40 Students and Graduates Receive Public Interest Fellowships

Yale Law School announced that 40 public interest postgraduate fellowships were awarded for 2024–2025 and 2024–2026.

Of this number, 24 fellowships were awarded directly by the Law School, while 16 were awarded by external fellowship programs.

The postgraduate fellowships offered by the Law School and outside organizations support one to two years of work in public interest law, jumpstarting the careers of Yale Law School graduates while serving the legal needs of underserved members of society.

The Law School funds significantly more postgraduate fellowships per student than any other law school in the country — an average of 34 per year. Nearly $2 million in annual fellowship funding benefits both students and the organizations they serve.

This year’s recipients will be working at organizations that include the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the MacArthur Justice Center, the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, The National Veteran Legal Services Program, and the European Court of Human Rights, among many others.

Fellowship recipients will undertake work serving communities throughout the country, in states including Alaska, California, Illinois, New Mexico, and New York, and internationally, in the Netherlands, Nepal, France, and elsewhere.

The full list of recipients follows.

Fellowships Sponsored by Yale Law School

Arthur Liman Public Interest Fellowship

• Ryanne Bamieh ’23 – Santa Barbara Public Defender (Santa Barbara, CA) 
• Gregory Briker ’24 – Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (Washington, D.C.)
• Nathan Cummings ’23 – Shriver Center on Poverty Law (Chicago, IL) 
• Ellie Driscoll ’23 – Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs (Washington, D.C.) 
• Jonathan Gibson ’24 – MacArthur Justice Center, Supreme Court & Appellate Program (Washington, D.C.) 
• Charlie Jiang ’24 – Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) (Boston, MA)
• Zoe Kreitenberg ’24 – ACLU of Massachusetts (Boston, MA)
• Terin Patel–Wilson ’24 – NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) (New York, NY)

Gruber Fellowship in Global Justice and Women’s Rights

• Kee Chong LLM ’24 – Human Trafficking Legal Center (Washington, D.C.)

Heyman Federal Public Service Fellowship

• Nathan Chael ’24 – White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy (Washington, D.C.) 
• Oluwalani Oisaghie ’24 – White House Domestic Policy Counsel (Washington, D.C.) 
• Brianna Yang ’24 – White House Gender Policy Council (Washington, D.C.)

International Court of Justice Fellowship

• Alaa Hachem ’24 – International Court of Justice Judicial Fellowship Programme (The Hague, The Netherlands)

Robert L. Bernstein Fellowship in International Human Rights

• Al Brady ’24 – International Refugee Assistance Project, Climate Fellow (New York, NY)
• Anuj Chand ’23 – Informal Sector Service Centre (Kathmandu, Nepal) 
• Jonathan Epps ’24 – Clooney Foundation for Justice’s Docket Initiative

Robina Foundation Human Rights Fellowship

• Medha Damojipurapu LLM ’24 – International Committee of the Red Cross and the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (Geneva, Switzerland/New York, NY) 
• Akriti Gaur JSD ’27 – European Court of Human Rights (Strasbourg, France)

YLS Permanent Court of Arbitration Fellowship

• Kate Yoon ’24 

YLS Public Interest Fellowship

• Melissa Kay ’24 – Earth Rights International (Washington, D.C.)
• Emma Kromm ’24 – U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Office of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (Washington, D.C.)

Yale Law Journal Fellowship

• Sarah Baer ’24 – Jane Matilda Bolin Fellow– Center for Biological Diversity (Albuquerque, NM) 
• Leighton Fernando Cook ’24 – Justine Wise Polier Fellow– Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) (Washington, D.C.) 
• Sarah Tseggay ’24 – Shirley Adelson Siegel Fellow– Law Center for Better Housing (Chicago, IL)

Non–Yale Law School Funded Fellowships

Contra Costa County Public Defenders’ Fellowship

• Yixuan Liu ’24 – Contra Costa County Public Defender’s Office (Martinez/Richmond, CA)

Equal Justice Works Fellowship

• Hannah Eichner ’24 – Bread for the City (Washington, D.C.)

Justice Catalyst Fellowship

• Ezra Ritchin ’23 – Freedom Community Center (St. Louis, MO)
• Poonam Daryani ’23 – Pregnancy Justice (New York, NY)
• Leah Fessler ’24 – MacArthur Justice Center (St. Louis, MO)

Douglas T. Kendall Fellowship

• Nargis Aslami ’24 – Constitutional Accountability Center (Washington, D.C.)

Independence Foundation Public Interest Law Foundation Fellowship

• Solveig Olson–Strom ’24 – Justice at Work Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)

Skadden Fellowship

• Grace Choi ’22 – ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project (New York, NY) 
• Diego Fernandez–Pages ’24 – Make the Road New York (New York, NY)
• Rebecca Harris ’24 – National Veteran Legal Services Program (Arlington, VA)
• Alexandra Johnson ’24 – ACLU, LGBTQ & HIV Project (New York, NY)
• Helen Malley ’24 – ACLU of Alaska (Anchorage, AK) 
• Shyamala Ramakrishna ’24 – A Better Balance (New York, NY)
• Benjamin Rodgers ’24 – Central West Justice Center, Seasonal & Migrant Farmworker Project (Springfield, MA)
• Isir Said ’22 – CAIR Legal Defense Fund (Washington, D.C.)

Natural Resources Defense Council/Yale Law School Environmental Law Fellowship

• Jane Jacoby ’24 – Natural Resources Defense Council – Yale (New York, NY/New Haven, CT)

Reported as of May 31, 2024