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PUBLIC INTEREST SCHOLARS PROGRAM: PROFILES
Current Students
Class of 2012
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Valerie Baron L'12
Valerie graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A. in Politics, 3rd World Studies and an International Studies Concentration in 2006. Prior to law school, Valerie worked for the Committee on Energy and Commerce at the U.S. House of Representatives, where she focused on issues related to consumer protection and product safety. In addition, Valerie worked on the staffs of two U.S. Senate campaigns, most recently serving as the Director of Grassroots Fundraising for Senator Sherrod Brown's successful 2006 race in Ohio, and in 2004 she took a leave of absence from college to accept a finance position on Betty Castor's U.S. Senate campaign in Florida. In college, Valerie was a Cole Scholar in the Oberlin Initiative in Electoral Politics and she held leadership positions in the ACLU, Hillel, and the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association. Valerie is interested in environmental law, health law, and where these fields intersect. At Penn Law, she has become an active member of the Environmental Law Project, and she will co-lead the group this year. In addition, she chaired the student/staff committee, Penn Law 4 Haiti this past year. This past summer, she worked at the Environmental Integrity Project in Washington, DC. |
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Robert Craig L'12
Robert earned a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from the University of Arizona in 2007, and a M.Ed. from Arizona State University in 2009. Prior to his career at Penn Law, Robert interned for the Democratic House of Representatives in Arizona and then worked as a fifth grade teacher in Phoenix, AZ through the Teach for America program. His interests include defending the civil rights of those people whose rights are most often ignored. At Penn Law, Robert has been active with the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Program, which he will co-lead this year. Robert is interested in law and technology, and access to technology for underrepresented communities. This past summer, he worked at the EEOC in Phoenix, Arizona. |
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Lisa Margulies L'12
Lisa graduated summa cum laude from Columbia University in 2005, where she earned a B.A. in art history and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. As an undergraduate, Lisa was active in a number of community service organizations, including Nightline peer counseling and Summerbridge/Breakthrough Collaborative. After graduation, Lisa taught secondary math in New York City Public Schools as a New York City Teaching Fellow. She simultaneously earned her M.S. in math education at City University of New York, graduating with Honors in 2008. Prior to her career at Penn Law, Lisa interned in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for human rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Dr. Mu Sochua. Her interests are child advocacy, fair housing, and international activism. This past year, Lisa was active with the Custody and Support Assistance Clinic that works in collaboration with Philadelphia Legal Assistance. This past summer, she worked at the National League for Democracy (Liberated Area) in Mae Sot, Thailand. |
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Rekha Nair L’12
Rekha graduated with a B.S. in Political Science from Arizona State University in 2006. As an undergraduate, Rekha interned at the International Rescue Committee assisting with refugee resettlement and spent a year abroad in India as a David L. Boren scholar. After graduating, she spent two year teaching middle school math in the South Bronx, NY as a Teach for America corps member. While teaching, she also earned a M.S.T. in Adolescent Education from Pace University in 2008. In her final year before joining Penn Law, Rekha taught high school mathematics, chemistry, & global issues in the Dominican Republic. Rekha's interests in law include criminal defense, immigrant rights, and the intersection of law and international sustainable development. This past year, Rekha was an active member of the Prisoners' Legal Education Project, the Immigrant Rights Project, the Custody and Support Assistance Clinic, and the Latin American Law Students Association. This past summer, she served as a clerk for the Honorable Aida Delgado Colon in Hato Rey, PR and worked for No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes, in Tucson, Arizona. |
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Yiyang Wu L’12
Yiyang graduated from Harvard College in 2007 with an A.B. in Government. While at Harvard, she acted as director of Chinatown Afterschool, a tutoring program serving low-income Boston youth. She also interned at the Medical-Legal Partnership for Children, a program dedicated to providing legal assistance for patients at the Boston Medical Center. After graduation, Yiyang worked at the District Attorney's Office in New York as an Investigative Analyst in the Frauds Bureau, where she interviewed victims and witnesses of white collar crime and prepared their cases for the grand jury. She hopes to pursue a career in juvenile advocacy, particularly within the immigration realm. This past summer, she worked in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. |
Class of 2013 |
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Shikha Bhattacharjee L'13
Shikha received her BA from Yale University in 2006 with a double-major in English and Ethnicity, Race and Migration. She is currently working with the Human Rights Legal Network in Kolkata, learning legal strategies to advance human rights, with a focus on Child Rights, Women's Justice and Trafficking. Shikha is also a consultant for the Intensive, In-Home Child & Adolescent Psychiatric Service at the Yale Child Study Center (IICAPS), where she assists in the development of a web-based program to teach IICAPS principles and clinical constructs to mental health providers nationwide. She has also worked as a mental health counselor for IICAPS. As a mental health counselor, she held bilingual (English/Spanish) therapy sessions with youth at risk of psychiatric hospitalization and youth involved in the juvenile justice system. Shikha is proficient in Spanish and studying Hindi. She intends to use her law degree to advance human rights for marginalized communities.
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Reid Cater L'13
Reid Cater is from the Gulf Coast of Alabama. He received his BA from Duke University in 2008 with a double-major in Political Science (International Relations) and History (American History). Reid also minored in Theatre Studies and was an active member of the Duke University Theatre. Upon graduation, Reid served in the Peace Corps in Morocco, working in Youth Development. He then worked in Baltimore as an Americorps volunteer for Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake. Reid is interested in criminal law. As a 1L he is involved with the Homeless Advocacy Program, does prison teaching, and works with the Innocence Project through the Prisoner's Education and Advocacy Program. He aspires to work in a public defender's office.
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Tara Grigg Garlinghouse L'13
Tara is from Houston, Texas and received a B.A. from Rice University with a double-major in Sociology and the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality in 2008. While at Rice, Tara conducted independent research on the impact of parenting practices and socioeconomic status on children of teenage mothers. Following graduation, she worked as a City Hall Fellow at the City of Houston Municipal Courts Administration where she conducted cost-benefit analyses, administered surveys, and analyzed state legislation. After her fellowship, Tara continued working as a Senior Staff Analyst, increasing departmental productivity and institutionalizing the surveys and performance metrics developed during her fellowship. Upon completing her legal education at Penn Law, Tara plans on working as a child advocate helping children for several years. Her long-term goal is to work in Washington, DC at a policy think tank aimed at improving the legal system for women and children.
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Ranwa Hammamy L'13
Ranwa received a BA in Psychology with a minor in Music Performance from St. Mary's College of Maryland in 2007. She is currently working towards a Master of Public Health in Community Health Education at the University of Maryland (College Park, MD). While in school, Ranwa participated actively in various programs as an employee and an intern. Most notably, she has been working at the Environmental Protection Agency as Program Assistant in the Office of Prevention, Pesticides & Toxic Substances, conducting research with the Health Effects Division on individual pesticide exposure.
As a short-term career plan, Ranwa wants to work with an organization that addresses the needs of the underrepresented, vulnerable, and underserved populations, such as women, children, ethnic/racial minorities, and "LGBT" individuals. Her long-term plans include providing guidance during the development of health-related policies and working as an advisor at a federal agency.
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Nikki Herst-Cook L'13
Nikki is from La Jolla, California and received a BA from Emory University in 2006 with a major in Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, focusing on international gender and power relations. She has worked as a paralegal at Federal Defenders of New York, Inc, where she assisted clients during presentence and pretrial interviews. She also worked directly with clients in and out of federal prison by performing interviews, coordinating entrance into alternatives-to-incarceration settings and securing medical treatment. Nikki is currently an intern at "Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales," a Buenos Aires-based organization that promotes sustainable development through policy, law and institutions. In addition to her major, Nikki also minored in Spanish at Emory and has conversational fluency in Spanish. At Penn Law, she looks forward to increasing her ability to work with underrepresented communities.
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Kevin Krainz L'13
Kevin is a 2007 graduate of St. Norbert College (WI) with a BA in Philosophy. He is currently working as a Development and Operations Associate at Cabrini Green Legal Aid, a Chicago-based organization that provides high-impact, free legal services to low-income individuals in Chicago. Before working at Cabrini Legal Aid, Kevin was a full-time volunteer in Chulucanas, Peru, educating villagers about human rights, civic participation, and illness prevention. During his time in Peru, he became fluent in Spanish. Kevin plans to work with Spanish-speaking immigrant populations to ensure that these individuals have access to the resources they need to fully participate in society.
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Class of 2014 |
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Anna Deknatel L'14
Anna graduated from Harvard College in 2005 with a BA in Sociology. While in school, she student taught world history to high school freshman through the Harvard School of Education's Undergraduate Teacher Education Program. During the 2004 Presidential election, she was part of the communications team at Rock The Vote. After graduation, Anna served as the Executive Director of the Brookhaven Town Democratic Committee in Long Island, New York where she led communications and voter contact efforts for eleven coordinated races for municipal government. Afterwards, she worked for three years as an Associate at BerlinRosen Public Affairs in New York City, where she developed and executed strategic communications plans for legal service, advocacy, and non-profit groups aiming to pass laws and impact public policy, both locally and nationally. Much of her work at BerlinRosen focused on housing and employment rights. Anna now aims to use law and advocacy primarily to assist people facing housing crises, including foreclosure and eviction. |
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Elizabeth Freed L'14
Elizabeth received her B.A. in interdisciplinary studies with a concentration in human rights from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 2009. While at NYU, Elizabeth worked with grassroots legal and social service organizations advocating for the rights of low-income immigrant communities in New York City. During her junior year, she studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and interned at the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group where she conducted human rights research and helped develop democracy and peace educational programming for youth. Following graduation, Elizabeth returned to Israel as a Dorot Fellow, and worked in the International Relations Department at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. Most recently, she worked with a Tel Aviv-based refugees rights organization interviewing Sub-Sahara African refugees and preparing their asylum applications and appeals to the Israeli Ministry of Interior. After law school, Elizabeth plans to help refugees secure basic human rights and self-sufficiency through direct representation and advocacy.
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Lauren Hoff L'14
Lauren graduated from the University of Michigan in 2010 with a B.A. in Psychology and Organizational Studies. While in school, she volunteered on the crisis line at a shelter for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. She also taught English at a home for homeless girls in Ecuador, where she studied abroad. After graduating, Lauren worked as an AmeriCorps VISTA for the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago on the Public Benefits Hotline. She helped individuals navigate the complicated public benefits system, advocating for her clients and advising them on how to advocate for themselves. Lauren plans to continue work on behalf of low-income clients while in law school and upon graduation.
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Alison Hollenbeck L'14
Alison graduated from Northwestern University in 2008 with a bachelor's degree in journalism and international studies. Alison spent her junior year of college in Egypt studying at the American University in Cairo, where she volunteered with a student group named Student Action for Refugees, teaching English and organizing classes for refugees. After graduating, Alison worked as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer at a Somali community-based non-profit organization south of Seattle. Upon the completion of her Americorps VISTA project, Alison accepted a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship grant, and taught English for a year in a boarding school in northern Thailand. After her grant concluded, she volunteered on the Thai-Burma border at a non-profit organization that provides educational and vocational training for Burmese migrant youths. Upon returning to the United States, Alison interned at the largest immigrant advocacy organization in the state of Washington. Alison hopes to pursue a combination of immigration, refugee and human rights law.
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Lindsey Johnson L'14
Lindsey recently graduated from the University of Arkansas with a Master of Public Service and Master of Public Health. Recently, she worked with a committee of state health leaders to research opportunities for local health reform, including the development of an all-payer claims database. Throughout graduate school, Lindsey worked as a Minority Health Policy Fellow and Program Manager at the Arkansas Minority Health Commission and served as an evaluation consultant for a local adult leadership program. She spent three months at Bo Hua Hospital in Jilin City, China where she helped design a chronic disease center. Before graduate school, Lindsey served as the Youth Coordinator at Children International, where she developed educational enrichment and service learning programs for two years. In 2007, she graduated with a B.A. in English Writing from Wheaton College in Illinois. As a Wheaton student, Lindsey worked for World Relief, a refugee resettlement agency, and also spent a semester in East Africa with Food for the Hungry. |
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Noel León L'14
Originally from Little Rock, AR, Noel received her bachelor's degree in psychology from Yale University in 2009. During college, Noel sang a cappella all four years, where she also served as musical director and tour manager. She spent summers working in health-related settings, interning in the radiology department where she did breast cancer research at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and worked at a non-profit organization dedicated to reproductive justice in Oakland, CA. Prior to coming to Penn Law, Noel worked as a research assistant in the Yale Department of Emergency Medicine before joining Manna Project International outside of Quito, Ecuador, as a full time volunteer. With Manna, a non-profit community development organization, she helped run a community center including a public lending library and a preventive health center, taught a sixth grade nutrition class, a women's exercise class, and an adult English class. Noel plans to devote her career to advancing the legal protection of individuals' bodily autonomy, paying special attention to women and those disadvantaged by socio-economic status.
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Alumni
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Sheerine Alemzadeh, L'11
Sheerine received her bachelor's degree in International Politics from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is interested in international human rights and in serving undocumented survivors of sexual violence in the workplace. Before coming to Penn Law, Sheerine worked for the legal department of the Tahirih Justice Center, a non-profit organization providing legal services and public policy advocacy for immigrant women and girls fleeing gender-based violence. She also served on the National Coordinating Committee of the Younger Women's Task Force. At Penn, Sheerine is the Clinical Coordinator for the International Human Rights Advocates and an Associate Editor on the Journal of Law and Social Change. She is also a founding member of SAGE, a legal project to serve survivors of gender-based violence. SAGE is currently spear-heading a know-your-rights initiative with immigrant survivors of sexual harassment. During her 1L summer, Sheerine worked for the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. During this past summer, Sheerine worked at the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs doing employment discrimination work. She has also interned for one semester at the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. Sheerine is interested in pursuing a career in civil rights litigation and holistic advocacy, particularly combating violence against minorities in the workplace. |
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Micole Allekotte, L'09
While working towards her B.A. in Women's Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Micole spent one year interning with Women Organized Against Rape in the family Court Division, where she helped prepare child sexual abuse survivors to testify in court. She spent the year following her graduation working for Intercultural Family services, Inc. as a Wraparound Case Manager. In that capacity, she administrated a program that places mental health professionals in the homes and schools of children with psychological, psychiatric, and behavioral health problems. |
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Katherine Andrews, L'11
Katherine received a B.A. in International Studies for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After graduation, she worked with AmeriCorps City Year and AmeriCorps VISTA. Immediately before coming to Penn Law, Katharine worked as a researcher with the Future of Peace Operations program at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, DC, where she focused on post-conflict rule of law and genocide prevention issues. Katherine spent her 1L summer interning with a public interest law NGO in Sierra Leone, and this past summer she interned at the Alexandria, Virginia Public Defender's Office. Katherine is a member of the Journal of Law and Social Change and co-chairs the Prisoners' Legal Education Project and Penn Law Chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild. |
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Chandra Bhatnagar L'01
Chandra is the Human Rights Advocacy Coordinator for the national legal department of the ACLU where he is part of a new working group of human rights defenders using international mechanisms, domestic litigation, public education, legal advocacy, and organizing to hold the United States government accountable for its human rights abuses under universally recognized human rights principles. Prior to joining the ACLU, Chandra was a Skadden Fellow with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund where he directed the South Asian Worker's Project for Human Rights, a community-based project providing legal services to low-wage workers from the South Asian diaspora using a human rights perspective. Previously, he was the Assistant Director of Columbia University's "Bringing Human Rights Home Project," and worked on human rights issues including conditions affecting post 9-11 detainees and efforts to organize a coalition of human rights defenders in the United States. He has also worked internationally, partnering with a leading NGO in India in applying human rights standards to their anti-child labor/bonded labor campaigns and domestically with the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he did immigrant's rights work and anti-police brutality organizing, and served as the interim Director of the Ella Baker Summer Intern Program. In addition to his J.D. from Penn Law, he received an LL.M. in international human rights from Columbia Law School. |
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Courtney Botts L'07
While working towards her B.A. in Political Science, with minors in Women's Studies and Spanish at Duke University, Courtney spent two summers in the Voting Rights Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice investigating submissions under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Since then she has spent two years with Ayuda Inc., working on protection orders and family law cases for immigrant victims of domestic violence. She has also worked in the Washington, D.C. U.S. Attorneys Office in the Transnational/Major Crime section. |
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Amy Laura Cahn, L'09
A former theatrical lighting designer and stage electrician and a long time organizer, Amy Laura Cahn is the founder of the New Orleans Dyke March and a co-founder of New York City's Bluestockings Women's Bookstore. Her community-based study on childhood lead paint poisoning, written with Gabriel Thompson, helped overturn New York City's lead laws in 2004. In 2002 and 2003, Amy Laura traveled to the West Bank and Gaza, to document and protest human rights violations. More recently, she joined the ACLU of Pennsylvania staff as Community Organizer for Eastern PA. Amy Laura graduated summa cum laude from Hunter College with a B.A. in urban studies. She is particularly interested in working at the intersection of environmental stewardship, human rights and public health. |
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Marsha J. Chien, L'10
Marsha graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in International Economics. Prior to Law School, Marsha worked as an AmeriCorps member for Heads Up in Washington D.C., and as a Peace Corps Volunteer with a Mayan village in Guatemala. At Penn, Marsha has been active in student-run pro bono projects and co-directed the Immigrant Rights Project and Employment Advocacy Project. Additionally, Marsha has spent her summers at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, California Rural Legal Assistance, and Friends of Farmworkers. In these positions, Marsha worked on diplomatic issues between the United Nations and The Netherlands, as well as individual cases and class actions related to workers' rights and workplace safety. In her legal career, whether it is in immigration law or other public interest sector, Marsha plans to continue working for the Guatemalan population stream she met in Peace Corps as they build their lives in the United States. |
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Kevin Costello L'01
Kevin is a staff attorney in the Elderly Law Project of Community Legal Services in Philadelphia. Working form the North Philadelphia neighborhood office, he serves low-income seniors who are struggling to navigate the channels of the health care system. In particular, Kevin focuses on Medicare managed care and other public benefits issues. After graduating with honors from Penn Law, Kevin clerked for the Hon. Joseph Rodriguez of the United States District Court in Camden, New Jersey. He then received a public interest law fellowship form the Independence Foundation to begin his work at Community Legal Services. Prior to his admission to the bar, he worked for public interest legal organizations in Boston, New York and San Francisco. |
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Amy Crawford L'00
Amy began working for The Bronx Defenders as an Equal Justice Works Fellow, a national fellowship to represent defendants accused of felony drug charges assigned to a specialized court, and now holds the position of Director of Development, Bronx Defenders After receiving her undergraduate degree in African-American Studies and Sociology from the University of Virginia, Amy spent three years working for the Legal Aid Society's Civil Appeals and Law Reform Unit before going on to Law School. She earned her JD from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was awarded a Public Interest Scholarship and the Frank H. Gelman Prize. Over the course of her studies, Amy interned at the Defender Association of Philadelphia, the Legal Aid Society, and at the Community Diversion Incentive Program, where she served as a case manager as an undergraduate. Before coming to us, Amy was a pro-se clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and a Litigation Associate with O'Melveny & Myers LLP. |
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Kristen M. Dama L'07
Kristen graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan. While in college, she worked as a campus organizer, focusing on issues related to violence against women. After graduation, Kristen worked as the Organizing Director for NARAL Pro-Choice New Hampshire, where she developed a statewide campaign to expand access to emergency contraception. Last summer, Kristen was a Sparer Fellow in the Public Benefits Unit at Community Legal Services. She currently is the Co-Chair of the Penn Law Reproductive Rights Clinic. She also is pursuing a Master of Bioethics, and plans to specialize in public health law. |
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Ezekiel Edwards L'02
While in law school, Zeke assisted in the representation of clients at the Defender Association of Philadelphia, the Habeas Corpus Unit of the Federal Defenders, and the Greater Cambodian Association of Philadelphia. During his summers away from Penn Law, Zeke worked in Phnom Penh at the Cambodian Defenders Project and with the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights in its Workers' Rights Program. Prior to law school, Zeke spent three years as an investigator for the Capital Defender Office in New York. Zeke presently works as a Staff Attorney at the Bronx Defenders in New York City. |
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Elizabeth (Liz) Eisenberg, L'11
Liz received a B.A. in Spanish and Psychology from Wesleyan University in 2005. During and after college, Liz worked on numerous social justice and public interest activities, including public education and environmental issues. Most recently, she was an AmeriCorps volunteer member and was subsequently hired as a workforce development and retention coordinator at DC Central Kitchen. There, she worked with men and women recovering from addiction, homelessness, and incarceration. Liz is interest in poverty and criminal justice issues. She is one of the co-chairs of Penn's National Lawyers' Guild chapter, the Prisoners' Legal Education Project, and the Animal Law Project. Liz is also an Associate Editor of the Journal of Law and Social Change and a member of Penn's Feminist Working Group. Right now her career goal is to work in indigent defense. This past summer, she worked at the Southern Center for Human Rights.
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Erin Flynn L'08
Erin graduated from Yale with a B.A. in Psychology. For the past three years, she worked in the Bronx trial office of The Legal Aid Society, Juvenile Rights Division where she assisted law guardians and social workers in representing children on abuse, neglect, and juvenile delinquency cases. For two of these three years, Flynn served as Paralegal Supervisor, during which time she expanded the paralegal role in the interdisciplinary practice. |
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Eric Foley, L'09
Eric graduated summa cum laude from Tulane University, majoring in History and International Relations. Following graduation, Eric spent a year working through AmeriCorps to volunteer in underserved communities ranging from the Navajo nation to post-Katrina Louisiana. He worked as a legal assistant in the months leading up to his attendance at Penn Law. His interests include civil rights and international human rights. |
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Amy Hammersmith L'04
Amy Hammersmith is currently a staff attorney in the housing unit of the Bronx Office of Legal Services New York (LSNY-Bronx) where she fights to preserve affordable housing and protect low-income and elderly tenants from eviction.
As a law student, Amy participated in both a clinic and independent study with the Philadelphia Defenders' Association, as well as serving as an extern in the Habeas Unit of the Defenders Association where she worked on death penalty litigation. Amy was a member of the Feminist Working Group and co-chair of the Equal Justice Foundation fundraising committee and auction. Her summers were spent exploring housing issues and mental health law as an intern with South Brooklyn Legal Services and MFY Legal Services.
Prior to law school, Amy worked for many years as an organizer on low-income and environmental issues in Philadelphia. Organizations that she worked with include Action Alliance of Senior Citizens and Clean Air Council. She was also a founding member of the print collective and the Philadelphia Independent Media Center. |
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Rachel Hannaford L'04
Rachel is currently a law clerk for the Staff Attorneys’ Office at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She grew up in Swarthmore , Pennsylvania , and received a B.A. from Duke University . Before law school, she worked as an Americorps* VISTA volunteer and a fundraiser for non-profits. At Penn Law, Rachel was awarded the Henry Meacham Award for Public Service in 2004. She was the Chair of the Equal Justice Foundation, a student-run 501(c)(3) dedicated to providing stipends to students doing public interest legal work; she led the Prisoners’ Legal Assistance and Education Project, a student-run clinic that provided legal services to inmates at the Philadelphia Prison System; she was a Senior Editor of The Journal of Constitutional Law, where her student comment was published in 2003; and she was a member of the Feminist Working Group and American Constitution Society, as well as a participant in the 2003 Cuba Trip and an organizer of the 2003 Sparer Symposium on Civil Liberties. During her summers, Rachel interned at D.C. Prisoners’ Legal Services Project and the Legal Aid Society’s Community Law Office in East Harlem, NY. After her clerkships, Rachel hopes to work at a non-profit doing civil rights litigation on behalf of prisoners, ex-offenders or other indigent individuals. She will be clerking for Hon. Peter W. Hall of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2006-2007. |
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Kelsey McCowan Heilman, L'10
Kelsey received her B.A. in History and Spanish from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, in 2002. After graduation, she worked for John Kerry's presidential campaign in Boston and rural Oregon before moving to Philadelphia to work for Congreso de Latinos Unidos, a community-based organization's welfare-to-work program in North Philadelphia. While at Congreso, Kelsey designed and implemented curriculum for adult GED and ESL classes and worked to integrate academic skill-building with issue advocacy, including research and community action on issues such as immigration reform and raising the minimum wage. At Penn, Kelsey has been active in the Penn Law Immigrant Rights Project, serving as the Policy Project Coordinator in her second year and as the Project's Co-Director in her third year. She spent the summer after her first year working as an intern with the Education Law Center of Pennsylvania where she drafted Comments to new Department of Education Regulations affecting access to early education services for at-risk children and worked as part of a task force dedicated to improving education services for children in foster care. In the spring and summer of her second year, she was an intern with the Employment Unit of Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, helping to represent mostly Spanish-speaking clients in wage theft, discrimination, and expungement actions. Kelsey took a year of leave between her second and third years of law school to live and work doing development and fundraising work for a medical NGO in Santa Cruz La Laguna, Guatemala, a Kaqchikel Maya village. While there, she worked with local women to develop a human rights-based training curriculum for indigenous language-Spanish interpreters. Kelsey wants to continue her work with the immigrant community in the United States as a legal services employment or immigration attorney or as a public defender. |
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Damon Hewitt L'00
Damon Hewitt is an Assistant Counsel at the New York office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. ("LDF"). While at Penn Law School, Damon worked as a research assistant to Professor Lani Guinier and served as a Comment Editor on the Journal of Constitutional Law. He was also elected president of both his graduating class and the Black Students Association and received the Henry Meacham Public Service Award.
Upon graduating from Penn Law School, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Eric L. Clay of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Damon joined the LDF staff in 2001 as a Skadden Fellow. Since then he has appeared before state and federal courts throughout the country, enforced and monitored compliance with court orders, negotiated settlement agreements, and represented clients in successful mediation. His docket has consisted of class action cases and consultation on a number of racial and social justice issues, much of which has been focused on access to public education, school discipline, school desegregation, and voting rights. He founded LDF's "Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline" project, which challenges racial disparities that lie at the intersection of educational opportunity, school discipline and the juvenile justice system. He has also worked on cases and policy matters involving school finance, educational adequacy, high-stakes testing, affirmative action and indigent defense.
This year Damon has been working on assignment in New Orleans coordinating LDF's post-Hurricane Katrina advocacy work. He recently received the Avery C. Alexander Civil Rights Award from the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus for his contributions to racial and social justice in the State. He is frequently quoted in the media on school discipline and racial justice issues, including those impacting New Orleans and the Katrina Diaspora. |
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Jesse Lynn Krohn, L'11
Jesse received her M.S.Ed. with a concentration in Urban Education from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education in 2008. Jesse received an A.B. with a concentration in Government from Harvard College in 2006. Before coming to Penn Law, Jessee worked as a secondary English teacher in the School District of Philadelphia with Teach for America. She has an interest in public policy. Jesse interned here in Philadelphia at the Education Law Center during her 1L summer. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Law and Social Change, Co-Director of the Public Interest Mentoring Initiative, Co-President of Penn Law for Reproductive Justice and is an Advocate with the Custody and Support Assistance Clinic. This past summer she worked at the National Women's Law Center in Washington, DC and at the Women's Law Project in Philadelphia. |
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Mark Ladov L'06
Mark received his B.A. from Wesleyan University (1994) and an M.A. in American History from New York University (2000). His experience in affordable housing advocacy and homelessness policy in New York includes work with the Housing First! Coalition, the Corporation for Supportive Housing, and the Housing Unit of South Brooklyn Legal Services. At Penn he has served as student coordinator of Penn Law Advocates for the Homeless and is organizing the Penn Tenant Advocacy Clinic with fellow PI Scholar Eric Wolpin. He is currently working on disability rights and environmental justice issues as a full-time intern with New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. |
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Amy Likoff L'08
Amy received her B.A. in History from Washington University. Prior to attending Penn Law, she served as the grassroots program associate with the Alliance for Justice, developing national campaign themes and raising awareness throughout college campuses about the role and importance of the Supreme Court in shaping fundamental constitutional rights. |
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Felicia Lin L'08
Felicia received her B.A. in Politics and East Asian Studies from Oberlin College. She served as the Legal Assistant and Community Organizer for Midwest Environmental Advocates, a nonprofit environmental law center in Madison, Wisconsin. There, she worked on promoting sustainable agriculture, protecting the sacred lands of Native Americans, stopping air and water contamination and ensuring government accountability. She also served on the board of Community Shares of Wisconsin, a social action fund. Her long-term career goal is to use a community organizing and community lawyering model to address the root causes of social injustice.
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Trevor Lippman L'07
Trevor received his B.A. in Film Studies from Wesleyan University (1996) and his Master's degree from the Harris School of Public Policy at The University of Chicago (2003). Before returning to school, he was a program director with Teach For America, helping develop and manage professional training. He has consulted with the Chicago Department of Public Health on the provision of health services in the city, the Midwest Immigrant and Human Rights Center on gay/lesbian immigration policy, Teach For America on the effectiveness of their admissions process, and with various other non profit organizations. His experience also includes work with Planned Parenthood of Connecticut and with a member of the New York State Assembly. Last summer, he worked with Human Rights Watch conducting research on the implementation of Megan's Laws across the United States. |
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Rebecca Maltzman, L'11
Rebecca graduated from Northwestern University with a Social Policy major. After graduation, she spent two years teaching second grade in Camden, New Jersey with Teach for America. She has spent time during Law School interning for the General Counsel of Teach for America, South Jersey Legal Services and the Education Law Center. She also co-founded the Legal Education Partnership, a comprehensive partnership between the Law School and a local Philadelphia high school. She spent her 2L summer working in the Office of Special Education at the District of Columbia Public Schools. She has spent the 2009-2010 school year at Harvard Graduate School of Education where she has received a Zuckerman Fellowship. Rebecca plans to continue her involvement in education reform upon graduation. |
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Lindsay E. Martin, L'10
Lindsay received her B.A. in Economics and Justice, Peace & Conflict Studies from Eastern Mennonite University in 2005. As an intern with Restorative Justice Initiatives, she sat in on juvenile court hearings and took referrals for potential cases appropriate for victim-offender reconciliation conferences. After college, she spent two years in the San Francisco Bay Area as a nonviolence trainer for Pace e Bene, leading workshops for groups ranging from homeless seniors to high school youth. She was also the youth organizer for the Declaration of Peace, a national campaign to call for an end to the war in Iraq, which culminated in a week of nonviolent action in Washington, DC. Lindsay spent her first summer working on wage claims and employment issues of low-income Philadelphians at Community Legal Services and her second summer at Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing & Feinberg, a civil rights organization in Philadelphia. She was co-director of the Prisoner's Legal Education Project, a student-run project at Penn, and currently plans to work in indigent defense. |
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Amanda Marzullo L'08
Amanda received her B.A. in Anthropology from New York University. During college she interned at the Fresh Air Fund, the Open Society Institute, and the U.S. State Department in Naples, Italy. After she graduated, she worked as a paralegal for the Capital Defender Office in New York for two years where she organized discovery for capital and non- capital first murder cases, investigated co-defendant criminal histories, and met with clients and their families to discuss case developments. This past summer she investigated child custody cases for the Children’s Law Center in Brooklyn, New York. She currently works as a case manager/paralegal on two death penalty cases before New York’s Eastern District. |
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Katherine Minarik L'06
Katherine holds an MSc in Social Psychology from London School of Economics, where she studied as a Thouron Scholar. She earned a B.A. in Psychology and Theatre Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated summa cum laude. Her professional experience includes serving as Director of Campus Programs for the Feminist Majority Foundation, as Political Director for the National Women's Political Caucus, and as an Advisor to the Women's Desk for the Dean presidential campaign. At Penn, she has founded Penn Law for Choice, co-founded the Reproductive Rights Legal Clinic, and co-chaired the Penn Law Get Out The Vote 2004 campaign. Katherine also currently serves as president for the Penn Law American Constitution Society chapter. |
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Amy Retsinas, L'09
Amy graduated from Swarthmore College in 2001 with a B.A. in sociology. She has spent the past five years working within the domestic violence movement in Philadelphia and in her home state of Rhode Island. Most recently, she has spent the past two years as the director of Rhode Island Family Court's statewide Domestic Violence Court, a specialized court docket for protection orders, custody and support. She is an advocate of nonviolence and hopes to use the law to build safer families and communities. |
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Abel Rodriguez, L'11
Abel received a Master of Theological Studies from The Divinity School at Harvard University in 2004 and a Master of Arts in Latin American Studies from Stanford University in 2002. Before pursuing these degrees, Abel received a B.A. in Spanish from Cabrini College in 2001 and an Associate degree from Montgomery County Community College in 1999. Before coming to Penn Law, Abel was a lecturer and course coordinator in the Romance Language Department at the University of Pennsylvania, and he spent the summers working at Annunciation House, a non-profit that serves the poor in migration in El Paso, Texas. During his first year of law school, Abel was an active member of Penn Law's Immigrant Rights Project and Latin American Law Students Association. For his first-year internship, he worked in Zacatecas, Mexico, at Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, a transnational workers' rights law center dedicated to improving the conditions of migrant workers in the United States. During this past summer, he worked at the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. Abel is interested in immigration law, particularly serving low-income communities. |
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Meghan Rohling L'06
Meghan attended the University of Michigan where she received her B.A. (2001) and M.S.W. (2002). She has worked in the mental health field, focusing on the provision of services to chronically homeless, mentally ill adults. She interned for the Women’s Law Project. She currently serves as the Chair of the Equal Justice Foundation and is a Senior Editor on the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. |
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Megan Rok, L'11
Megan received a B.A. in political science from Vassar College in 2005. While in college, Megan interned in the Office of United States Senator Jack Reed in her home state of Rhode Island, and spent a summer assisting the Chief of Policy for the Mayor of Providence. Her public interest activities also included work with the Human Rights Campaign, the Sierra Club, RI PIRG, and the Vassar College Blegen Center for Social Change. Before coming to Penn Law, Megan taught high school science for three years in New Orleans through the Teach for America program. As a teacher, Megan chaired her school's Substance Abuse Prevention Education program and secured over $2,500 in Donor's Choose grants to promote student literacy. Through a partnership with the University of New Orleans Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Science, Megan also conducted water salinity tests in local bayous with her students to foster their awareness of ecological changes resulting from Hurricane Katrina. As a 1L, she assisted the Juvenile Law Center's civil rights case by conducting intakes of youth who were adjudicated delinquent in the corrupt Luzerne County juvenile court. During her 1L summer, Megan worked at the National Center for Youth Law (NCYL), located in Oakland, CA, conducting legal research in support of class action litigation to improve children's access to mental health care services in California and Washington. She also assisted with the NCYL Juvenile Mental Health Court Initiative. Megan serves on the Executive Board of the Penn Law Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, and is also active with the Penn Housing Rights Project and Lambda Law. She recently competed in the 2009 National Moot Court on Sexual Orientation Law at UCLA, arguing a case challenging the constitutionality of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Megan is passionate about serving as a youth advocate in the intersecting areas of public health, education and juvenile justice. This past summer, she worked at the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. |
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Shira T. Roza, L'10
Shira took a semester off during her junior year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to work as the Statewide Student Organizer for Howard Dean's presidential campaign. Following graduation, she was elected President of the Wisconsin Chapter of the National Organization for Women. In that capacity, she focused primarily on working with other community leaders to pass a municipal ordinance establishing a mandatory number of paid sick days for workers. Immediately before law school, she worked as the Milwaukee Regional Director for Fair Wisconsin - the statewide campaign to defeat a constitutional ban on marriage and civil unions for gay couples. During her first year at Penn Law, Shira co-founded the Urban law forum, a student-run group dedicated to improving quality of life for low-income invididuals and families in urban communities. She also volunteers with the Penn Law Unemployment Compensation Project and the Guild Food Stamp Clinic and is a Senior Editor on the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law. During her 1L and 2L summers, Shira worked for organizations which offer legal services in both housing and employment law, and she hopes to continue this type of work after she graduates. Shira is also working towards an M.S. in Social Policy at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice. |
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Sujata Elam Sidhu L'07
Sujata graduated from Wesleyan University with a B.A. in music. Prior to coming to Penn Law she was an organizer for the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), living in hotels across North America and helping workers form unions and gain better working conditions. She has been active in many social movements, living in several countries around the world to work for change. At Penn Law, Sujata serves as the facilitator of the National Lawyers Guild. Last summer, she worked on prisoner’s rights at the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, and the Innocence Project. |
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Elena Steiger, L'10
Elena graduated from Duke University in 2003 with a B.A. in Public Policy Studies. She spent the following two years with Pathfinder International, an international reproductive health organization, where she helped coordinate advocacy campaigns aimed at improving U.S. policies on funding for international reproductive health and HIV/AIDS programs. She spent the following two years working for Human Rights First, an international human rights organization, where her work was focused on improving conditions for human rights defenders abroad who face threats as a result of their work. While at HRF, she was primarily responsible for the organization's work with activists in Cuba and an Afro-descendent community in Honduras. During the summer of 2008, Elena worked for the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. In the summer of 2009, Elena split her summer between a law firm and Sanctuary for Families, where she worked with immigrant women who were the victims of domestic violence. |
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Emily Turner, L'09
While working towards her B.A. in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, Emily spent the spring and summer of her junior year studying abroad in London where she worked with the Justice Research Consortium conducting randomized control trials of restorative justice conferences for serious violent and property crime cases in the London Crown Courts. Since graduating, Emily has worked in the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center where she has served as a research assistant on a variety of studies investigating prisoner reentry, domestic violence, prison sexual violence, and the relationship between community organizations and crime. She has also served as part of the Urban Institute's research partnership with the Washington DC Project Safe Neighborhoods violence reduction team. Emily will be working toward her J.D./M.A. in Criminology. |
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Eric Wolpin L'06
After graduating from Haverford College, Eric taught middle and high school biology in the Mississippi Delta through the Teach For America Program. Eric worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York City this past summer, and spent the previous summer interning with Dakota Plains Legal Services in Pine Ridge, South Dakota and the Navajo Nation Supreme Court in Window Rock, Arizona. While attending law school at Penn, Eric has helped design and implement an observation project detailing the legal process of Philadelphia Housing Court. |
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ThaoMee Xiong L'06
ThaoMee received her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College and her M.A. in Public Administration from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. Prior to Law School she worked as the Project Team Leader for a statewide research project examining the impact of welfare reform on communities of color and immigrants. She is co-author of “In My Heart I will always be Hmong: One Hmong Woman's Pioneering Journey towards Activism.” During Law School, she worked for the International Organization of Migration to help resettle Hmong refugees and United Nation's High Commissioner for Refugees as an interpreter on high profile refugee cases. She also interned for the Defender Association of Philadelphia. And most recently, she co-produced a documentary called, “Goodbye, Wat Thamkrabok,” a film about a forgotten refugee community living illegally in Thailand. |
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Su Ming Yeh L'04
Su Ming Yeh graduated cum laude from Penn Law and received a B.A. from Brown University in 1993. Most recently, she was a law clerk to the Hon. Gerard E. Lynch, U.S. District Court Judge in the Southern District of New York. In Law School, she was a Public Interest Scholar, Senior Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, a member of the Moot Court Board, and Co-Chair of Lambda Law. She spent her summers as an intern for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, and Relman & Associates. Su Ming was a recipient of the Benjamin R. Jones Award for her outstanding contribution to public interest, and the Samuel Gomez Scholarship for dedication to public interest law.
Prior to law school, Su Ming had extensive experience working towards social justice. From 1998-2000, she was the Executive Director of the Asian Professional Extension, Inc., a mentoring organization for Asian American inner-city youth. Prior to that, she was the Deputy Director of the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families, where she conducted cultural sensitivity trainings for social service providers, and organized Chinese immigrant parents as advocates in the New York City child welfare system. She also managed an after-school program in the South Bronx with the Supportive Children's Advocacy Network (SCAN-NY), and was a science teacher for two years in the U.S. Peace Corps in the Kingdom of Tonga. She served as the treasurer of the Board of Directors for the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice from 2000-2004, and continues to volunteer for the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York. |
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