PUBLIC INTEREST SCHOLARS PROGRAM: PROFILES

Current Students

	Sheerine Alemzadeh, L'11 Sheerine Alemzadeh received a B.A. in International Politics from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 2006. She is interested in international immigrant rights and in serving undocumented survivors of sexual violence in the workplace. Before coming to Penn Law, Sheerine worked as a paralegal at the Tahirih Justice Center in Falls Church, Virginia. Her primary responsibilities there included performing client intake interviews in French, Farsi and English and preparing affidavits for attorneys.
	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.
	Katherine Andrews, L'11 Katherine Andrews received a B.A. in International Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2002. After graduation, she became actively involved in the AmeriCorps City Year and AmeriCorps*VISTA programs. Immediately before coming to Penn Law, Katherine worked as a researcher with the Future of Peace Operations program at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, D.C., where she focused on post-conflict rule of law and genocide prevention issues. Katherine is interested in conflict resolution studies.
	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.
	Marsha J. Chien, L'10 Marsha graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in International Economics. While in college, she worked as an AmeriCorps member for Heads Up, a non-profit operating in Washington D.C. schools. She coordinated and taught a summer and after-school enrichment program that included literacy events and project fairs. After graduation, she spent a summer at an organic farm in Colorado, and most recently, she was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala. As an agricultural marketing facilitator, she worked with an indigenous Mayan cooperative in establishing income-generating projects related to the village's tea plantation.
	Elizabeth Eisenberg, L'11 Elizabeth Eisenberg received a B.A. in Spanish and Psychology from Wesleyan University in 2005. During and after college, Liz was involved in a host of social justice and public interest activities including AmeriCorps, the Teaching Institute for Essential Science and the District of Columbia Central Kitchen, where she was a workforce development and retention coordinator. Liz is interested in immigration law and in criminal justice issues.
	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.
	Jesse Krohn, L'11 Jesse Krohn received her M.S. with a concentration in urban education from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. Jesse received a B.A. with a concentration in Government from Harvard University in 2006. Before coming to Penn Law, Jesse worked as a secondary English teacher in the School District of Philadelphia through the Teach for America program. She has an interest in public policy and education law.
	Rebecca Maltzman, L'10 Rebecca Maltzman graduated from Northwestern University with a Social Policy major. While in college, she interned at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago on the Public Benefits Hotline and with the National Women's Law Center advocating for affordable day care and reproductive health access. After graduation, she spent two years teaching 2nd grade in Camden, New Jersey with Teach for America. She is interested in education law and hopes to use her legal skills to return to Camden to work towards systemic change in the city.
	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.
	Kelsey McCowan, L'09 Kelsey received her B.A. in history and spanish from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. After graduation, she worked for John Kerry's presidential campaign in Boston and rural Oregon. Kelsey has spent the past year designing and implementing curriculum for adult GED and ESL classes in a welfare-to-work center here in Philadelphia. She has 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.
	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.
	Abel Rodriguez, L'11 Abel Rodriguez 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 the Montgomery County Community College in 1999. Before coming to Penn Law, Abel taught introductory, intermediate, and advanced Spanish and cultural courses at the University of Pennsylvania. He is interested in immigration law, particularly serving low-income communities.
	Megan Rok, L'11 Megan Rok received a B.A. from Vassar College in 2005. Her public interest activities include interning at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, at the office of former Providence Rode Island Mayor David Cicilline, and at the office of United States Senator Jack Reed. Before coming to Penn Law, Megan taught science courses in the Jefferson Parish School System in New Orleans through the Teach for America program. She is interested in public health law.
	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. Most recently 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.
	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.
	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.

Alumni

	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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.