Clinic Faculty & Staff

Clinic Director

Sara Colangelo is the Director of the Environmental Law & Justice Clinic and a Visiting Professor of Law. She is the 2020 recipient of the Georgetown Law Fahy Teaching Award. From 2015-2021 Professor Colangelo served as the Director of Georgetown’s Environmental Law and Policy Program, teaching multiple courses in environmental law. Her areas of specialty are environmental litigation and enforcement, including community considerations in the enforcement process: She speaks at conferences, appears in the media, and provides Congressional testimony on these topics. Professor Colangelo is a member of multiple boards and committees on environmental law and scholarship, science and health, and environmental justice.

Previously Professor Colangelo served as a trial attorney for the Environmental Enforcement Section (EES) of the Environment and Natural Resources Division at the Department of Justice for many years. She joined the Division through the Attorney General’s Honors Program. At EES, she managed complex civil environmental enforcement cases for pollution control and cleanup of hazardous waste sites to negotiated or litigated resolution, appearing on behalf of the United States in trials across the country. Professor Colangelo received multiple awards from the Environmental Protection Agency and from the Environment Division for her work. In addition, she was nominated for two awards from the Attorney General.

Professor Colangelo graduated cum laude from Georgetown Law, where she was a research assistant to Professor Richard Lazarus, worked in the environmental section of the Institute for Public Representation Clinic, and served on the Georgetown International Environmental Law Review. She was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and received the William Gaston Premium Scholarship at Brown University, where she graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in International Relations on the Global Environment Track.

Graduate Fellows

Sarah Dorman is an environmental and human rights lawyer with a professional background in community-led development, international finance, and international law. She has collaborated with communities and rights organizations around the world in defense of human rights and the environment, including in Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, and Chile. Her work has focused on transitional justice, corporate accountability, environmental democracy, and Indigenous peoples’ rights.

Most recently, Sarah served as a Senior Attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, where she advocated for policy reforms at the World Bank Group and accompanied communities in pursuing accountability and remedy for social and environmental harms linked to development projects. She also taught human rights as an Adjunct Professor at George Mason University.

Previously, Sarah served as a Legal Fellow with Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, where she contributed to litigation before the African and Inter-American human rights systems. Prior to this, Sarah spent extensive time in the Middle East, where she studied as a Fulbright grantee, witnessed the 2011 Arab uprisings, and worked for several years with an Egyptian rights organization based in Cairo. Sarah began her career with a local development organization in an Indigenous community in Mexico.

Sarah holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School. While studying law, she supported efforts to achieve accountability for corporate complicity in crimes against humanity committed in Colombia and spent several months in Bogotá conducting comparative research to inform the structure of the Colombian Peace Accord’s Special Peace Tribunal.

Emily Kath Schlidt is a supervisory attorney and clinical fellow at Georgetown’s Environmental Law & Justice Clinic. In this role, Emily supervises students working on environmental matters on behalf of communities with environmental justice concerns and co-teaches the Clinic’s seminar course.

Emily joined the Environmental Law & Justice Clinic from private practice, where she focused on environmental litigation, environmental compliance counseling, renewable energy financing, and environmental due diligence for a variety of real estate and transactional matters. While in private practice, she devoted significant time to pro bono matters, including assisting the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Toxics in drafting a report to advise the United Nations Human Rights Council on the right to science in the context of toxic and hazardous substances, resulting in honorary recognition during The Cyrus R. Vance Center’s 2021 Celebration of International Pro Bono Excellence.

Emily holds a J.D. from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, where she was the Managing Editor of the Journal of Law and Social Policy. Following law school, Emily clerked for the U.S. District of Wyoming.

Clinic Manager

Niko Perazich is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the clinic. Prior to Georgetown Niko worked at various DC-area law firms as a paralegal. Niko is a graduate of Middlebury College and is married with two young children.