Class of 2020 Public Interest Fellows

Please see our Public Interest Fellows page for more information about this program.

	Ola Abiose Ola moved around quite a bit growing up but spent the most amount of time in Iowa. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2014, majoring in Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology (a single major), and graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2015 with a master’s degree. Afterward, she joined the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Law, Brain & Behavior, a nonprofit organization devoted to using neuroscience to inform legal policy. She also spent time in a neuroimaging lab at MGH and was a Saturday school public speaking instructor for Codman Academy High School, a public charter school in Dorchester, Massachusetts. At Stanford, she is co-president of the Black Law Students Association and an SLS Democratic Socialists board member. She is also an Articles Editor for the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties and a Member Editor of the Stanford Law Review. Ola spent her 1L summer in San Francisco as a Litigation Intern for the ACLU of Northern California. In her free time, she enjoys coffee-shop hopping, watching TV, and going to protests.
	Holt Alden Holt grew up in Cayucos, California, a small beach town on the central coast. He majored in Global Studies at UCLA, where he also captained the UCLA Men’s Club Soccer Team and was an editor with the UCLA Undergraduate Law Journal. Holt focused primarily on international law as an undergrad, writing his thesis on the American-led creation of a new legal paradigm for combatants and civilians following 9/11 and its importation by illiberal regimes to oppress domestic political dissidents. At Stanford, Holt has served as the co-President of both the Stanford Latino Law Students Association and the International Law Society. He was previously a co-Chair for the SLA Academic Affairs Committee and continues to be a Planning Committee member for Stanford Advocates for Immigrants’ Rights. Holt also volunteers weekly with the Prisoner Legal Services Pro Bono and quarterly with the Immigration Pro Bono. His first summer was spent at the Federal Public Defenders for the Northern District of California, where he supported the representation of indigent clients by writing motions and conducting extensive Fourth Amendment research. Holt split his second summer between civil rights firm Brown, Goldstein & Levy in Baltimore, Maryland, and Civil Rights Corps, a non-profit dedicated to challenging systemic injustices in the criminal system. Holt spent last spring in the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, where he will return as an advanced student this fall. He will also be externing with the Colorado State Public Defenders during winter quarter. After graduation, Holt will clerk for the Honorable Richard Paez on the Ninth Circuit. In his copious amounts of free time, Holt loves to play soccer, surf, and read science fiction.
	Juan Barragan Juan grew up in rural North Georgia and later moved to Atlanta, where he received his B.A. in Sociology from Georgia State University. He then headed to Texas, where he worked as an elementary school teacher with San Antonio ISD. As a law student, Juan worked with the Farmworker Rights Division of Georgia Legal Services Program, the Dalton Legal Services Program Office, and the California Teachers Association. Motivated by his work as a teacher and with Stanford’s Youth and Education Law Project, Juan is also pursuing a joint master’s in education. After law school, he hopes to head back south and continue his involvement in workers’ rights and education.
	Hannah Begley Hannah grew up in Mesa, Arizona (a sprawling suburb of Phoenix). In 2015, she graduated from Brown University, where she studied political science, philosophy, and psychology. Before law school, she worked as a paralegal at a private-public interest firm in Washington D.C. called Spiegel & McDiamid LLP. In her free time, she worked on academic research with a Northwestern Law professor and she has published three law review articles. Hannah spent her 1L summer working in the Impact Litigation and Social Justice section at the Santa Clara County Counsel, and she spent her 2L summer as a Summer Associate at Altshuler Berzon LLP, a public interest firm in San Francisco. She will be clerking for Justice Liu on the California Supreme Court for the 2020-2021 term, and for Judge Berzon on the Ninth Circuit for the 2021-2022 term. At SLS, Hannah is the Senior Articles Editor of the Stanford Law Review, a Co-President of the Law Students for Disability Rights, and a Community Development Chair for the First-Generation and Low-Income Professionals. Last year, she was a Co-President of the First-Gen group, a Co-Director of the Workers’ Rights Clinic, the Marketing and Media Chair for the Shaking the Foundations conference, and a Research Assistant for Professor Alison Morantz. As a 1L, Hannah was an Associate Editor on the Stanford Law and Policy Review, and she was the Faculty Co-Chair for the SPILF Auction. Outside of law school, Hannah likes to host homemade trivia nights, eat Hot Cheetos, and play board games with her long-term partner John.
	Dan Beksha Dan grew up in Attleboro, Massachusetts then received a degree in Economics from the University of Chicago. After college, Dan moved to NYC and worked in finance as a macroeconomic analyst. At night he volunteered in local politics working on State Senate and City Council races. In March of 2015, he joined Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign as the Budget Director. At SLS, Dan was the Editor-in-Chief of the Stanford Law and Policy Review Volume 29 and is a member of the Community Law Clinic, American Constitution Society and Prisoner Legal Services. This past summer Dan worked as an Election Law Fellow at the US House of Representatives and the previous summer was a researcher in the Stanford Machine Learning Group.
	Noah Breslau Noah worked as an investigator for six years, starting as an Investigative Fellow at the Public Defender Service for DC. During his four years at the at the New York Civil Liberties Union (the ACLU of NY), among other projects, Noah worked on lawsuits challenging adolescent solitary confinement practices in Syracuse, NY, and the state’s failure to manage, fund, and oversee upstate public defense delivery systems. His 1L summer he worked on immigration detention litigation and settlement implementation in California Prisons on disability accommodation at the Prison Law Office. During his 2L summer, he worked on securing appropriate housing and medical/mental health care for a trans prisoner; bail reform; and other conditions of confinement litigation at the MacArthur Justice Center in Chicago. Last year at SLS, Noah was codirector of IRAP and on the boards of a number of groups or activities, including the Criminal Law Society, SPARC, Democratic Socialists, and Shaking the Foundations. Noah also participated in the 3 Strikes Project, the Criminal Defense Clinic, a foster care policy practicum, and conducted research on other criminal justice and immigration detention issues. He was born in Chicago, IL and attended the University of Pennsylvania. He enjoys drawing, science fiction, and long walks with limited inclines with friends.
	Ashley Brooks Ashley Brooks grew up in Orange County, California and graduated from University of California, Santa Barbara, where she majored in Philosophy and Psychology. At Stanford Law School, Ashley volunteered with Prisoners Legal Services and was the Co-President of Project Clean Slate. She was also on the SPILF Public Auction and Shaking the Foundations Boards. Ashley spent her first summer at Orleans Public Defenders, where she worked on a habitual offender resentencing project. Her second year of law school, she joined the Criminal Defense Clinic and then interned at the Santa Clara Public Defender Office, where she represented clients at arraignment and bail hearings. She enrolled in Three Strikes Project spring quarter of her second-year and hopes to continue to be involved. The summer after 2L, Ashley interned at the Federal Defenders of New York in Brooklyn. This fall, Ashley is externing full-time at the Federal Defender of Northern California in San Francisco. After law school, she hopes to be a public defender in New York, and she is clerking for Judge Brodie in the Eastern District of New York in 2022.
	Nicole Collins Nicole is a Bay Area native, born and raised in San Jose. She moved cross-country to attend Cornell University and graduated in 2013 with a double major in government and economics. Eager to escape Ithaca’s freezing winters, she left New York for Washington, D.C., where she worked in fundraising at the Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institution, two nonprofit policy think tanks. She split her 1L summer between the State Department’s Office of Global Women’s Issues in D.C. and the Office of the Tribal Attorney for the Yurok Tribe in Klamath, CA. Nicole spent her 2L summer at Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger, a small firm in San Francisco that focuses on environmental, land use, and local government law. She hopes to return to California and practice in one of these areas after completing her clerkship on the Ninth Circuit in Phoenix next year. At SLS, Nicole is the president of the Stanford Law Review, and previously served as co-president of WSL (Women of Stanford Law) and the Street Law pro bono project. She’s also a proud alum of the Religious Liberty Clinic. Nicole is a big believer in the health benefits of vitamin D and spends most of her free time outside.
	Willa Collins Willa is a fiercely proud New Yorker (Brooklynite originally, Queens convert since 2013). Nevertheless, she headed to central Iowa to attend Grinnell College, returning to New York in 2016. She worked for Tamika Mallory, a local civil rights activist, before investigating whether she hated the law by becoming a paralegal at an IP boutique. Assured she liked the law (if not patents specifically), she headed west again. For her 1L summer, Willa was back in her beloved Brooklyn working in the housing division of Legal Services NYC. For 2L summer, she continued doing housing work in New York at Lenox Hill Neighborhood House. She plans to continue fighting for tenants’ rights in NYC after graduating. Find her distracting people in Crocker or dancing at the Patio. In her free time, she likes to go home and lie down.
	Nicholas Eckenwiler Nick is a 3L who wants to be done with law school but feels completely unprepared to re-enter the world of jobs and responsibility. He grew up in DC (mostly) and stuck around the East Coast for four years of undergrad (Yale ’14, math and polisci) and three years of work for a Democratic campaign consulting firm. Despite his efforts, Democrats kept losing, and Nick shoved off for law school, which he intended to use as a stepping stone to a new career. After a summer with the Department of Justice and a year at Stanford filled with criminal defense work, Nick interned at the Legal Aid Society of New York during his 2L summer and now intends to be a housing attorney. He spends his free time skiing, writing, and trying to figure out how much he should care about his classwork.
	Armando Fernandez Armando is generally interested in restructuring the inequalities of wealth and power. He was born and raised on the far Southside of Chicago, although as a kid he spent a couple of years in his parents’ rural hometown in Michoacán, Mexico. For college, he stayed close to home and graduated from the University of Chicago–taking classes in philosophy, music, and interdisciplinary social sciences. After college, Armando spent a year as an AmeriCorps member, helping low-income first-generation college students, like himself, transition into college. For his 1L Summer, Armando interned at BPI Chicago, a policy and law center, where he did research on local public housing and juvenile justice reform. For his 2L Spring, Armando was enrolled in the Community Law Clinic where he provided crucial legal services in East Palo Alto. For his 2L Summer, Armando was a Summer Associate at Loevy & Loevy, a civil rights law firm in Chicago specializing on police misconduct and prison litigation. Armando has served on the boards of the SLS Democratic Socialists, the Stanford Latino Law Students Association, and the First-Generation Professionals. Outside of school Armando likes recording and playing a dead indie-rock genre from the ’80s called “shoegaze”. He also likes discussing ancient and 20th-century continental philosophy, weird-ish movies, video games, and eating the food he can’t afford.
	Olivia Flechsig Olivia grew up in nearby Los Gatos, California and majored in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, she wrote her senior thesis on the workplace experiences of professional women of color in the Bay Area and worked with different organizations to improve the campus’ response to sexual violence, solidifying her interest in becoming an advocate for civil rights in the workplace and beyond. While at Stanford, she served as a co-President of the Women of Stanford Law and the StreetLaw pro bono project, competed in the Wagner Moot Court competition, and continues to compete with Stanford’s mock trial team. Being a clinical student for the Stanford Youth & Education Law Project has been one of her favorite academic experiences, second only to studying international and comparative law abroad in Paris, France. She spent both of her summers at boutique plaintiff-side employment firms specializing in civil rights cases challenging discrimination and sexual misconduct. After graduation, she looks forward to returning full-time to Allred, Maroko & Goldberg in Los Angeles, California.
	Elizabeth Hannah Liz is from Sarasota, Florida and studied Public Policy and Global Health at Duke University. For 27 months, Liz was a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Nicaragua teaching family planning, HIV-prevention, and maternal health. At SLS, Liz has done the Immigrants’ Rights and Criminal Defense clinics, as well as the Three Strikes Project. She worked with the Immigration & SSDP pro bono projects and traveled to Dilley, Texas to volunteer with detained immigrant women and children. She worked for the ACLU of Florida her 1L summer and split her 2L summer between the State Attorney’s Office in Tampa and Catholic Legal Services in Miami. After graduating, Liz hopes to begin her career as an immigration attorney in South Florida.
	Ben Hattem Ben was raised in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and he bleeds Tar Heel blue accordingly. He attended Swarthmore College, where he pursued an interdisciplinary major in Creative Writing and Sociology/Anthropology. After that, he spent a year tending bar in Chicago and four more as a freelance journalist in the West Bank and New York City. His reporting on forced medication practices at the psychiatric emergency room of Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital won the New York Press Club’s 2016 Nellie Bly Cub Reporter Award. At Stanford, Ben has been involved in Project Clean Slate, Prisoner Legal Services, Shaking the Foundations, the Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Law Students for Disability Rights, and the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. He also served as a teaching assistant for Professor Rabia Belt’s Criminal Law class. He spent his 1L summer at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a nonprofit that pursues class action litigation on behalf of people with mental disabilities. During his 2L summer, he worked at Rosen, Bien, Galvan & Grunfeld, a public interest firm focused on disability rights, plaintiff-side employment litigation, and class action litigation regarding conditions of confinement in jails and prisons. After graduation, Ben will clerk for Judge Myron Thompson on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.
	Emily Hawley Originally from Oregon, Emily studied political science and Arabic, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies at Santa Clara University. She graduated in 2013 and moved to Amman, Jordan on a Fulbright research fellowship. Emily stayed two more years in Jordan, where she worked as a Syria analyst and ran a homemade peanut butter business before she started at Stanford in 2016. Her 1L fall, Emily traveled to Istanbul to present her research on disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration in Syria at a UN Human Security Conference; that spring, she co-led SLS’s IRAP field training in Beirut, Lebanon. Emily then split her 1L summer, first doing anti-death penalty work at Reprieve in London and then working in refugee legal aid from Vial Refugee camp in Chios, Greece. Her second year, Emily co-directed IRAP and participated in the International Human Rights Clinic. She traveled to Sulaymaniyah, Iraq to work on a gender studies paper with Kurdish activist Choman Hardi and presented another paper at the D.C. Cutler Fellows program. She published that paper ‘ISIS Crimes Against the Shia: The Islamic State’s Genocide Against Shia Muslims’ in Genocide Studies International in December 2017. Emily spent a second summer working in legal aid in Chios before taking a year’s leave from the law school, moving to Cairo, and endlessly confusing her classmates. Emily intends to graduate with the class of 2020 and to work internationally in human rights, particularly in countering U.S. human rights violations overseas.
	Tyler Jones Tyler was born and raised in the L.A. area. After graduating from UCLA, he worked at a boutique consulting firm where he advised government agencies on implementing alternatives to traditional incarceration, regulating cannabis, and reducing illicit trade in tobacco products. Tyler also worked as a researcher at UCLA Law’s Program on Understanding Law, Science, and Evidence, where he focused on the intersection of technology, big data, and the Fourth Amendment. At Stanford, Tyler is the Vice President of the Trial Team, the Notes Editor for the Stanford Law and Policy Review, and a research assistant for Judge Stephen Smith at the Center for Internet and Society. Tyler has also served on the board of the Criminal Law Society, participated in the Criminal Prosecution Clinic, and is the coach of Los Altos High School’s mock trial team. Tyler spent his 1L summer prosecuting misdemeanors in Yosemite National Park and his 2L summer at California’s Office of Legislative Counsel, where he drafted bills on cannabis regulation, public safety, and state parks. After graduation, Tyler will clerk for Chief Judge Marjorie K. Allard on the Alaska Court of Appeals, which handles only criminal matters.
	Liz Lagerfeld Liz grew up outside Washington, D.C. She majored in Spanish and Economics at the University of Virginia. After college, Liz taught English in Mexico City and then worked for three years as an economic consultant in Washington, D.C., focusing on legal and regulatory projects. Her main interests in law school are public defense, criminal justice reform, and immigrants’ rights. She is particularly interested in their intersection (crimmigration). Liz worked in indigent defense for Orleans Public Defenders in summer 2018 and on criminal appeals and civil rights litigation at MacArthur Justice Center Appellate Project in summer 2019. As part of the Stanford Immigrants’ Rights’ Clinic, she represented a legal permanent resident who faces deportation based on criminal convictions. Last year, Liz also co-led the Immigration Pro Bono Project, wrote a resentencing brief for the Three Strikes Project, and volunteered with Al Otro Lado in Tijuana over spring break. Liz is also committed to building queer community at Stanford and served as a co-president of OutLaw in 2018-2019. After graduation, she will clerk for Chief Judge Sydney Thomas on the Ninth Circuit in Montana. She will then pursue a public interest career in immigration and/or criminal work. Liz likes live music, solo travel, and learning new languages. Her current projects are learning French and seeing all 48 contiguous states by the time she turns thirty (tick tock)!
	Alyssa Martinez
	Danny Martinez Danny grew up in San Francisco and graduated from Boston College in 2012, where he majored in Political Science. After college, he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Benin from 2012-14, living in a rural village and implementing community projects in education and nutrition. He taught English in France and worked at a plaintiff-side securities fraud litigation firm in New York City. At SLS, Danny has been a member of Housing Pro Bono; board member of the Stanford Latino Law Students Association; participated in an alternative spring break trip to Florence, AZ where he provided pro bono legal services to detained immigrants; the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic; and the Stanford Journal of International Law. During his 1L summer, Danny clerked for Senator Dianne Feinstein’s Judiciary Committee staff and spent his 2L summer at the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. He likes to run, play soccer, and keep up his language skills.
	Derin McLeod Derin grew up in Chicago and went to Yale for college. Before coming to Stanford, he earned a Ph.D. and was a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley. While at Berkeley, he regularly taught at San Quentin as part of the Prison University Project. At Stanford, he has been a student in the Three Strikes Project and in the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, and he was a voter protection volunteer in Arizona during the 2018 election. He has also been a member of the International Refugee Assistant Project Pro Bono, the Social Security Disability Pro Bono Project, the Stanford Prisoner Advocacy and Resource Coalition, and Stanford Advocates for Immigrant Rights. During his 1L summer, he worked at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center; this past summer, he worked at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. After graduating, he will clerk on the California Supreme Court and the Second Circuit.
	Andrew Moore Born and raised in Michigan, Andrew joined the Foreign Service after Harvard College. He served overseas in Pakistan and Australia. Before coming to Stanford as a JD/MBA, he was a Special Assistant in the office of Secretary of State John Kerry. In his summers he worked for Google X, Debevoise & Plimpton, and McKinsey & Company. At SLS, he volunteered with the tax pro bono project and loved working with a great team as part of the International Human Rights Law Clinic. A former cross-country ski coach and travel book writer, Andrew enjoys weekend adventures with friends.
	Julia Neusner Julia is a 4th year joint degree student pursuing a JD and MA in International Policy, focusing on human rights. Julia co-leads the SLS National Lawyers Guild and started the Stanford Advocates for Immigrants’ Rights Asylum Project, which has sent multiple student groups to provide legal services to asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border. Julia also co-leads the SLS Rule of Law Program’s Rwanda Legal Education Project. Julia is a representative on the Graduate Student Council and has participated in the Prison Legal Services pro bono, Stanford Prison Education Project, Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and Female Academics in Foreign Policy. During her law school summers, Julia worked as a law clerk with a labor union, a private public interest firm, a Mexico-based immigration legal services organization, and a Colombia-based human rights nonprofit. Prior to law school, Julia earned a BA in Comparative Literature from New York University, then taught high school special education through the New York City Teaching Fellows, earning a MS in Education. Julia is a member of Stanford’s triathlon team and she also enjoys playing music, surfing, and snowboarding.
	Mariel Perez-Santiago Mariel grew up in Guayama, Puerto Rico and Waco, Texas. Before law school, she spent four years working on international human rights policy with two non-profits in Washington, D.C. At the U.S. Office on Colombia, she partnered with local activists to promote better U.S. human rights policies toward Colombia. At Human Rights First, she led research and advocacy on international LGBT human rights issues. Mariel earned a BA in International Studies from Baylor University and an MA in Latin American Studies from UT Austin. At SLS, Mariel served on the board of the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and co-led the Immigration Pro Bono Project. She is also a member of the Stanford Latino Law Students Association. During her 1L summer, Mariel provided legal services to detained immigrant families with the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) in San Antonio, Texas. Last year, Mariel participated in the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. Her 2L summer, she supported the litigation team at the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles. In her spare time, Mariel enjoys finding good live music in the Bay Area, singing, and Latin dancing.
	Elizabeth Reetz Elizabeth is from the Pacific Northwest where she is excited to return after graduation. She earned a B.A. from Whitman College in 2012 and then spent three years teaching sixth grade social studies in Denver. After a brief stint as an education organizer and then advocate, she decided to leave education for law. During 1L, Elizabeth was one of the five original organizers behind Racism Lives Here Too. As a 2L, she was on the board of Women of Color Collective, First Generation Professionals, and the Stanford Critical Law Society. She also helped run the Race and Criminal Justice Reading Group, has done pro bono work with Prisoner Legal Services and the Workers’ Rights Clinic, and is on Stanford Law Review. As a 2L, she was in the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. She’s worked at Prison Law Office and Legal Aid at Work. This year, she is applying for public interest fellowships with Disability Rights Oregon to protect the right to adequate medical care and freedom from criminalization for people experiencing psychiatric crisis.
	Michaela Ross Michaela Ross grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. She earned her B.A. in History from Harvard in 2012 and has always been fascinated by how we choose to structure society, and how we can make it more just. After college, she wandered through the social sector, working as a field organizer in Cleveland for President Obama’s reelection campaign, in Governor Deval Patrick’s office in Boston, as a White House intern at the National Economic Council, as a nonprofit consultant at The Bridgespan Group, and as a Kiva Fellow in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Immediately before starting law school she worked as a case manager helping families experiencing homelessness in San Francisco find housing. At SLS, Michaela has been involved with Stanford Advocates for Immigrants’ Rights, Shaking the Foundations, the Stanford Critical Law Society, the Immigration Pro Bono, and the Housing Pro Bono. Michaela spent her 1L summer helping defend tenants from eviction at the East Bay Community Law Center, and her 2L summer working on immigrants’ rights in Northern Virginia with Legal Aid Justice Center. She participated in the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. Michaela is especially interested in housing law and policy, and would enjoy talking to you about it (or about anything else related to social justice, public policy, and public interest law).
	Daniel Rubin Daniel grew up in Buffalo, New York before attending Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. There he double majored in Communication Studies and Economics and acted as the school’s mascot. He came to law school straight from college knowing that he wanted to be a public interest lawyer. At SLS, Daniel has participated in the Prisoner Legal Services pro bono project and the Environmental Law Clinic. He also helped found the Community Health Access Project. Over his 1L Summer, Daniel worked for the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing doing nonprofit eviction defense in Chicago. After 2L year, Daniel spent his summer with Chicago’s Shriver Center on Poverty Law working on both local and national public interest litigation and legislation. Post-law school, Daniel will be clerking in the Northern District of Illinois before he finally must stop procrastinating and figure out what type of public interest work he is interested in. Daniel can be spotted on campus wearing the same grey Stanford hoodie literally every day or reading Harry Potter on the elliptical at the gym.
	Diana Sanchez Diana is from Vista, California, a small city in San Diego County, and came to Stanford Law for the tools to serve marginalized communities like her own. She graduated from the University of San Diego in 2015 and was the Operations Coordinator for OASIS before law school, where she contributed to Mexico’s ongoing criminal justice reform. At SLS, Diana has served as the co-president of the Stanford Prisoner Advocacy and Resource Coalition and the Prisoner Legal Services pro bono project. She also served on the boards of Stanford Latino Law Students Association, Women of Color Collective, First Generation Professionals, and was on Stanford Law Association’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Diana was also a Senior Editor of the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties. As a 3L, she will continue to co-lead the Race and Criminal Justice Reading Group and serve on the board of the First-Generation and Low-Income Professionals. Diana spent her 1L summer at the San Diego Public Defender’s Office and her 2L summer as a Justice John Paul Stevens Public Interest Fellow at the Southern Center for Human Rights. She will also spend next winter externing with the Colorado State Public Defenders. Diana’s best experience at SLS has been with the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic and she plans to continue that work during her 3L year. In her free time, she enjoys the gym, a night of dancing with friends and finding a good coffee shop. After law school, Diana will clerk in the Southern District of Texas for the Honorable Keith Ellison and on the Ninth Circuit for the Honorable Richard Paez. She then plans to serve as a public defender in California.
	Nicole Santoro Nicole was born and raised in Las Vegas. After graduating from Columbia with a degree in Russian language and culture, she worked at the Nevada Attorney General’s Office as a compliance investigator in the Fraud Unit. At Stanford, she is a member of the Housing Pro Bono and the Stanford Latino Law Students Association, and she participated in the Community Law Clinic. Previously, she was co-president of the Criminal Law Society and a member editor of the Environmental Law Journal. Nicole worked at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Las Vegas in the summer after 1L and spent her 2L summer at the Baltimore office of Sanford Heisler Sharp, where she worked mainly on employment discrimination cases. After graduation, she will clerk for Judge Andrew Gordon in the District of Nevada. In her free time, Nicole enjoys donuts and the outdoors.
	Sophia Villarreal Sophia is a native of the El Paso/Juárez border who now considers Tucson, Arizona to be equally home. She graduated from Stanford University in 2014 with a degree in Art History and minor in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. After graduating, Sophia worked in the arts before spending a year as a JusticeCorps Fellow in San Francisco. During her year in JusticeCorps, she provided legal information and assistance to self-represented litigants in a range of civil and family-law cases. At SLS, Sophia has continued her commitment to studying international perspectives, working for social justice, and her love of the arts. Her main focus has been criminal defense–teaching at Hillcrest Juvenile Hall through StreetLaw, participating in the Criminal Defense Clinic, externing with the Office of the Federal Public Defender, and working on expungements with the Private Defender Program in San Mateo County. Sophia spent her 1L summer clerking on the Supreme Court of Rwanda, and she split her 2L summer between the New York and Buenos Aires offices of Cleary Gottlieb Steen and Hamilton. The biggest surprise of law school has been making some of the best friends of her life. Although she isn’t ready for everyone to scatter across the country, she looks forward to clerking for Judge Lawrence Vilardo in the Western District of New York after graduation.
	Rachel Waterman Rachel grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, where she plans to return after graduation. She graduated from Claremont McKenna College in 2014 with an interdisciplinary degree in Environment, Economics, and Politics. She worked for several years as a labor organizer for the Service Employees International Union. She first organized adjunct professors in the Midwest and, later, nursing home workers on the west coast. She spent her 1L summer at ArchCity Defenders working on a campaign to close down a local jail where detainees are subjected to notoriously inhumane conditions. She spent the following summer working to hold absentee speculators accountable for the buildings they have abandoned and allowed to deteriorate in low-income St. Louis neighborhoods. She’ll be applying for fellowships to continue and expand this work next year. She is a big fan of trying to squeeze long backpacking trips into short weekends (Yosemite really isn’t that far y’all).
	Zachary Waterman Zachary Waterman grew up in Nashville, Tennessee and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. Zach has spent much of his time in law school focused on direct services work in the Housing Pro Bono and every criminal defense opportunity available to him from Stanford’s Criminal Defense Clinic and Three Strikes Project to a summer internship with the San Francisco Public Defender and a fall externship with the Santa Clara Public Defender. Zach is eager to spend the rest of his life as a public defender and is currently working on securing a Stanford fellowship to support his beginning that work.
	Victor Xu Victor grew up in Carmel, IN. He attended Stanford University, where he was the editor of The Stanford Daily and a major supporter of Ike’s Sandwiches not leaving campus. Graduating in 2017 with a degree in economics, Victor decided to stay for law school. As a 2L, he co-led the Economic Advancement Project pro bono, which works with a community legal aid group to assist indigent clients in East Palo Alto, and was part of the Criminal Prosecution Clinic. During his summers, Victor has worked as a prosecutor in Yosemite National Park and as a summer associate at Covington & Burling and Bredhoff & Kaiser. Victor is interested in criminal prosecution and labor law.