Growing up in Los Angeles instilled in Christian Aviles his passion for community. In his neighborhood of Boyle Heights — predominantly Latino, immigrant, and Spanish-speaking — he went to one of the largest high schools in the country. Even among so many students, Aviles found a path for himself by forging close mentoring relationships with his teachers and in activities like student government, Junior ROTC, and the marching band.
Those dedicated teachers encouraged Aviles to go to a four-year college, but without the means or the desire to take loans, he chose instead to attend community college, an experience that was covered entirely by the generosity of a family who were alumni of his high school. After two years at East Los Angeles College, he applied to transfer and got accepted to Amherst College in Massachusetts — a school he had learned about primarily through watching YouTube videos and in a place he had never visited.
Nevertheless, he went to Amherst sight unseen by taking a train by himself across the country. The journey was not without its challenges — there was lost luggage and complications from Hurricane Irene — but he loved the liberal arts college experience there and studied English and sociology. Thanks to the advice of his mentors, he learned about a scholarship for transfer students that allowed him to attend Amherst at no cost.
Because of the important relationships he had with his teachers, he dreamed of pursuing a career in education. He spent his summers in college doing teaching-related activities, including working with the Mississippi Teacher Corps and Philips Exeter Academy. He became a teacher after graduation but, after two years, found he didn’t love it. The parts that were meaningful to him — connecting with others and mentoring — were less of the job than he had hoped, so he looked for work in the nonprofit sector where he could have an impact on individuals and families.
He next found a job in New Haven, another place he had never been to, with an urban squash program (a sport he learned at Amherst) where he could teach, mentor, and help connect families with resources to ensure their economic prosperity. In his job at Squash Haven for nearly a decade, Aviles saw the impact the legal world had on his mentees. He saw families struggling with the same challenges his family struggled with when he was growing up. That inspired him to do something more, and that led him to explore the idea of law school.
He became part of the first cohort of Yale Law School’s Access to Law School pipeline program, a two-year program designed for people in the New Haven area. After completing the program and applying to law school, he enrolled in the University of Connecticut Law School’s part-time evening program while continuing to work at Squash Haven and helping to support his mother in California. After two years at UConn, where he was ranked number one in his class, his mentors there encouraged him to consider transferring. He was thrilled when he was accepted at Yale Law School.
On Family
“I’m amazed and I’m grateful that Yale is going to give me the opportunity to change the trajectory of my family’s life, financially.”
“My mom went from being an immigrant coming to the United States to now seeing me about to become a top earner in this country. It feels crazy that within this same lifetime, the trajectory of my family’s life will be so wildly different. I have Yale to thank for that. And I have Yale to thank for the doors that it opened and the opportunities that it’s afforded me during my time here, that I know will stay with me for a lifetime.”
On Need-Based Aid
“I have bills, I have a car. I also help my mom now. She’s older and doesn’t work anymore. Going into [the law school application] process, I was like, okay, money will definitely be a big [consideration]. And it will be the make or break of whether I go to law school. And I thought if I get into a school and I get nothing, I’m not going to take out $200,000 of debt. That’s just crazy to me.”
“The scholarship allowed me to move around the law school feeling like I had this weight off my shoulders, which meant I could focus on the things that were important to me and the things that I wanted to do when I started law school, which was building community, both in the classroom and in the student life on campus.”
Yale Law School and the Hurst Horizon Scholarship
“[When I received the scholarship] I just felt like I let out a breath that I didn’t know I was holding. So much about law school had been about money. And I think now to get this news that I was going to get this really generous award to a school that I was really excited about, I think made me just breathe… That honestly captures a lot of what my experience has been with the Hurst Horizon Scholarship: just having the opportunity and the freedom to breathe and not feeling like your back is up against the wall because you’re pinching pennies or you’re struggling to get by. In a life that was defined by a lot of economic struggle and uncertainty, to now get this scholarship was truly a gift, one that I intend on paying forward for the rest of my life.”
“It gave me the opportunity to just experience law school with a lot of joy. And that’s something that I know a lot of people don’t get.”
“This really has been a school that has allowed me to chart my own path forward. In a way that I don’t know that I would have been able to do anywhere else.”