2L Public Interest Mentors 2012 - 2013 Each year, the Levin Center at Stanford Law School recruits second-year public interest students to mentor fi rst-year students to help ease the transition to law school and provide personalized advice and support. First-year students can choose to join specifi c practice area groups (e.g., criminal prosecution, international human rights, or environmental law) or a general public interest group for students with niche interests not covered by existing groups (e.g., animal law) or students who have not yet narrowed their interests. Laura Bixby that idea to being a lawyer to help those in need, particularly Laura is from Phoenix, Arizona. She attended immigrant communities. At Stanford, she has participated in the Amherst College, where she received a BA Naturalization and Language Bank Pro Bonos; is on the board in Studio Art (specifi cally, fi lm photography) of the Stanford Latino Law Student Association; is in the Law and studied abroad in Morocco. After college, and Immigration group, and enjoys avoiding the library. She she attempted to pursue an artistic career in has performed Pro Bono work at the Legal Aid Society of San both Phoenix and Chicago, working at Whole Foods and a law Diego and Community Legal Services of East Palo Alto. Atenas fi rm in the meantime. At Stanford, she is the Co-President of spent her 1L summer working at Justiça Global, a human rights StreetLaw (through which Stanford students teach legal concepts NGO in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she worked on cases at a juvenile detention center) as well as the Co-Founder of the being brought before the Inter-American Commission on Human unoffi cial Fancy Beer Club. This past summer, she interned at the Rights. Atenas is excited to be in the International Human Rights Federal Defender’s offi ce in Phoenix, Arizona, working both with and Confl ict Resolution Clinic this winter. the Capital Habeas Unit and the traditional trial side. She will be participating in the Three Strikes Project in the Fall. This winter, John Butler she will be enrolling in the Community Law Clinic. She plans to John is from Essex County, NJ. He has an clerk after graduation and then work as a public defender. M.Sc. from the London School of Economics in Comparative Politics where he focused on Christina Black confl ict studies and political violence. Before law Christina was born and raised in Northville, MI. school he worked in organizational development She left suburbia for the city in 2006, graduating for Big Brothers Big Sisters in Newark, NJ, on Kirsten in 2010 from the University of Chicago. She Gillibrand’s Senate campaign and also doing development work studied History and Philosophy of Science and in Kenya and Tanzania and disaster relief work in Haiti. During minored in Human Rights. Christina then spent his 1L summer, John worked for the Public International Law & a year in Washington, D.C., working at EMILY’s Policy Group, in Washington, D.C. advising clients in the Middle List as well as a PR and lobbying fi rm. At Stanford, she is the co- East and North Africa on constitutional reform. At Stanford he chair of Law Students for Reproductive Justice and the mentoring is the Notes Editor for the Stanford Journal of International Law, co-chair of Women of Stanford Law. She spent her 1L summer a member of the Iraqi Legal Education Initiative and a board at Bay Area Legal Aid, helping San Franciscans on welfare member of the Stanford Latino Law Student’s Association. John overcome the legal barriers preventing them from working. graduated from Brown in 2007. She is interested in women’s rights, particularly in the areas of employment discrimination and violence against women. In her Benjamin Chagnon spare time, she reads a lot of blogs and watches a lot of TV. Ben is from southern Massachusetts. He graduated from Brown University in 2010 with Atenas Burrola degrees in Economics and Political Science. Atenas is from Santa Fe, NM. She studied at the Ben then spent one year at a consulting fi rm, University of Pennsylvania, majoring in History ZS Associates, working with pharmaceutical and Political Science with a minor in Latin companies on sales force and marketing issues. At SLS, he is American and Latino Studies. After graduating a member of the Stanford Law and Policy Review and is the in 2010, she went back to beautiful New Mexico chief coordinator for the Tax Pro Bono Project. He spent his 1L for a year, working as a waitress and taking advantage of some summer at the California Attorney General’s Offi ce in the Health, free time to travel to Brazil, Egypt and Israel. Having wanted to Education, and Welfare Section. Ben is looking forward to be a lawyer since she was 7 years old, Atenas has since refi ned participating in the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic this coming 2L Public Interest Mentors 2012-2013 spring. the University of Ghana in Accra where he studied agricultural policy and food insecurity for a year. Stateside, he helped a friend Briane Cornish establish In Every Story, a nonprofi t temporary employment Briane Cornish was born in San Jose, CA. agency serving low-income workers in Charleston, SC. He also Her family relocated to Brooklyn, NY when worked as a mule carriage tour guide in Charleston’s historic she was 15 where she attended high school. district. At Stanford, he is a member of the Afghanistan Legal After graduating from Tufts University, she Education Project and the Environmental Law Journal, and he is spearheaded a Youth-Police relations and anti- co-president of the Environmental Law Society. He is pursuing a racism facilitative dialogue as an Americorps member working joint MS through the E-IPER program. He spent his fi rst summer under the auspices of the Young Women’s Christian Association at San Francisco Baykeeper. (YWCA). While later working for a Women-owned translations company in Brooklyn, Briane matriculated at Stanford Law Rachel Easter School. During her fi rst year, Briane provided support and Rachel is from Richmond, Virginia. She attended participated in the Law School Musical, the SPILF auction, University of Virginia where she studied edited for the Documentary Project and served as a mentor for a history and anthropology and was involved in recently incarcerated new business entrepreneur through Project the International Relations Organization. After Remade. Briane spent her fi rst summer as an Intern for the graduating, she did a fellowship with Princeton Department of Justice-Criminal Division, Offi ce of Policy and in Asia teaching English in rural Japan. At Stanford, Rachel is Legislation. Briane looks forward to her 2L year where she is one on the executive boards of the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights of the Co-Presidents of the Criminal Law Society. and Civil Liberties and the Stanford International Human Rights Law Association. During her 1L summer, Rachel worked for Mia Crager the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Mia grew up in Denver, Colorado. After Government Relations Department, and in the fall she will be obtaining a B.S. in Chemistry from Yale, Mia doing the International Human Rights clinic. realized that the hard sciences are not for her and went on to study Public Health in her Master’s Mark Feldman at Columbia. Before coming to Stanford, she Mark grew up outside of Chicago and graduated worked at the Program for Survivors of Torture and the Colorado from the University of Michigan in 2007 with School of Public Health. At SLS Mia is co-president of the a degree in Comparative Literature and a love Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) and the Stanford Law of Latin America and Michigan football. After Immigration Initiative. Mia spent her 1L summer in Amman, graduation, he served as an AmeriCorps VISTA Jordan working on resettlement cases of Iraqi refugees and at ACCION International, a non-profi t microfi nance organization co-authoring a chapter of IRAP’s refugee law treatise about the based in Boston. Strangely drawn to activities with “Corps” in security clearance process. the title, Mark then served two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in a Berber village in Morocco. At SLS, Mark’s primary interest Rob De Luca is human rights—both domestic and international—with a focus Rob grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. on criminal defense, prisoner’s rights and immigration. Mark is After studying Political Science at the University Co-President of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, a Managing of Alberta and holding assorted odd jobs, Editor of the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, he moved south and completed a Ph.D. in and a member of the Iraqi Legal Education Initiative and the Government at the University of Texas. His Social Security Disability Pro Bono. This past summer, Mark primary fi eld of research was political theory. During his fi rst worked on wrongful convictions and international death penalty year at Stanford, he was an editor and member of the Notes litigation at Northwestern Law’s Bluhm Legal Clinic in Chicago, Committee for the Stanford Journal of International Law. He and he can’t wait to do the Criminal Defense Clinic this spring. In also participated in the Volunteer Attorney Program. This his spare time he enjoys playing music, baking and hiking. past summer he returned to Austin to work at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid in housing law. He is looking forward to being in the Meredith Firetog Community Law Clinic this spring. Meredith is from Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Swarthmore College in 2010 Pete DeMarco with a B.A.