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Arlene Finkelstein

Arlene Rivera Finkelstein

Associate Dean for Equity & Justice; Chief Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) Advisor

Arlene Rivera Finkelstein is Associate Dean for Equity & Justice, and the inaugural Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Officer for the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. She collaborates with the Law School community and across the University to advance equity and justice broadly, while supporting the work of the Toll Public Interest Center and the Office of Equity & Inclusion.

Since 2008, Rivera Finkelstein served as Executive Director of the Toll Public Interest Center, cultivating the expansion of its wide array of public interest and pro bono programs. Before coming to Penn Carey Law, Rivera Finkelstein was the inaugural director of the Public Interest Resource Center at Widener Law School. She began working at Widener as a professor of legal research and writing, where she also taught interviewing and counseling, and public interest lawyering.     

Rivera Finkelstein has worked to advance racial and social justice throughout her career, which she began as an Assistant Defender at the Defender Association of Philadelphia, where she focused primarily on the defense of children. She serves on several nonprofit boards including the Defender Association of Philadelphia (Executive Committee) and the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project (Advisory Board). She previously chaired the boards of Community Legal Services, Philadelphia Legal Assistance, and Justice at Work. She is a past president of the Hispanic Bar Association of Pennsylvania. Rivera Finkelstein is also a past chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Pro Bono and Public Service Opportunities.

Rivera Finkelstein attended Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology, and the Temple University Beasley School of Law. She earned a Certificate in Executive Leadership from the Bryn Mawr College Graduate School of Social Work & Social Research, Nonprofit Executive Leadership Institute, and she completed the Executive Program in Social Impact Strategy at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice.