Students Earn Public Interest Fellowships. Ilana Abramson (’17) received a Massachusetts Bar Foundation Legal Intern Fellowship. The award provides a stipend for law students who intern at nonprofit organizations providing civil legal services to low-income clients in Massachusetts. Abramson worked at the AIDS Action Committee in Boston, Mass.
Yelena Greenberg (’17) was selected
Sonam Bhagat (’17) received a Goodwin
Kate Lebeaux (’15) and Michelle Martínez (’14) have been selected for fel-
Procter Public Service Fellowship for Law Students of Color and the MassMutual/ Goodwin Procter Public Interest Fellowship award. Bhagat used these generous awards to fund a summer internship with the Health Care Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office.
BU LAW AWARDS 12 PUBLIC SERVICE FELLOWSHIPS TO CLASS OF 2015. Since 2010, the School of Law has awarded a handful of yearlong Public Service Fellowships to select members of the graduating class to support their work at under-resourced public interest organizations across the US and abroad. Hoping to fund the fellowships, BU President Robert Brown issued a $1 million matching challenge to alumni and friends in spring 2015. Alumni donors responded with an incredible outpouring of support, exceeding the goal and securing the dollar-for-dollar match from the University. To recognize the most generous gifts, 10 of the 12 fellowships will now bear the names of alumni donors or their matching firms, including the N. Neal Pike Disability Rights Fellowship, established in 2012. Twelve members of the Class of 2015 received BU Law Public Service Fellowships to support their work on diverse issues, including: disability and employment law, reproductive rights, internet freedom, immigrants’ rights, public education, international human rights, and legal aid. This year’s recipients, their fellowships, and their host organizations are:
by the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy to receive a coveted 2015 Rappaport Center Fellowship. The generous stipend funded Greenberg’s work in the Health Care Division of the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General over the summer.
lowships from the Department of Justice Attorney General’s Honors Program; these prestigious two-year fellowships are funding their work with the Boston Immigration Court and the Executive Office of Immigration Review in New York City, respectively.
nn Kyra Berasi, Center for Reproductive Rights, US Policy and Advocacy Program, Washington, D.C. nn Dena Birkenkamp, William and Patricia Kleh Fellow, Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid, Immigration Law Project, Minneapolis, Minn. nn Caitlyn Byers, N. Neal Pike Disability Rights Fellow, Disability Law Center, Boston, Mass. nn Margot Finkel, Lisa G. Beckerman Fellow, New York State Attorney General’s Office, Labor Bureau, New York, N.Y. nn Emily Fridman, Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP Fellow, Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Malden, Mass. nn Danielle Hites, Yanan and Dan Schwartz Fellow, International Justice Resource Center, San Francisco, Calif. nn Gillian Stoddard Leatherberry, Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP Fellow, Legal Aid Society, Employment Law Unit, New York, N.Y. nn Kerry Sheehan, Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP Fellow, Public Knowledge, Washington, D.C. nn Hannah Tanabe, Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP Fellow, Greater Boston Legal Services, Criminal Offender Record Information & Re-Entry Project, Boston, Mass. nn Mike Tartaglia, Sixth Amendment Center, Boston, Mass.
Jeanette Schroeder (’17) was named a Peggy Browning Fellow. This highly competitive public interest labor law fellowship is awarded to top law students interested in workers’ rights. The honor funded her 10-week internship in the Employment Law unit at Greater Boston Legal Services this past summer. John Travis (’15) has been awarded a two-year fellowship from the Immigrant Justice Corps, a prestigious program placing recent law graduates with leading nonprofit immigration legal services organizations. Travis is working with Catholic Charities in New York, N.Y.
nn D iona Vakili, Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP Fellow, BU School of Law Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, Boston, Mass. nn Nicole Wolfman, Gerard H. Cohen Fellow, Committee for Public Counsel Services, Public Defender Division, Brockton, Mass.
ALUMNI PUBLIC SERVICE ACCOLADES In April, BU Law presented its annual DC Public Service Award to Deborah S. Mayer (‘97), chief counsel and staff director of the Select Committee on Ethics in the US Senate, in honor of a career committed to ethical conduct in the Navy JAG corps, Department of Justice, and Congress. Last fall, BU Law students, faculty, and alumni gathered for the annual Pro Bono Kick-Off to launch a new year of student service and to honor distinguished alumnus Richard Ney (‘78) with the 2014 Victor J. Garo Public Service Award. Dean Maureen O’Rourke instituted this distinction— awarded annually to an alum demonstrating exemplary commitment to pro bono work—in 2007 to honor Garo’s 30-year pro bono commitment to a wrongful conviction case.
THE RECORD | Fall 2015
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