Chi Adanna Mgbako HLS J.D. ’05 wins Shanara Gilbert Award

Chi Adanna Mgbako, Clinical Professor of Law and Director, Leitner International Human Rights Clinic at Fordham University School of Law

The Executive Committee of the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education announced that Chi Adanna Mgbako (HLS J.D. ’05) Clinical Professor of Law and Director, Leitner International Human Rights Clinic at Fordham University School of Law, is this year’s recipient of the Shanara Gilbert Award. Professor Mgbako is an alumna of HLS’s Human Rights Program and received the Gary Bellow Public Service Award while a student at Harvard Law.

Named in honor of clinician Shanara Gilbert, the award is given to a recent entrant with ten or fewer years of experience in the clinical legal education community who has demonstrated some or all of the following qualities:

• commitment to teaching and achieving social justice, particularly in the areas of race and the criminal justice system;
• an interest in international clinical legal education;
• a passion for providing legal services and access to justice to individuals and groups most in need;
• service to the cause of clinical legal education or to the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education; and,
• an interest in the beauty of nature.

Professor Mgbako has focused much of her human rights teaching and advocacy on criminal justice reform as it affects people of color in the United States and Africa. She has directed human rights clinical projects in partnership with non-governmental agencies, international organizations, and foreign law schools. Professor Mgbako also developed an innovative mobile legal aid program in Malawi. Her clinic and the Center operated two mobile legal aid clinics in three rural villages in Malawi that had never before had access to legal services.

We offer our heartfelt congratulations to Professor Mgbako!