Misha Guttentag ’17

I’d heard about Yale. At the time I was teaching high school chemistry and really trying to think about my students and what I cared about and how to turn those things and make them better. It was Yale’s combination of the small environment, the tight-knit student body, the supportive faculty that convinced me this was the place to take an idea and bring it to fruition.

My involvement with tech law at Yale began with the personal statement and started to hit the ground running on day one. Talking to students who were also interested, going to events at the Information Society Project (or ISP). We’re working with them to bring internet law back to Yale. So I ran and created a reading group this year that meets every week to talk about these issues. We’ll have an internet law class next year. I’m taking Intellectual Property this semester. And I’m just really interested in getting more "tech curious" students to Yale to make this an environment to incubate, work together, and see what we can create.

One professor that’s been really inspirational has been Amy Kapczynski, whom I think serves as a model for all of us when we come to Yale because when she was at Yale from day one as a 1L she was already working to increase access and lower prices for HIV drugs in Africa. She teaches Intellectual Property and she brings this sort of global welfare perspective to each and every class that really challenges us to think about how to use our legal perspective to make the world a better place.

My fellow students are incredibly inspirational. They come from a ton of different backgrounds. I have friends who are former teachers, former Marines, former CEOs, and former personal trainers. Put us all together and we challenge each other to be better and do better and make the most of our time here. I’m so thankful for that community.