Alumni

Sam Adelsberg

Sam is currently an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York as well as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserves. He previously served as a Special Counsel at the FBI focusing on cyber investigations and encryption policy and as a Privacy and Cybersecurity Fellow at Sidewalk Labs, the urban-innovation arm of Google's parent company, Alphabet. Sam also served as a Special Advisor to the Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, David Cohen, and as a Special Assistant to the Chief Prosecutor for the Military Commissions, Brigadier General Mark Martins.

Sam received his J.D. from Yale Law School after graduating with Phi Beta Kappa honors from the University of Pennsylvania. He has served as a law clerk to Judge José A. Cabranes of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge Jesse M. Furman of the Southern District of New York. Sam has written for the New York Times, the Atlantic, and Politico, among other publications.

Benjamin Alter

Benjamin Alter is an Arthur Liman Public Interest Fellow at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he focuses on redistricting, voting rights, and the 2020 Census.

A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, Ben has previously worked at the U.S. Treasury Department, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Foreign Affairs magazine. He has written for the New York Times, the National Interest, the Atlantic, and Lawfare.

Jordan Blashek

Jordan is a Senior Manager at Schmidt Futures, leading the organization’s efforts to advance American prosperity.

Jordan graduated from Yale Law School in 2018. Previously, he served as an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps, reaching the rank of Captain. He served two tours, the first as part of a counter-terror task force in the Horn of Africa and then as a military advisor to the Afghan National Army in Helmand Province.

Jordan graduated Summa cum Laude with Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University in 2009. At Princeton, he majored in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs, with a focus on national security and military operations. Jordan is currently a fellow with the John Hay Initiative and a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, and co-founder of a pro bono legal technology organization.

Julia Brower

Julia is an associate at Covington, Washington, DC office where she practices in the International Arbitration, Litigation, and Anti-corruption/FCPA practice groups.

Julia was a Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a paralegal in the Office of the Legal Adviser in the U.S. Department of State before law school. During law school, Julia worked in Sierra Leone with Timap for Justice, a local NGO that provides free legal assistance throughout the country, and with a law firm in Washington, D.C. She is currently clerking for Judge Karen Nelson Moore on the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. In December 2015, she will begin a Robina Foundation Human Rights Fellowship as a policy adviser at the Washington, D.C. office of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. Julia will work on thematic issues with a human rights focus--women and security, human trafficking, access to justice, and international accountability mechanisms--and manage two geographic regions, West Africa and Latin America.

Sarah Burack

Sarah is an associate in the New York office of Latham & Watkins. She graduated from Yale Law School in 2017.

Prior to law school, Sarah worked as a corporate investigator at a boutique risk consultancy where she focused on anti-corruption and anti-money laundering investigations. Previously, she was a research assistant on the defense and security team of a European think tank, and contributed to studies on the defense equipment market and the coordination of national security strategies across countries. Her own academic research has covered a variety of areas, including weapons acquisition policy, immigration policy and counterterrorism strategy.

Sarah graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in history magna cum laude in 2010, and received an MPhil with distinction in international relations from the University of Cambridge in 2011.

Celia Choy

Celia is a litigation associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Munger, Tolles & Olson, where her practice focuses on white collar criminal defense and investigations, as well as complex civil litigation.

Celia previously served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern

District of New York.She also served as an associate in the litigation and international arbitration practice groups at Covington & Burling LLP. Before law school, she was a Yale-China Fellow at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. Her interests include national security law and constitutional law.

Emily Chertoff

Emily is a staff attorney in the Adult Representation Project (ARP) at Immigrant Defenders. Most recently, she was an associate at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C., where she maintained an extensive pro bono practice centered on immigrants’ and detainees’ rights.

Before attending Yale Law School, Emily Chertoff worked as an editor and reporter at magazines based in the United States and West Africa. She has published work at Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, and other venues. At Yale, she studies sovereignty, information law, and humanitarian and human rights law.

Eric Chung

Eric most recently served as a law clerk at the U.S, Court of Appeals and Supreme Court of California. He graduated from Yale Law School in 2017.

His research interests at the intersections between government systems, social policy, human rights, international law, and development. He received his A.B. summa cum laude in Government and a secondary field in Global Health and Health Policy from Harvard University and has worked with many policy and research institutions including the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, U.S. Department of State, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the White House.

Rebecca Crootof

Rebecca joined the Richmond Law faculty as Assistant Professor of Law after serving as the Executive Director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.

Her research focuses on how international law evolves and its role in American law and policy, and her primary areas of interest include the law of armed conflict, international legal theory, and foreign affairs and national security law.

Lara Dominguez

Lara Domínguez is a legal fellow at MRG, engaging in advocacy on behalf of minorities and indigenous communities through strategic litigation in Europe and Africa. Prior to joining MRG, Lara worked at Three Crowns LLP and specialised in international arbitration. She received her JD from Yale Law School, where she was student director of the Immigration Legal Services Clinic, a member of the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, and a Herbert J. Hansell student fellow at the Center for Global and Legal Challenges.

She has represented clients in their asylum proceedings before U.S. immigration authorities, co-authored white papers on complex issues of international law, and published an article in the Texas Law Review on state responsibility for non-state actors in armed conflict.

Chris Ewell

Chris Ewell is a Yale Law Schoo graduate. He is interested in the intersection between international environmental issues, human rights, and the ways in which global power dynamics have shaped access to international law and justice. During the summer of 2020, he worked for Greenpeace Oceans on human rights issues in the global seafood industry and for Blue Ocean Law on legal responses to the impacts of climate change in the Pacific region. Prior to law school, he was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines working on coastal resource management and then worked at Greenpeace Africa in Johannesburg on the just transition to renewable energy. In May 2016, Chris graduated from New York University with a B.A. in International Relations and Environmental Studies.

Alexandra Francis

Alexandra graduated from Yale Law School in 2018. Prior to law school, Alexandra worked as a Junior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She also held a Fulbright Scholarship in Amman, Jordan and worked in Istanbul, Turkey on conflict stabilization. During law school, Alexandra has summered at the Office of the White House Counsel, the State Department Office of the Legal Adviser, the law firm Covington & Burling. At Yale, Alexandra served as a Student Director of the Lowenstein Human Rights Clinic and the Center for Global Legal Challenges. She was previously Co-President of the National Security Group and a Legal Director for the International Refugee Assistant Project. Born and raised in Vermont, Alexandra received her B.A. in Political Science from Davidson College and is a Harry S. Truman Scholar.

Aaron Haviland

Aaron Haviland is a Yale Law School graduate. Prior to law school, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps and left with the rank of Captain. He completed his undergraduate degree in physics at the U.S. Naval Academy and his master’s degree in international relations at the University of Cambridge. Aaron grew up in a State Department family and spent his childhood in Haiti, Bangladesh, England, Senegal, Pakistan, and India.

Daniel Hessel

Daniel Hessel is a Yale Law School graduate. He has worked as a Student Director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights and the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic. He has also worked as a foreign law clerk at the Israeli Supreme Court and as a summer intern at the ACLU, and has worked on an asylum claim through the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science and Legal Studies from Northwestern University.

Annie Himes

Annie is a Yale Law School garduate, where she was a Articles Editor on the Yale Law Journal, a Coker Fellow, and a member of the Rule of Law Clinic. She was also co-president of the Yale Law National Security Group during the 2019-2020 school year. Before law school, Annie worked as a Junior Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she analyzed the Kremlin’s resurgent foreign policy since Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012. She also spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar at Saratov State University in Saratov, Russia. In 2016, Annie graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with degrees in Russian, global studies, and history. She was named a Harry S. Truman Scholar in 2015 for her commitment to public service.

Brian Kim

Brian Kim is an associate at Covington & Burling LLP’s Washington, DC office where he practices in the firm’s CFIUS group. Prior to law school, he received his graduate degree in China Studies from Peking University where he studied as a Yenching Scholar. He earned his undergraduate degree from Princeton University, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 2016. At YLS, he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and Kerry Fellow with the Jackson Institute.

Christina Koningisor

Christina Koningisor currently serves as a law clerk to Chief Judge Sidney Thomas on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She graduated from Yale Law School in 2014. While in law school, she served as an Articles Editor for the Yale Journal of International Law and as a student director of the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic. She has previously served as an intern at the White House Counsel's office and as a summer associate at WilmerHale, LLC, in Washington, D.C. Prior to law school, she completed a Fulbright Scholarship in Kuwait and served as an editorial fellow at the Atlantic Magazine. She is a 2007 graduate of Brown University.

Tobi Kuehne

Tobi Kuehne graduated from Yale Law School in 2021, where he was an Articles Editor for the Yale Law Journal and a Coker fellow. He also graduated with a Ph.D. in German Literature at Yale in 2021. His interests include immigration law, international administrative law, cyber security, and political theory. Tobi is currently clerking for the Hon. Paul A. Engelmayer in the Southern District of New York.

Diana Lee

Diana Lee is a Yale Law School garduate, where she studied he intersection of law, technology, and civil liberties. She was a member of the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, the Veterans Legal Services Clinic, and the Yale Law Journal. Diana interned at the Wikimedia Foundation, where she assisted in-house counsel with a range of foreign law challenges to online free speech and access to knowledge. Prior to law school, Diana served as a Global Academic Fellow at New York University Shanghai. She graduated from Bowdoin College with honors in history.

Philip Levitz

Philip Levitz is an associate at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, DC. His practice focuses on trial and appellate litigation and international matters. He previously clerked for Judge Diana Gribbon Motz on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and, before law school, worked in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State. He graduated from Yale Law School in 2012 and from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, in 2008.

Preston Lim

Preston gruaduated from Yale Law School in 2021. He graduated from Princeton with an A.B. in Near Eastern Studies and received a Master’s in Global Affairs from Tsinghua University, where he represented Canada as a Schwarzman Scholar. During summer 2019, he worked on Parliament Hill for Erin O’Toole, then Shadow Critic for Foreign Affairs. His writing on Canadian foreign policy has appeared in the Globe and Mail, National Post, and Toronto Star, among other outlets.

Ryan Liss

Ryan is currently an Assistant Professor at Western University Faculty of Law. His research focuses on criminal law and public international law (including international criminal law, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law), examining the ways in which human rights construct and constrain state power in both areas. Ryan holds an undergraduate degree and a J.D. from the University of Toronto, and an LL.M. from Yale Law School. He completed his J.S.D at Yale, where he studied as a Trudeau Scholar and a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow. Prior to joining Western University, he served as an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School, and as a visiting fellow at the Schell Centre for International Human Rights at Yale Law School and the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto. He clerked for Chief Justice Warren Winkler and the justices of the Court of Appeal for Ontario, and has worked with the International Criminal Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the Coalition for the ICC.

Zachary Manfredi

Zachary Manfredi is a graduate of the Yale Law School and a PhD candidate in the Department of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. At Yale he serves as president of the American Constitution Society and participates in the Worker and Immigrants Rights Advocacy Clinic. His research interests include international human rights, humanitarian and criminal law, as well as domestic immigration law, worker and LGBTQ rights, equal protection jurisprudence and the First Amendment. Prior to coming to Yale he completed a masters degree in political theory as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. He has previously worked on international law issues at the Center for Constitutional Rights, the World Bank Inspections Panel, the Carter Center, Google Inc., and the Oxford Transitional Justice Research Project.

Randi Michel

Randi Michel received oint JD/MPA from Yale Law School and Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. Before graduate school, Randi worked for five years as a conflict and stabilization advisor at the U.S. Department of State, including two years in Nairobi, Kenya as the U.S. Embassy's lead on election security and violence prevention. She has also worked in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Malawi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, and South Africa. Randi received her BA summa cum laude from Harvard in social studies.

Nicole Ng

Nicole Ng is a J.D. graduated from Yale Law School in 2022. At Yale, she is co-president of the National Security Group and a member of the Peter Gruber Rule of Law Clinic. During her first summer in law school, Nicole worked at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Prior to law school, Nicole was a research assistant and junior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she focused on U.S.-Russian relations and Russian foreign policy issues. Nicole received a bachelor’s degree in Global Affairs and Russian and East European Studies from Yale College.

Ellen Nohle

Ellen Nohle is a JSD graduate fromYale Law School, where she earned her LL.M. degree in 2021. She is a Salzburg Cutler Fellow and a Hansell Fellow at the YLS Center for Global Legal Challenges. Her research explores the intersection between governmental authority to use force and the individual obligation to disobey orders on the use of force. Ellen has trained in the Swedish Armed Forces, worked for the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as legal advisor for the ICRC in Geneva and Kabul. Ellen obtained her B.A. in Law from the University of Cambridge, and graduate degrees from the University of Oxford and the University for Peace.

Sally Pei

Sally Pei graduated from Yale Law School in 2013, where she was an Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal and Articles Editor of the Yale Journal of International Law. She was also a member of the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Law Clinic and the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project.

After graduation, Sally clerked for Judge William Fletcher on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and served as legal adviser to Judge O. Thomas Johnson on the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague. Sally holds a BA (Hons) degree from Cambridge University in Arabic and French.

Paulina Perlin

Paulina Perlin is a Yale Law School graduate, where she served as chapter co-director of the International Refugee Assistance Project and the Lowenstein Project for Human Rights. She has previously worked with the UN OHCHR in implementing Colombia's peace accord with the FARC, taught political science at NYU Abu Dhabi as a Global Academic Fellow, and joined the communications team for the Romney 2012 presidential campaign. She currently has an article on refugee law and the environment forthcoming in the Texas International Law Journal. In 2015, Paulina graduated summa cum laude with bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics and Political Science from Wellesley College, where she also won the Barnette Miller Prize for the Best Paper in Political Science and was selected as a Fulbright scholar to Russia.

Stephen Preston

Stephen Preston heads WilmerHale's Defense, National Security and Government Contracts Practice. His work includes investigations, litigation, federal procurement, civil fraud, foreign investment in the United States, cybersecurity, strategic counseling and crisis management

Stephen is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Legal Challenges.

He served until recently as General Counsel of the Department of Defense, and before that, as General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency.

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Alasdair Phillips-Robins

Alasdair Phillips-Robins is a Yale Law School graduate. Before law school, he worked as an editor at Foreign Affairs and before that as a consultant. He received his undergraduate degree in history from the University of Cambridge and was the C.D. Broad Fellow at Rice University in 2015-16.

Michael Shih

Michael Shih graduated summa cum laude from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where his research on nationalism and Chinese foreign policy won the prize for best senior thesis. He continued his studies as a Marshall Scholar, receiving a master's in international relations from Cambridge and a master's in global governance from Oxford. He then enrolled in Yale Law School. There, he served as an Articles Editor on the Yale Law Journal, a Coker Teaching Fellow in constitutional law, and a research assistant to Professor Oona Hathaway. He reached the finals of both the Morris Tyler Moot Court of Appeals and the Barristers' Union Mock Trial Competition. And he received two academic prizes for his work in international and foreign relations law. After graduating, he clerked for the Honorable Jeffrey S. Sutton on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He will begin work as an attorney for the United States Department of Justice in fall 2015.

Julia Shu

Julia Shu is a Yale Law School graduate. While at Yale Law School she was primarily interested in international human rights, IP, and trial advocacy, she was Student Director of the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic and member of the Veterans Legal Services Clinic. During her time at Yale, she has also served on the Executive Board of Yale Law Women and interned for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Prior to law school, she studied political science at the University of Maryland, College Park and taught English in the Atacama Desert.

Mark Stevens

Mark graduated from Yale Law School in 2021. He graduated from Princeton University in 2013 with an A.B. in Public Policy and International Affairs and a certificate in Near Eastern Studies, and subsequently received a Master in Public Affairs from Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs in 2017. Prior to attending law school, Mark served as a fellow at the U.S. Department of State, where he focused on Middle East policy, and later worked for a humanitarian information-gathering organization in East Africa and the Middle East. At Yale, Mark is a member of the Peter Gruber Rule of Law and Lowenstein Human Rights clinics. He spent his summers in law school with the California-based Center for Justice & Accountability and with the Washington, D.C. office of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, LLP.

Paul Strauch

Paul Strauch is Yale Law School graduate also completed an MBA at the Yale School of Management. In 2016-2017, Paul served as Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of International Law, and during his first law school summer he worked in the President’s Office of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Prior to Yale, Paul worked as an investment banking compliance analyst at Goldman, Sachs, & Co. Over the course of his undergraduate studies at Dartmouth College and graduate school, he has studied and/or worked in Spain, England, the Hague, and Armenia. His research currently focuses on human rights at sea and international criminal law.

Jake Sullivan

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Tina Thomas

Tina M. Thomas is a first-generation Indian-American, born and raised in New York City. She attended Yale University for undergrad, where she majored in Political Science and International Studies. While there, she spent summers studying and working in Argentina, Venezuela, and India. After Yale, she went on to serve as a paralegal in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State. There for two years, Tina assisted in a variety of projects, including being a lead negotiator on human rights resolutions at the United Nations Human Rights Council and serving on the core team in the inaugural Universal Periodic Review of the United States' human rights record. After State, Tina enrolled at Yale Law School. While at YLS, she continued her focus on international law but also developed an interest in criminal defense. She spent her summers working for the Orleans Public Defenders, the Federal Public Defender for the District of Columbia, and Covington & Burling LLP. After graduating, she clerked for the Honorable Scott M. Matheson, Jr. on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. She will return to Covington this fall.

Peter Tzeng

Peter Tzeng is a J.D. grauduate from Yale Law School. He has studied and/or worked in eleven countries, and has represented and/or advised nine States in international legal disputes. He speaks all six official languages of the United Nations.

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Jacob Victor

Jacob Victor is a litigation associate at Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP and a Visiting Fellow at the Yale Information Society Project. He holds an A.B. in Social Studies from Harvard and J.D. from Yale Law School. During law school, Jacob served as an Essays Editor for the Yale Law Journal, an Articles Editor for the Yale Journal of International Law, and a Coker Fellow in Constitutional Law. As a second year law student, he participated in the International Law and Foreign Relations Seminar and prepared white papers for various federal government agencies. Jacob has published law journal pieces on topics including international intellectual property law, data privacy, First Amendment law, and the law of humanitarian intervention. Before law school, he spent two years working in the political-military affairs division of the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser. In December 2015, he will begin a clerkship on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Beatrice Walton

Beatrice Walton is a 2018 J.D. candidate at Yale Law School. She focuses on public international law, private international law, human rights law. She has worked on international legal disputes and petitions, served as a clerk at the European Court of Human Rights, and has helped draft motions and amicus briefs on international law and foreign relations law matters at all level of U.S. courts. Before law school, Beatrice received a M.Phil. degree, focusing on international law and Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.

Sarah Weiner

Sarah Weiner is a Yale Law School graduate. Previously, Sarah worked as a Program Coordinator and Research Assistant for the Project on Nuclear Issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. Sarah received her undergraduate degree in political science with highest distinction from the University of California, Berkeley, where she also competed as a nationally-ranked policy debater.

Alyssa Yamamoto

Alyssa Yamamoto is a Yale Law School graduate. While at Yale, she studiee international human rights and humanitarian law. During law school, she worked on international law issues at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch. Prior to coming to Yale, Alyssa worked on global health issues at the nonprofits Partners In Health and Village Health Works. Alyssa graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, with an A.B. in the Comparative Study of Religion and Government.

Tianyi "Tian Tian" Xin

Tianyi "Tian Tian" Xin graduated from Yale Law School in 2019 and has a broad interest in national security law and policy. Prior to law school, she served as a Military Intelligence Officer in the United States. She deployed to Afghanistan in 2014 as an intelligence analyst for a Special Operations task force in eastern Afghanistan and then to Iraq in 2016 as part of the counter-ISIL coalition. In her last position in the Army, she was the speechwriter to the Commanding General of III Corps and Fort Hood, Texas. Tian Tian graduated from West Point in 2011 with degrees in International Relations and International Law.