{"id":7597,"date":"2021-07-13T08:50:55","date_gmt":"2021-07-13T12:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/?page_id=217167"},"modified":"2025-12-02T20:38:05","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T20:38:05","slug":"clinic-faculty-and-staff","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/experiential-learning\/clinics\/our-clinics\/racial-equity-in-education-law-and-policy-clinic\/clinic-faculty-and-staff\/","title":{"rendered":"Clinic Faculty and Staff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professor Janel George<\/h2>\n
\n

Professor George’s work and scholarship focus on racial stratification in public education and the role of the law in perpetuating it. She is the founding director of the Racial Equity in Education Law and Policy Clinic (REEL Policy Clinic), which is Georgetown Law\u2019s newest clinic. Professor George’s scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in\u00a0the Columbia Law Review<\/span>(This link opens in a new tab)<\/span><\/span><\/a>, the\u00a0Georgetown Law Journal<\/span>(This link opens in a new tab)<\/span><\/span><\/a>, the\u00a0Fordham Urban Law Journal<\/span>(This link opens in a new tab)<\/span><\/span><\/a>, and the\u00a0Clinical Law Review<\/span>(This link opens in a new tab)<\/span><\/span><\/a>, among others. She has also produced commentary that has been published in Ms., CNN, Education Week, Teen Vogue, and other outlets.<\/p>\n

She began her legal career as a Women\u2019s Law and Public Policy Fellow with Georgetown University Law Center. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, where she served as a Managing Editor of the Wisconsin Law Review, and Spelman College.\u00a0She has served as an adjunct professor with Georgetown Law and Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, as well as a congressional staffer and senior counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. As legislative counsel on Capitol Hill, her portfolio included issues of health care, civil rights, immigration, and education. At LDF, she worked with a large coalition, the Dignity in Schools Campaign, to reform discriminatory school discipline practices. She has co-authored policy reports on Black girls and education, and as a policy advisor at the Learning Policy Institute, on magnet schools and the federal role and school integration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

Amber Koonce<\/h2>\n

Amber Koonce is an Adjunct Professor of Law and the Senior Director of Legal Research and Development at PolicyLink, where she counsels on<\/span>\u00a0legal strategies and policy interventions to promote\u00a0the full effectuation of the 14th Amendment,\u00a0<\/span>an inclusive economy,<\/span>\u00a0and representative democracy.<\/span>\u00a0 Prior to this role,\u00a0Amber\u00a0was Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund where she litigated matters of economic justice, employment, and\u00a0equal access to\u00a0<\/span>education.\u00a0 In that role,\u00a0<\/span>Amber\u00a0represented\u00a0Nikole\u00a0Hannah-Jones<\/span>(This link opens in a new tab)<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0in her tenure dispute\u00a0with UNC; filed\u00a0an\u00a0amicus brief\u00a0in the Supreme Court’s UNC affirmative action case<\/span>(This link opens in a new tab)<\/span><\/span><\/a>; filed a complaint challenging the censorship of Black history and other inclusive topics in South Carolina public schools; and represented a class of Black parents and students seeking the complete desegregation of their school system in Alabama<\/span>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Amber\u00a0also\u00a0<\/span>served as Lead Counsel for Community Development Financial Institution advocacy; co-authored\u00a0Economic Justice guidance for Businesses and Funders<\/span>(This link opens in a new tab)<\/span><\/span><\/a>, overviewing Title VI, Title VII and Section 1981 compliance in a post-SFFA\u00a0<\/i>landscape; and filed an\u00a0amicus brief\u00a0defending NASDAQ’s diversity disclosure rule for corporate boards<\/span>(This link opens in a new tab)<\/span><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Amber\u00a0has\u00a0presented to a number of organizations on these matters, including the\u00a0National Association of Counsel for Children, the Affirmative Action Coalition at UNC-Chapel Hill,\u00a0 the\u00a0<\/span>Black Limited Partners Association, Opportunity Finance Network, Hope Policy Institute, and Open to All, among others.\u00a0\u00a0Amber\u00a0clerked for the Honorable William A. Fletcher on the Ninth Circuit and graduated from Yale Law School.<\/p>\n

Sophia Tan<\/h2>\n

Sophia Tan joins the Racial Equity in Education Law & Policy Clinic as an experienced legal services advocate for education access and equity. Prior to starting her fellowship, she worked as a Staff Attorney at the Legal Aid Justice Center\u2019s Youth Justice Program serving youth, community members and advocates across Virginia. Working with organizers and attorneys in the program, Sophia represented caregivers on education law issues ranging from special education, school discipline, enrollment, and language access and partnered with colleagues to support youth-serving coalitions and campaigns. After graduating from Duke in 2019 with a J.D. and Master\u2019s in Public Policy degree, Sophia completed a two-year fellowship with the Education Law Center-PA to increase language access and improve equitable services for multilingual students and families in public schools. Sophia started her career in public service in her hometown of Philadelphia as an office manager at a bilingual preschool and then a grant writer in an education nonprofit that trained and coached educators to improve literacy outcomes for young students.<\/p>\n

Rayna Zhou<\/h2>\n

Rayna serves as the Office Manager for three of Georgetown Law\u2019s 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\u2019s DC Street Law Program. Previously, she worked on Georgetown’s main campus after graduating from the School of Foreign Service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Janel George Professor George’s work and scholarship focus on racial stratification in public education and the role of the law in perpetuating it. She is the founding director of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":0,"parent":7569,"menu_order":83,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-7597","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/experiential-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/experiential-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/experiential-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/experiential-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/experiential-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/experiential-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7597\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/experiential-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/experiential-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}