaign. He then worked in Washington, DC as a researcher for the Service Employees International Union and in finance and administration at the National Trust for Historic Preservation before discovering his passion for immigration law. During more than three years as a legal assistant and paralegal with the law firm of Maggio + Kattar, Jesse assisted with many difficult immigration cases that showed him this was a field where he could make a real difference for communities badly in need of affordable legal services.
Jesse is thrilled to be back in New York City and plans to use his NYU Law degree to defend indigent foreign nationals in deportation proceedings. Jesse has also taught English as a Second Language as a volunteer and lived for a time to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he worked extensively on his Spanish in order to further assist future clients with their immigration cases.
Ariel Werner
William and Mary Sterling Scholar
Ariel graduated from Brown University in 2009 with honors in Political Science. At Brown, she served as Student Coordinator of the Right to Vote Campaign, a successful movement to end felony disenfranchisement in Rhode Island. She also coordinated Space in Prison for the Arts and Creative Expression, a program that provides student-led arts and writing workshops in the state Adult Correctional Institutions and publishes the work of prisoner participants in an annual journal. Ariel has interned at the Rhode Island Family Life Center for Ex-Offenders and at the Rhode Island Office of the Public Defender. As a research assistant, she investigated a case of wrongful conviction. In 2006 and 2008, Ariel delved into electoral politics, working on the campaigns of a Providence City Councilman, a Rhode Island State Representative, and President Obama. For her social justice pursuits and political advocacy during college, Ariel was named a 2008 Harry S. Truman Scholar.
Ariel has served as a Paralegal Specialist in the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York for the past two years. She looks forward to pursuing a career in criminal justice reform through direct service, litigation and public policy.
Michele Yankson
Andrew W. Mellon Scholar
Michele Yankson graduated with Honors from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 2008 with degrees in English and Sociology. During college, she participated in service work from tutoring in under-resourced schools in Detroit and Ypsilanti with the America Reads program, to promoting campus discourse on issues of identity as a dialogue facilitator for Michigan's Intergroup Relations.
After graduating, Michele joined Miami Teaching Fellows to serve as a middle-school teacher in a school designated as high-need. While planning and implementing lessons for Reading and Language Arts, she learned the most invaluable ones from her students and their community. In 2010, Michele founded the Miami chapter of Stand-Up For Kids Don't Run Away program. Through this program, she worked towards curbing Miami's substantial population of homeless youth through education and outreach within schools.
Michele sees inequities in education as one of the greatest causes of social unrest among disadvantaged groups and how underserved communities are often inextricably tied to deficient institutions of education. She hopes to use her law degree to advocate for children and their families through the advancing policies that promote their welfare.
Michele was born and raised in and near Detroit, Michigan to immigrant parents from Ghana.
Daniel Yu
Daniel graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in accounting. As a student, Daniel explored his interest in social enterprises as a student consultant for the Los Angeles Community Impact, providing pro bono business consulting services to non-profits in the greater Los Angeles area.
Daniel’s involvement with public interest began in high school with his participation in Asian Pacific American Leadership Institute’s Leadership Academy, where he cultivated a passion for Asian-American activism and interethnic affairs. He built on this experience as policy intern at Asian American for Community Involvement and APA Dispute Resolution Center.
Daniel developed his passion for the law at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, working as a legal advocate for survivors of domestic violence. His decision to pursue a career in law was cemented after a research trip to Cambodia with the Shoah Foundation in which he studied transitional justice among ethnic minorities after the Khmer Rouge genocide. Daniel’s interests in the law include immigration and domestic violence advocacy, transitional justice, and competition law.
Alyson Zureick
Filomen M. D’Agostino Scholar
Alyson graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with honors in Political Science from Princeton University in 2006, where she was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Scholar, co-editor of the Daily Princetonian opinion page and Vice-President of the University’s Organization of Women Leaders.
After graduating from Princeton, Alyson worked at a number of international non-profit organizations, focusing on women’s human rights, access to justice and post-conflict development. She first worked on access to justice issues in sub-Saharan Africa as a Princeton Project 55 Fellow at the Cyrus Vance Center for International Justice. Subsequently, she worked with the International Rescue Committee in their Sierra Leone office, where she provided program support to IRC’s gender-based violence and maternal health programs. She then spent two years with the Center for Reproductive Right’s International Legal Program where she worked on UN advocacy projects around maternal mortality as a human rights issue and reproductive rights violations as forms of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Alyson is now a committed Brooklynite. She’s hoping, however, to give up the skinny jeans life after law school to live and work on women’s health and human rights issues in Africa.