Leo Gertner ’16, a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar, has been selected for a Peggy Browning Fellowship. The fellowship, which supports public interest labor law endeavors, will fund Gertner’s work in the United Steelworkers’ Legal Department at their national headquarters in Pittsburgh this summer. Gertner is one of 70 law students chosen from nearly 400 applicants nationwide.
During his 10-week fellowship, Gertner will assist the union’s attorneys with research and writing on legal issues affecting union workers, their families, and the union’s campaigns. His focus on labor law originated in his work as a case manager for Span, Inc.’s Prisoner Re-Entry Initiative in Boston, where he saw firsthand the limited protections of the service jobs in which his clients worked. In his next position, at a Boston office of the Service Employees International Union, Gertner advocated for sick days, health insurance, occupational safety, antidiscrimination measures, and living wages.
At NYU Law, Gertner has served as a debate coach for Legal Outreach as well as a board member of both Law Students for Economic Justice and the Immigrant Rights Project. He earned a BA in anthropology from the University of Chicago, where he was president of a student group for human rights.
Posted June 18, 2014