“We can change the world and make it a better place. It is in your hands to make a difference.”
— Nelson Mandela, human rights lawyer

We recently celebrated the graduation of the Class of 2025! Each year, we feel so privileged to have been able to work with and get to know the newest class of lawyers pursuing social justice. Many 2025 graduates have already volunteered to serve as public interest alumni mentors, continuing to expand the network of support for SLS students aspiring to public interest and public service careers.

We look forward to meeting the incoming class of 2028 in just a few weeks. Our returning students are already preparing for a year leading the coming year’s pro bono projects, and paying it forward to support 1L students via PI-FAMM, the public interest mentoring program. We are also supporting students in the Class of 2027 with their job searches for next summer, and the Class of 2026 with their postgraduate job searches. For public interest and public service focused students, postgraduate job searches can be quite variable and require significant investments of time this summer.

I hope you enjoy this issue of Create Change, where we highlight students’ Alternative Spring Break Trips; events with this year’s concluding Visiting Public Interest Practitioner, Ashwini K.P.; and our Spring Public Interest Awards Reception — including student and faculty awardees, Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Awardee Stacy Villabolos, JD ’15; and a tribute to the enduring legacy of the Stanford Public Interest Law Foundation (SPILF) which sunset last year. As always, I welcome your feedback.

Sincerely,

Shannon

The Levin Center was honored to host Ashwini K.P., U.N. Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, as our international Visiting Public Interest Practitioner from April 20 – 24, 2025.

Ashwini K.P. was appointed to her role by the U.N. Human Rights Council in October 2022, and took up her functions as Special Rapporteur on November 1, 2022. She also served as an assistant professor in Political Science in India. As part of her research and activism, she has focused on policies related to marginalized communities like Dalit and indigenous communities in India. She has primarily concentrated on social exclusion, particularly race and descent-based discrimination in an international human right framework. Ashwini K.P. has represented Indian Dalit women in various civil society groups, helping them in strategizing how to ensure that women from marginalized communities are empowered in decision-making roles in activism and mainstream social movements. She has previously worked as a Senior Campaigner on Business and Human Rights with Amnesty International India. She earned her MPhil and Ph.D. in South Asian Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

While on campus as our Visiting Public Interest Practitioner, Ashwini K.P. delivered a community address, “Racism and its Present Day Manifestation,” and met with law school classes, student organizations, faculty, and individual students for mentoring meetings. With antiracism work continually under attack, and advocates facing resistance and even attempts to intimidate, we deep appreciate not only her sharing of her time with our students and faculty but her courage in leading this critical human rights work.

On May 14, we gathered with SLS students, faculty, alumni and their loved ones in Russo Lounge to honor students for their public interest contributions, including recipients of the Deborah L. Rhode Public Interest Award and the Lisa M. Schnitzer Memorial Scholarship; present the inaugural Public Interest Faculty Champion award, and celebrate this year’s Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Awardee.

This year’s Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award was presented to Stacy Villalobos, JD ’15, Director, Racial Economic Justice Program at Legal Aid at Work, by Professor Jayashri Srikantiah. The award is given annually to a Stanford Law School graduate whose outstanding work has advanced justice and social change in the lives of vulnerable populations on a community, national, or international level. In particular, the award is intended to highlight concrete and sustainable approaches and solutions to a societal problem.

Rebecca Berman, JD ’25, and Hannah Fleischmann, JD ’25, presented the inaugural Public Interest Faculty Champion Award to Professor Joanna L. Grossman. The award is chosen by nomination and vote of Public Interest Fellows and Public Interest Associates, who are members of the graduating class volunteering in leadership roles in the PI-FAMM public interest mentoring program. It recognizes s a faculty member who has been an outstanding advocate for public interest and public service at SLS including by mentoring students and encouraging their public interest and public service pursuits and career paths.

Michael Winn presented Deborah L. Rhode Public Interest Awards to Rebecca Berman, JD ’25; Hannah Fleischmann, JD ’25; and Amanpreet Singh, JD ’25. The award recognizes graduating JD students or teams for exceptional contributions to underrepresented groups or public interest causes through non-scholarly public service during law school.

The Lisa M. Schnitzer Memorial Scholarship was presented to Rodrigo Moreno, JD ’27, by the prior year’s awardee, Ariel Salmon, JD ’26. The scholarship is awarded to a first-year student dedicated to public interest law embarking on a nonprofit or government agency internship during the summer.

We also shared a slideshow recognizing graduating students and alumni who are heading into entry-level public interest and public service roles, and students who served as Pro Bono Project leaders, Public Interest Fellows, Public Interest Associates, and Public Interest Mentors.

The Levin Center was thrilled to honor an outstanding public interest leader, Stacy Villalobos, JD ’15, Director of the Racial Economic Justice Program at Legal Aid at Work, with this year’s Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award. She was presented her award by Professor Jayashri Srikantiah, who spoke about Stacy’s humility, tenacity and passion for justice as a student, colleague and advocate. Stacy delivered moving remarks centering her clients’ experiences challenging racial discrimination in the workplace.

The Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award is given annually to a Stanford Law School graduate whose outstanding work has advanced justice and social change in the lives of vulnerable populations on a community, national, or international level. In particular, the award is intended to highlight concrete and sustainable approaches and solutions to a societal problem.

Stacy has been advocating for workers’ rights for over two decades, beginning during her undergraduate years as an organizer with the university’s immigrant workers. Her practice currently focuses on fighting race discrimination in the workplace, including representing job seekers with arrest and conviction records. In this work, she has litigated many legal questions of first impression, leading to judicial decisions that have solidified and expanded federal and California law protections for workers who are discriminated against and economically exploited.

Most recently, Stacy was involved in arguing and briefing, as amici curiae, an important victory before the California Supreme Court. In Bailey v. San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, the California Supreme Court broke new legal ground when it held that a single use of a racial epithet, even when uttered by a coworker, can be severe enough to be actionable harassment under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). Stacy and her colleagues also won two important victories in the Ninth Circuit. In Arias v. Raimondo, co-counseled with California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc. (CRLA), the court created national precedent when it found an employer’s attorney could be held personally liable for unlawful retaliation when he contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to have an undocumented immigrant worker deported after he had sued the employer to recover his unpaid wages. And in Guerrero v. California Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), the Ninth Circuit upheld a groundbreaking U.S. District Court judgment that CDCR violated a job applicant’s federal civil rights by rejecting him solely because he had used an invalid Social Security number to obtain work while he had been undocumented.

Stacy also advocates for systems and policy change to challenge structural racism and advance the rights of marginalized workers. As part of this work, Stacy was selected to be a 2021 Dr. Beatriz María Solís Policy Institute Fellow by the Women’s Foundation California.

Stacy began her legal career as a Skadden Fellow at Legal Aid at Work, representing immigrant women workers in the Central Valley and beyond.

Stacy is a former law clerk to the Honorable Fernando M. Olguin of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. She is a graduate of Stanford University and Stanford Law School. Stacy also serves on her local Library Board of Trustees in Southern California. She previously served as an Abogada Consultura for the Consulado General de Mexico de San Francisco and on the Mexican American Bar Association’s Judicial Externship Committee. She is the first in her family to obtain a high school diploma and a native Spanish speaker.

With deep sadness, the Levin Center learned that Andrew Ascencio, JD ’21, a beloved alumnus and accomplished attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice Tax Division, died tragically in an accident on June 29. Andrew began his career with the Tax Division through the prestigious DOJ Honors Program in 2021. Dean Anna Wang recalls, “I remember Andrew as someone strongly committed to prosecution and public service and am heartbroken by this news.”

The Sonoma Index-Tribune published a tribute to Andrew here. A GoFundMe campaign has been established to help cover the costs of transporting him home from Australia where he was vacationing at the time of the accident. Details of a memorial service in Washington D.C. July 13, and a celebration in Sonoma on August 16, will be shared on the GoFundMe page.

Create Change is designed and produced quarterly by the staff of the John and Terry Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law. Unless specifically noted, all articles are written by staff.

Associate Dean for Public Service and Public Interest Law: Anna Wang
Executive Director: Shannon Al-Wakeel
Director, Pro Bono and Externship Programs: Mike Winn
Director, Public Interest Career Development Program: Shafaq Khan
Public Interest Career Counselor: Kevin Lo
Program Manager: Melanie Stone
Research Assistants: Arjun Ayyapan and Nicol Roman

To be notified when new issues of the newsletter are available, please visit this website.

Create Change is published via email and past issues are available on our website. Articles, letters, and photos are welcome. Please send them to public.interest@law.stanford.edu.

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