Faculty and Staff

Charisma X. Howell, Visiting Associate Professor and Street Law Director

Charisma X. Howell is Visiting Associate Professor and Director of Georgetown Law’s Street Law Practicum, the original street law program in the world and a model for experiential legal education since 1972. Each year, the program places Georgetown Law students in District of Columbia public and charter high schools, where they teach practical law through discussion-driven classes that reach 600 to 800 high school students annually.

Her scholarship examines how deliberately structured classrooms build legal reasoning and professional judgment in law students, and how legal education can cultivate critical citizenship. Her current article project, The Classroom as Democratic Laboratory: Paulo Freire, the Banking Model, and the Foundations of Critical Citizenship, examines how intentional sequencing and dialogue prepare students to interpret, question, and apply legal concepts. She is also co-author of Teach by Not Teaching: Learner-Centered Law School Clinical Supervision, published in A Global Handbook of Interactive Models of Clinical Legal Education.

Professor Howell began her legal career as a law student with the California Innocence Project, then worked for the Honorable John A. Houston of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California before joining the San Diego County Office of the Public Defender. She later joined Georgetown as a Street Law Teaching Fellow and adjunct professor, then served as policy counsel for an education advocacy organization and as Deputy Executive Director and Legal Counsel of the District of Columbia’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council before returning to direct the Street Law program.

For two decades, she has taught hands-on, discussion-based methods to legal professionals, educators, policymakers, and community stakeholders in more than a dozen countries worldwide.

Professor Howell earned her LL.M. in Advocacy from Georgetown University Law Center, her J.D. from California Western School of Law, and her B.S. in Management, with an emphasis in Entrepreneurship, from Arizona State University.

Sara Wanous, Teaching Fellow

Sara Wanous (she/her) is a Street Law clinical teaching fellow. She earned her JD from American University Washington College of Law. Following law school, Sara completed two judicial clerkships. First, she was a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Rosalyn Tang at the Appellate Court of Maryland. Then, she was a judicial law clerk to the Honorable J. Michael Ryan at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

During law school, Sara interned for three different public defender offices on both the state and federal levels. Sara also spent her third year of law school in the Criminal Justice Clinic, preparing a motion for relief for her client under the Juvenile Restoration Act in Maryland. She served as a classroom fellow for the Legal Rhetoric Program and a teaching fellow in the Marshall Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project. She was the Senior Note and Comment Editor for Volume 30 of the American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy, and the Law.

Before law school, Sara taught third grade in Minnesota and worked in student development in higher education. She earned a BA in Elementary Education from Bethel University.

Myriam Allen, Teaching Fellow

Myriam Allen is a Supervising Attorney and Clinical Teaching Fellow in Georgetown’s Street Law Clinic. She holds a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, where she is also pursuing an LL.M. in Advocacy.

During law school, Myriam dedicated every opportunity she had to develop her passion for education and disability law even while becoming a mother of two children. She was a Law Clerk at the U.S. Department of Education in the Office of Civil Rights, the Children’s Law Center in the Healthy Together Program, and the Public Defenders Service of D.C. in the Special Education Division. Myriam also served as a Student Attorney in Georgetown’s Health Justice Alliance Clinic, where she successfully represented her clients in IEP meetings, coordinated essential testing, and provided counsel on public assistance programs. Most recently, Myriam served as a Fellow with the Urban Institute-Georgetown Law Project on Health Equity and the Law.

Before law school, Myriam served in the White House, U.S. House of Representatives, and the U.S. Senate. She also taught elementary and early childhood education in the District of Columbia Public Schools. Myriam earned her B.A. in Political Science from Florida International University.

Rayna Zhou, Office Manager

Rayna serves as the Office Manager for three of Georgetown Law’s experiential programs. She manages the day-to-day operations of the Health Justice Alliance Clinic, the Racial Equity in Education Law and Policy Clinic and Georgetown’s DC Street Law Program. Previously, she worked on Georgetown’s main campus after graduating from the School of Foreign Service.