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43 Students and Graduates Receive Public Interest Fellowships

black and white drawing of an archway looking into the YLS Courtyard

Yale Law School announced that 43 public interest postgraduate fellowships were awarded for 2026–2027 and 2027–2028. 

Of this number, 34 fellowships were awarded directly by the Law School, while nine 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 33 per year. More than $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 United Nations, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, and the ACLU, among many others.

Fellowship recipients will undertake work serving communities throughout the country, in states including California, Colorado, New York, Michigan, Washington, D.C., and internationally, in Costa Rica, France, South Africa, Switzerland, and elsewhere.

The full list of recipients follows.

Fellowships Sponsored by Yale Law School

Arthur Liman Public Interest Fellowship
  • Hannah Berkman ’26 – New York Attorney General’s Office (New York, NY)
  • Mehrdad Dariush ’26 – International Brotherhood of Teamsters (New York, NY/Washington, D.C.)
  • Camilo Duran ’26 – ACLU of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)
  • Jorge Ledesma ’26 – San Francisco City Attorney's Office (San Francisco, CA)
  • Fumika Mizuno ’26 – Pregnancy Justice (New York, NY)
  • Jake Reagan ’26 – Colorado Solicitor General's Office (Denver, CO)
  • Emma Roberts ’25 – Office of the Federal Public Defender, District of Connecticut (New Haven, CT)
  • Katherine Salinas ’25 – Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Southern District of Texas (Houston, TX)
  • Neha Srinivasan ’25 – Lawyers for Good Government (New York, NY)
  • Ruth Zheng ’26 – San Francisco City Attorney's Office (San Francisco, CA)
Gruber Fellowship in Global Justice and Women’s Rights
  • Eniola Ajao ’26 – Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (San Francisco, CA)
  • Stephanie von Ungern Sternberg Prufer ’26 – OceanCare (Wädenswil, Switzerland)
Heyman Federal Public Service Fellowship
  • Patrick McCormick ’23 – Office of Senator Tim Kaine (Washington, D.C.)
  • Jarek Neczypor ’25 – Office of Senator Adam Schiff (Washington, D.C.)
  • Zachary Williams ’26 – Office of Senator Raphael Warnock (Washington, D.C.)
Hillary Rodham Clinton Public Interest Fellowship
  • Nellie Conover-Crockett ’26 – ACLU State Supreme Court Initiative (New York, NY)
Information Society Project Fellowship
  • Jackson Dellinger ’26
International Court of Justice Fellowship
  • Doruk Erhan ’22 LLM
Mary A. McCarthy Public Interest Fellowship
  • Katie Kroft ’26 – ACLU Center for Liberty (New York, NY)
Robert L. Bernstein Fellowship in International Human Rights
  • Florian Kriener ’26 LLM – Heinrich Boell Foundation (Berlin, Germany)
  • Laura Plata ’26 – Human Rights First (New York, NY)
  • Umer Ranjha ’26 LLM – U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers (New York, NY)
  • Indy Sobol ’26 – The Forest Peoples Programme (London, U.K.)
Robina Foundation Human Rights Fellowship
  • María José Gutiérrez Rodríguez ’26 LLM – Inter-American Court of Human Rights (San Jose, Costa Rica)
  • Tasneem Hussain ’26 LLM – Constitutional Court of South Africa (Johannesburg, South Africa)
  • Gabriel Klapholz ’26 – European Court of Human Rights (Strasbourg, France)
YLS Public Interest Fellowship (YPIF)
  • Sarah Nathan ’23 – Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (Kalamazoo, MI)
  • Daisy Ni ’26 – Public Counsel (Los Angeles, CA)
  • Amanda Powers ’26 – New York City Anti-Violence Project (New York, NY)
  • Dhruv Singh ’26 – ACLU Capital Punishment Project (Durham, NC)
  • Cait Young ’26 – Greater Boston Legal Services (Boston, MA)
Yale Law Journal Fellowship
  • Anthony Cosentino ’26 – Jane Matilda Bolin Fellow – Federal Defenders of New York (New York, NY)
  • Cyrus Khandalavala ’26 – Justine Wise Polier Fellow – Washington Litigation Group (Washington, D.C.)
  • Natalia Poblete ’26 – Shirley Adelson Siegel Fellow – Brooklyn Defender Services (Brooklyn, NY)

Non–Yale Law School Funded Fellowships

Animal Outlook Fellowship
  • Ethan Shopmeyer ’26 – Animal Outlook (Washington, D.C.)
Center for Advancing Health Policy through Research Fellowship
  • Claire Talbert ’26 – Brown University School of Public Health (Providence, RI)
Equal Justice Works Fellowship
  • Sharon Du ’26 – ACLU of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA)
Justice Catalyst Fellowship
  • Zoë Mermelstein ’26 – Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (El Paso, TX)
  • Lauren Taylor ’26 – Connecticut Fair Housing Center (Hartford, CT)
Justice Catalyst & COSAL Fellowship
  • Jordan Cozby ’26 – Salahi PC (San Francisco, CA)
Marshall-Motley Scholars Program
  • Trenaj Mongo ’26 – Texas Civil Rights Project (Austin, TX)
Skadden Fellowship
  • Bill De La Rosa ’26 – Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project (Florence, AZ)
  • Bryce Morales ’26 – Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights (Washington, D.C.)

Reported as of June 2026