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All PILS Photo with Director Carmia N. Caesar at the PILS Fall 2011 Dinner |
PILS 2012 Graduating Class
Alison Borchgrevink
Alison Borchgrevink is a third-year Public Interest Law Scholar focusing on education law and other issues affecting youth. While at Georgetown, Alison has worked as an Education Pioneer Graduate School Fellow, assisting a D.C. charter school ensure its compliance with District and federal statutes. She also gained legal experience working at D.C. Public Schools and at the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee’s Education Policy office.
Prior to law school, Alison spent three years as a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development working on its HIV/AIDS housing programs. Through the fellowship, she also spent time at the U.S. Department of Education and the National Academy for State Health Policy.
Alison holds an editorial board position on the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy, and she will participate in the Federal Legislation and Advocacy Clinic in Spring 2012. She earned her M. S. in Social Work from the University of Texas at Austin and received her B. A. from Louisiana State University.
Sandra Fluke
Sandra Fluke’s professional background in domestic violence and human trafficking began with Sanctuary for Families in New York City. There, she launched the agency’s pilot Program Evaluation Initiative. While at Sanctuary, she co-founded the New York Statewide Coalition for Fair Access to Family Court, which after a twenty-year stalemate, successfully advocated for legislation granting access to civil orders of protection for unmarried victims of domestic violence, including LGBTQ victims and teens. Sandra was also a member of the Manhattan Borough President’s Taskforce on Domestic Violence and numerous other New York City and New York State coalitions that successfully advocated for policy improvements impacting victims of domestic violence.
As the 2010 recipient of the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles Fran Kandel Public Interest Grant, she researched, wrote, and produced an instructional film on how to apply for a domestic violence restraining order in pro per. She has also interned with the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking; Polaris Project; Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County; Break the Cycle; the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project; NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund; Crime Victim and Sexual Assault Services; and the Human Services Coalition of Tompkins County.
Through Georgetown’s clinic programs, Sandra has proposed legislation based on fact-finding in Kenya regarding child trafficking for domestic work, and has represented victims of domestic violence in protection order cases. Sandra is the Development Editor of the Journal of Gender and the Law, and served as the President of Law Students for Reproductive Justice, and the Vice President of the Women’s Legal Alliance. In her first year, she also co-founded a campus committee addressing human trafficking. Cornell University awarded her a B. S. in Policy Analysis & Management, as well as Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies in 2003.
Joseph Graziano III
Joseph is a 2007 Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Georgetown University with a major in sociology and a minor in government. Driven by a blue-collar, service-oriented background and his father’s involvement in 9-11 as a New York City firefighter, Joey is dedicated to ensuring that the U.S. government honors its commitment to veterans by ensuring they are provided the federal benefits they earned through their service. Joey’s undergraduate thesis anticipated that soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan would experience high levels of negative stressors. To counter that, Joey began working with retired Lieutenant Colonel John Sharp to represent veterans before the US Court of Appeals for Veteran’s Claims. Joey has since founded the Academy for Veterans and has worked as a law clerk at the National Veterans Legal Services Program. While at Georgetown University, he was the starting third baseman on the baseball team, a four time Big East Academic All-Star, and the team’s Most Valuable Teammate. After graduating, Joey moved to a Dominican Republic barrio to run the non-profit Beisbol y Libros, which uses baseball to incentivize literacy for children. During his law school summers, Joey has worked as a Summer Associate in Washington DC at the law firm Jones Day, focusing mainly on white collar and FCPA litigation. In November 2009, Joey was awarded a prestigious George J. Mitchell Scholarship to spend the 2010-2011 academic year in Galway, Ireland at the National University of Ireland, Galway. There, Joey received a First Honors L.L.M. in Public Law. Currently, Joey is working full time as a consultant within the Office of Evaluation and Suspension at the World Bank, focusing on anti-corruption work.
Sharita Gruberg
Sharita Gruberg is a third year law student with an interest in post-conflict reconstruction and assisting displaced populations. Prior to law school, she worked as a program specialist for the Women's Refugee Commission. While at the Commission, she participated in lobbying efforts to increase humanitarian assistance and strengthen refugee resettlement programs as well as monitoring family detention facilities and advocating for the increased use of alternatives to detention.
In addition to being a Public Interest Law Scholar, Sharita is the writing program director for the Georgetown Journal of Poverty Law and Policy and on the board of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice. She also successfully represented an asylum seeker in removal proceedings through the Center for Applied Legal Studies. Last summer, Sharita was a legal associate with the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an NGO that aims to help Cambodians heal from the Khmer Rouge regime by documenting the regime's atrocities and educating young Cambodians about genocide in order to facilitate justice and reconciliation.
Sharita graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in Political Science and Women's Studies. While at UNC, she was active in student government, served on the board of the Carolina Women's Center, and traveled to Croatia and Bosnia to conduct research on the role of international organizations in post-conflict reconstruction.
Alice Hsieh
Prior to law school, Alice Hsieh volunteered with migrant workers in Shanghai, which exposed her to the realities of forced labor and labor trafficking. When she returned to the U.S., she volunteered at Human Rights in China researching domestic surveillance practices in China leading up to the Beijing Olympics. While in undergrad, she interned for two summers in the chambers of the Honorable Chief Justice Hassell of the Supreme Court of Virginia researching the development of the Virginia judiciary and judicial independence. In addition, she worked at the Brennan Center for Justice as an undergraduate intern, where she did preliminary research and writing on topics including detention and habeas corpus violations, racial profiling, community-oriented defense, and domestic counter terrorism. Alice graduated magna cum laude from New York University in 2009 with a major in International Relations and minors in East Asian Studies and Law and Society. There, she co-founded the Journal of Politics & International Affairs at NYU and the Undergraduate Microfinance Initiative at NYU. Her thesis on whether World Bank Involvement Causes Political Unrest was published with honors.
Alice is particularly interested in pursuing a career in public interest litigation. This past summer, she worked at the International Rights Advocates at Conrad & Scherer, LLP litigating cases against corporations that violate human rights. She previously interned in the chambers of the Hon. Roslynn R. Mauskopf, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York. Alice successfully represented an asylee before the Arlington Immigration Court while participating in the CALS Clinic last spring. At Georgetown, Alice is currently a Senior Writing Fellow, a former Law Fellow, and the Legislative & Advocacy Chair of the Women’s Legal Alliance.
Danielle Jefferis
Danielle is a third-year student pursuing a career in public interest litigation, namely in the realm of civil liberties and counterterrorism. Last summer, she interned with the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, litigating issues related to post-9/11 detention and torture, government surveillance, and the First Amendment. This year, she is continuing her work with the ACLU, but on the legislative side, working with the Washington Legislative Office on issues of FBI surveillance and investigative powers. She is also a Law Clerk with the International Human Rights Group of Cohen Milstein Sellers and Toll.
At Georgetown, Danielle is currently Student Counsel with the Appellate Litigation Program. She also participated in the Center for Applied Legal Studies during her second year, where she successfully co-represented an asylum seeker in Immigration Court. Danielle is a member of the Barristers’ Council Appellate Advocacy Division, a Senior Writing Fellow and a former Law Fellow for Professor Sirota.
Prior to law school, Danielle worked with the Arab American Family Support Center in Brooklyn to open the Khalil Gibran International Academy – the first dual language Arabic-English public school in the country – where she managed a wide range of programs serving the Arabic-speaking community. She graduated from New York University with a degree in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and was the 2007 recipient of the Ibn Khaldun Prize for Excellence and Achievement in the Arabic Language.
Sara Kane
Sara Kane is a member of the class of 2012. She is a student-attorney in the 2011-2012 Criminal Justice Clinic and spent this past summer at the Parole Division of the Public Defender Service, where she represented D.C. residents alleged to have violated their terms of parole or supervised release. Sara spent summer 2010 at the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, a non-profit law office that provides pre-trial, trial, and some post-conviction representation for indigent defendants facing the death penalty in Louisiana. She hopes to continue indigent defense work upon graduation.
Sara is the Online Editor of the Georgetown Journal of Poverty Law & Policy, and was a 2010-2011 Board Director for Georgetown Human Rights Action. She was also a member of the 2010-2011 Human Rights Institute's fact-finding mission regarding the human rights of mentally disabled persons deported to Jamaica; their report is available at: http://www.law.georgetown.edu/humanrightsinstitute/documents/Sent.pdf.
Before law school, Sara was a Fulbright fellow in Bogota, Colombia, where she studied Colombian constitutional law and researched land protection policies for Colombia's over 4 million internally displaced citizens. Before moving to Bogota, Sara was a paralegal and investigator at the American Civil Liberties Union of the Nation's Capital, where much of her work involved investigating alleged violations of fourth amendment law, federal employees' due process rights, and prisoners' rights. Sara graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Maryland in 2006.
Alex Marlin
Prior to attending Georgetown, Alex Marlin joined Teach For America and spent three years teaching second grade at P. S. 70 in the Bronx. In 2006, he joined the United States Peace Corps, and was placed in South Africa as an Education and Community Development Advisor. In the village of Nkampani, he coordinated large-scale HIV awareness and testing campaigns, which made testing and information available to thousands of rural South Africans. These efforts were bolstered by grassroots involvement by community members who participated in the development and enactment of AIDS prevention strategies. Additional projects included establishing a library for village youth and leading a community effort to install speed bumps at a high-traffic crossing, which has ended a tragic pattern of pedestrian deaths.
At Georgetown, Alex is a member of the Georgetown Law Journal and has participated in the CALS clinic, where he represented a client seeking political asylum in the United States. During his summers, he worked on civil rights litigation at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. Alex is currently a student attorney in Georgetown’s Juvenile Justice Clinic. Alex graduated from Northwestern University in 2003.
Charity Ryerson
Charity Ryerson graduated magna cum laude from Loyola University Chicago with a BA in political science. As an undergraduate student, she helped to create and implement Loyola's Socially Responsible Investment Policy, and was active in the student anti-sweatshop movement. Between college and law school, she worked in the international labor rights movement, supporting worker organizing on Latin American plantations and in factories that produced for the US market. She also investigated ongoing impunity for anti-union violence in Colombia and the progress made by the International Labor Organization courts, from which she produced reports used by Congress in the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement debates.
Since 2006, Charity has represented School of the Americas Watch on the Ethics Commission, a body created by the Colombian victims' movement to lay the groundwork for a Truth Commission. In this capacity, she visits displaced communities in rural Colombia, works closely with the Colombian victims' movement to support their work for Truth, Justice, and Integral Reparation, and engages in the ongoing debate about the conditions that would be necessary for a Truth Commission to be effective in Colombia. For most of 2009 and the summer of 2010, she worked for International Rights Advocates on several lawsuits against US companies for human rights violations overseas. In 2002, Charity was arrested for civil disobedience at the School of the Americas, and served 6 months in federal prison. While in prison, she organized underground educational programs for prisoners, focused on communicating with the press about the inadequate provision of heath care to inmates.
Agatha Schmaedick Tan
A dual citizen, raised in a bilingual and bi-cultural family, Agatha strives to build bridges through her professional work—whether they be across national, social, or economic divides. For eight years prior to law school, Agatha worked on issues of labor and employment rights, immigrant community inclusion and integration, and international development.
After college, Agatha worked with migrant farmworkers and urban immigrant communities as the Immigrant Justice Program Director for the Community Alliance of Lane County (the county where Agatha grew up in Oregon). In this position, she strove to combat anti-immigrant hate crimes and to educate high school and middle school students about U.S. immigration history. Also, she worked with various community stakeholders (employers, consumers, clergy, workers, and unions) to draft and advocate for the passage of State legislation to improve the working and living conditions of farmworkers. Soon thereafter, Agatha moved to Washington D.C. to work for the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), an international labor rights monitoring and advocacy organization. The WRC was created in 2000 as a result of a national student movement to combat sweatshop labor conditions in factories making collegiate licensed apparel, of which Agatha was a founding member. For six years as a staff member of the WRC, Agatha inspected numerous factories and advocated on behalf of garment workers throughout Asia. In 2006, Agatha was promoted to Assistant Director/Field Operations and continued to help establish the WRC as an internationally respected labor rights monitoring organization, and to effectuate real, positive change in the working and living conditions of garment workers worldwide.
During her studies at Georgetown Law, Agatha has clerked for the D.C. Employment Justice Center, International Organization for Migration, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Service Employees International Union, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board. She also frequently serves as an Indonesian interpreter and translator for legal aid organizations in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Agatha graduated cum laude from the University of Oregon, Robert D. Clark Honors College with a B. A. in International Studies. Agatha’s interests include labor, employment, immigration, trade and international law. In her free time, Agatha enjoys dancing, sewing, and chasing after her one-year-old son.
PILS 2013 Graduating Class
Jeremy Blasi
Jeremy came to Georgetown Law with ten years of experience as a researcher and advocate for low-wage workers. From 2004 until 2010, he served as a field representative and ultimately Director of Investigations for the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC, www.workersrights.org), a labor rights monitoring organization that works to combat sweatshops and protect the rights of workers in the supply chains of multinational apparel and textile companies. In these capacities, he coordinated investigations in such countries as Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Kenya, Swaziland, Turkey, Thailand, and Bangladesh. This work resulted in a number of breakthroughs to remedy wage theft and other labor rights violations – leading to the payment of more than $5 million in illegally withheld compensation and the reinstatement of over a thousand workers who had been unlawfully terminated. He continues to work with the WRC as a senior consultant.
Prior to joining the WRC, Jeremy worked at the UC Berkeley Labor Center, where he contributed to a variety of projects concerning low-wage labor and produced the documentaries “Trade Secrets,” concerning labor rights and the environment in U.S. trade policy, and “Eyes on the Fries,” concerning employment practices in fast food and retail workplaces.
Since beginning law school, Jeremy has maintained his involvement in human and labor rights issues. Among other experiences, during the summer of 2011 he worked as a law clerk at the ACLU of Southern California, where he contributed to litigation and advocacy on behalf of homeless veterans suffering from PTSD and brain trauma, youth unfairly punished by Los Angeles’ daytime curfew, and a victim of religion-based employment discrimination.
Jeremy grew up in Los Angeles and graduated summa cum laude from UC Berkeley.
Lauren Dollar
Lauren Dollar graduated from Emory University in 2005 with a major in international studies. In 2006, she volunteered in post-Katrina New Orleans working in a free legal clinic assisting hurricane victims with insurance claims, participating in public housing advocacy, and monitoring the prison conditions in the Orleans Parish Prison. She also interned with the International Rescue Committee and Refugee Family Services, and worked with the Emory Living Wage Campaign. After graduation, she completed a Master's of Philosophy in Justice and Transformation from the University of Cape Town in 2008. From 2007-2010, she worked at the South African and Dutch branches of Young in Prison, where she coordinated programs for juvenile offenders in multiple juvenile correctional facilities in Cape Town, South Africa, and worked on organizational development in Amsterdam.
Abigail Marshak
Abbey’s career interests include criminal sentencing policy, incarceration conditions, and indigent defense within the United States. Prior to attending law school she worked as an associate for the US Program at Human Rights Watch, where she assisted on various reports focusing on human rights violations within the United States, including on criminal justice, sexual assault, and immigration policy. Abbey’s career interests stem from a 2005 internship at the DC Public Defender Service, where as a criminal investigator she was first exposed to conditions within the DC jails.
At Georgetown, Abbey plans to participate in the Community Justice Project Clinic in the Spring of 2012. She is currently interning at the Institutional Services Program in the Community Justice Division of the DC Public Defender where she represents individuals in their jail disciplinary hearings and assists with other issues related to their incarceration. Since beginning law school she has clerked at the Alexandria, VA, Public Defender Service and volunteered at the Father McKenna Center serving homeless men.
Abbey graduated from the University of Michigan with a self-designed major in “Crime and Punishment.” She received high honors for her thesis on the impact of nomenclature on students’ perceptions of the incarcerated population. For two years, while an undergrad, she led weekly theater workshops in local prisons. She also completed internships with the Sentencing Project, National Criminal Justice Association, Washtenaw County Public Defender, and for a Michigan state representative.
Abbey rode her bike across the country, worked on an organic produce farm, loves to cook (and eat), and is from New York.
Reid Rector
Before enrolling at Georgetown, Reid Rector worked for five years at non-profit and human rights organizations with a focus on conflicts and health emergencies in Africa. From 2008-2009, he worked in Lesotho, Africa for the Touching Tiny Lives Foundation, a small non-profit organization that assists HIV affected children in rural communities. While in Lesotho, he spearheaded efforts to expand and improve community outreach and fundraising efforts. Prior to that, he spent over two years at the Save Darfur Coalition in a variety of roles helping to address the conflict and human rights emergency in Darfur, Sudan. While at Save Darfur, he helped organize dozens of international rallies and protests and also co-wrote two advocacy reports on peacekeeping efforts: Keeping our Word: Fulfilling the Mandate to Protect Civilians in Darfur and UNAMID Deployment on the Brink. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and currently lives in Takoma Park, Maryland with his wife Bridget.
Vasanthi (Vasu) Reddy
Vasu graduated from Harvard University in 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts in Government. While at Harvard, she interned at the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, the Universal American School in Dubai, and John Kerry for President. She also taught with Harvard’s CityStep program and taught ESL courses in a housing project. Since her graduation, she has been the clinical department administrator at Sanctuary for Families, a full-service organization in New York for domestic violence and trafficking victims.
Stacie Reimer Smith
Prior to her studies at Georgetown Law, Stacie Reimer Smith spent four years developing her career in the non-profit and government sectors. Stacie earned her B. A. from Northwest University in 2006. Following graduation, Stacie worked as a case manager for a social service non-profit that serves homeless families. Stacie was responsible for low-income housing management, new client intake, and client advocacy and support. Stacie then joined the Peace Corps as a youth development worker in Bulgaria. During her two years in Bulgaria, Stacie became fluent in the language and worked in partnership with local schools and non-profit organizations. Her main projects focused on improving the quality of life for orphans, disabled children and at-risk youth. These projects included the creation of a sensory room for autistic children, the creation of an after-school club for at-risk youth, human trafficking awareness campaigns, and HIV/AIDS education.
At Georgetown, Stacie is involved in the Georgetown Human Rights Action group’s advocacy committee and anti-trafficking committee. During her 1L year Stacie worked as a student volunteer at the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and interned with the Rebecca Project for Human Rights. During her 1L summer Stacie interned at the Human Rights Law Network in New Delhi, India, where she worked on public interest lawsuits concerning women’s health. Currently, Stacie is interning at the DOJ’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and is a Law Fellow for Prof. Ross. Stacie is also a staff member of the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law. Stacie plans to use her law degree to work in either a non-profit organization or a government agency working to combat human trafficking.
Kelly Whitener
Kelly Whitener is currently a 2E at Georgetown and works for the Senate Committee on Finance, managing the Medicaid, CHIP, and prevention and wellness portfolios. As an undergraduate, Kelly studied psychology and Spanish at the University of Michigan and worked with children with special needs. In 2002, Kelly joined the Peace Corps, serving for three years in Ecuador as an urban youth development volunteer. Her time in the Peace Corps sparked an interest in policy. Upon her return to the US, Kelly studied public health policy at UCLA while working as a case manager in community mental health clinics. After completing her graduate work, Kelly was selected as a David A. Winston Health Policy Fellow which brought her to Washington, DC. Since moving to Washington, Kelly has continued to focus her work on improving the health of low-income children and families.
PILS 2014 Graduating Class
Anand Appulingam
Anand is a native of New Jersey with a BS in finance and international business from Georgetown University. Following his graduation, Anand did graduate work in mathematical finance at Columbia and worked in volatility trading for an investment bank. Building upon a lifelong passion for the environment, he helped form The Carbon Group to help develop the low-carbon economy and to bring environmental markets to least developed countries. Through his work with The Carbon Group, Anand is helping to address the needs of LDC's in the global debate on climate change and has worked on multiple energy and infrastructure projects in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. As a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, Anand is currently working to develop a credit facility to help bring financing to clean energy projects in the developing world. Following graduation, Anand hopes to help develop climate policy and environmental markets in the U.S.
Katie Bacharach
Katie graduated from the University of Virginia in 2007 with a BA in Foreign Affairs and a minor in Global Cultures and Commerce. While at UVA, Katie participated in an international relations and human rights study abroad program in Geneva, Switzerland. After graduating, Katie joined the U.S. Peace Corps as an Environment Volunteer in Madagascar. She spent her first year in Madagascar working largely with subsistence farmers to improve agricultural techniques, but her service was interrupted when a coup d’état forced the suspension of the Peace Corps program. A few months later she was selected to return to Madagascar and reopen the Peace Corps program. Once back in Madagascar, Katie spent a year working in cooperation with an American NGO to improve the functionality of a small community-based forest management association, develop an environmental education program and improve an ecotourism project and forest restoration project. Katie then extended her service for six months to work with a local Malagasy NGO as a supervisor for their environment projects and for a women’s and children’s rights project. Katie is fluent in Malagasy and intends to pursue a career in international human rights.
Justin Bennett
Justin’s passion for public interest law stems from his Christian faith and the clear biblical teachings to “do justice and love mercy” (Micah 6:8). Justin graduated from Gordon College in 2007 with a degree in Biblical and Theological Studies and a minor in foreign languages (Spanish and Koine Greek). Prior to law school, Justin worked in the Outreach Department of Grace Chapel in Lexington, MA, where he supported the work of Grace’s 80+ global and regional ministry partners and helped coordinate over two dozen domestic and international service projects. Justin also worked as a paralegal for the Law Offices of Jeffrey B. Rubin in Boston, MA, a firm specializing in criminal defense and immigration law. There, he worked closely with the predominantly Spanish-speaking clientele to prepare applications for permanent residency, naturalization, asylum, and withholding/cancellation of removal. Justin hopes to explore many areas of public interest law while at Georgetown, especially international human rights, immigration, and criminal law. Whatever Justin finds himself working, he is grateful to be learning a practical way to put his faith into action. He also knows that he could not accomplish any of this without the support of his incredible wife, Lauren, whom he joyfully married on June 4, 2011.
Rebecca Broches
Rebecca grew up in New York City and received a degree in the interdisciplinary Science in Society Program 
from Wesleyan University. While at Wesleyan, Rebecca spent her summers interning at Planned Parenthood and the Innocence Project. This work catalyzed her commitment to addressing the health disparities experienced by underserved communities and led her to Georgetown Law. After graduating from Wesleyan in 2008, Rebecca moved back to NYC and spent two years working as a paralegal at the law firm, Morvillo Abramowitz. More recently, she contributed to research for "Stress and Justice in the South Bronx," an epidemiological study looking at the impact of parental criminal justice system involvement on children's mental health. This summer, Rebecca spent an incredible month in rural India learning about community-based primary health care.
Jennesa Calvo-Friedman
Jennesa is committed to economic justice and is especially interested in how government can better serve the most marginalized and address rising economic inequality. She graduated from Swarthmore College in 2008 with an Honors Major in Political Science and Honors Minor in Sociology & Anthropology. Jennesa is the Director of an innovative program to intervene in the spread of gun violence across New York State, modeled on CeaseFire Chicago. She has worked for the Majority Counsel of the New York State Senate, where she assisted Chief Counsel in legislative, public policy, and litigation. Jennesa also traveled to Georgia and Florida as a staff member on Barack Obama's 2008 Presidential campaign. More recently, she helped to elect Eric Schneiderman as New York’s Attorney General. In the run-up to Health Care reform, she helped start a national advocacy organization (with Georgetown Law PILS graduates!), “Young Invincibles.” While at Swarthmore College, Jennesa spearheaded successful campaigns for responsible consumer practices. In 2005, in response to the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, she helped found the Genocide Intervention Network. She also published a paper entitled “From Fraud to Responsibility: A discourse analysis of the speeches of two Presidents in their quest to implement welfare reform.”
Aparna Krishnaswamy
Aparna is from Greenville, South Carolina and graduated from Duke University in 2005. While at Duke, 
she interned at the Legal Aid Society in Asheville, North Carolina, where she helped Domestic Violence victims represent themselves in court. She spent a summer in Cape Town, South Africa, teaching a speech and debate workshop to kids in the township of Phillipe.
For the past few years Aparna has been working in the Office of Congresswoman Niki Tsongas, where she served as a Legislative Assistant for health care, women's issues, education, immigration and Social Security. She advised her boss during the historic health care reform debate, helping the Congresswoman focus her legislative efforts on women's health. Aparna wrote legislation to provide legal protections for victims of sexual assault in the military, which passed in the House of Representatives. Aparna has also worked in the Office of Senator Barbara Mikulski, and the health policy office of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, chaired by the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Aparna took a break from Capitol Hill to serve as a field organizer during Obama presidential campaign in North Dakota and Wisconsin. Aparna is interested in women's issues, poverty, health care and human rights. She hopes to use her law degree to continue public policy work in one or more of these areas.
Clare Kruger
Clare grew up in Berkeley, California with her mother and three younger brothers. She graduated from UCLA in 2009 with a degree in Political Science. As an undergraduate at UCLA, Clare participated in Project BRITE (Bruins Reforming Incarceration Through Education), where she tutored young inmates at Juvenile Probation Camp Vernon Kilpatrick. She also assisted a public policy professor at UCLA in her research on the prevalence and proliferation of youth gangs in Los Angeles. Until recently, Clare was working with the Beat Within where she led creative writing workshops in juvenile halls and edited workshop pieces for the Beat Within's weekly publication - a magazine composed of the most prominent workshop pieces, which circulated throughout many California juvenile halls. Last year, Clare spent time volunteering at a juvenile detention facility in Cusco, Peru. Clare’s passion for justice and a desire to affect systemic change to the juvenile justice system has led Clare to Georgetown Law.
Elizabeth (Betsy) Noel
Betsy grew up in Coronado, California, near San Diego, and graduated from Yale University in 2006 with a degree in Anthropology. Following graduation from Yale, Betsy obtained a 
nursing degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing. Until recently, Betsy served as Manager for Quality Improvement and Safety at the Goldberg Centers for General Pediatrics and Community Health at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. In this role she developed and implemented new systems for improving access and quality of care for the over 30,000 patients, most of whom receive publicly funded insurance, that receive primary care in the Goldberg Center health centers. She is passionate about transparent, coordinated and effective clinical systems that prioritize family preferences in their health care experience. Betsy aims to use her law degree to further her work in the health care arena by becoming a more effective advocate for patients, safety, and accountable care. Prior to her position in pediatric primary care, Betsy worked as a registered nurse at Children’s National on the pediatric Hematology Oncology unit.
Betsy enjoys painting, running and yoga, and owns an invitation company with her husband.
Lee Wang
Lee grew up in New York City and graduated from Yale University with a dual degree in English and Ethnicity, Race and Migration. Before starting law school, Lee worked as a journalist and documentary filmmaker for numerous media outlets including PBS, MSNBC and Newsweek. She has covered presidential elections, the war in Iraq, the debate over healthcare, and immigration. Her film, "Someone Else's War," recently aired on PBS, and documented the stories of Filipino contractors employed by the U.S. military in Iraq. Lee has also worked closely with the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, a non-profit that helps Iraqi refugees to apply for asylum. In 2009, she traveled with the group to Jordan, and produced several short films about their clients which are now used for trainings and fundraising. Lee's interests include immigration, labor and civil rights law. She lives with her husband Danny and her daughter Maya in Capitol Hill.
