Meet Current Wasserstein Fellows

Tory (she/her) has dedicated the past 25 years to developing novel legal theories, advancing public policy efforts, and driving complex, multi-party litigation on behalf of ordinary and vulnerable citizens. She is currently the Director for State Litigation and Emerging Issues at Democracy Forward, where she leads impact litigation designed to disrupt anti-democratic lawmaking at the state and local level, including efforts to: ban books, dismantle DEI programs, restrict access to information about contraception and abortion services, prohibit consideration of climate risk in public investing and contracting, and usurp the powers of locally-elected officials and boards.

For more than two decades, Tory was at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, guiding the firm and its consumer protection practice group. She worked side by side with Attorneys General on historic opioid litigation against major drug manufacturers, distributors, and national pharmacy chains. She led state-wide investigations into major international investment banks for predatory lending schemes and represented New Mexico and Pennsylvania in claims against for-profit nursing homes. She also spent seven years at Public Citizen, a leading consumer advocacy organization. Tory served as a member of the Board of Directors of Public Justice for six years, an organization where she worked as an Equal Justice Works Fellow early in her legal career. She received her B.A. from Wesleyan University and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

Ask Me About: impact litigation; consumer law; career arcs; financing a public interest career; work/life balance; good government and good governance; maintaining perspective; the brilliance of the U.S. civil justice system (and why it must be defended); public nuisance; the differences between nonprofit, government, and private practice work; how the Restatements come about and the American Law Institute (which is where they come from); how to be an effective member of a litigation team as an early career lawyer.

Caroline Sacerdote (she/her) is a Senior Staff Attorney in the Center for Reproductive Rights’ U.S. Litigation Program. She is an experienced litigator who has fought restrictions on reproductive rights in state and federal courts across the country. Caroline joined the Center in 2016 as a Legal Fellow. Prior to that, Caroline served as a Ford Foundation fellow with Lambda Legal’s HIV Project, where she worked to make HIV treatment and prevention more accessible. Caroline first worked at the Center in 2014 as a Ford Foundation summer fellow while in law school. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she served as an editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender. She graduated cum laude from the University of Florida with B.A.s in Economics and Political Science.

Ask Me About: reproductive rights; litigating in state vs. federal courts; partnering with state and local organizations; constitutional law; maintaining work-life balance in movement work.

Erin D. Drake (she/her) is Senior Advisor & Legal Counsel for the Women’s National Basketball Players Association. In her role, Erin works closely with players and other staff to address social, cultural, workplace, and legal concerns that arise for players, and prepares the Union to strategically respond to these matters, and any others arising from the ever-changing landscape of women’s sports. She conducts research, drafts reports and correspondence, and designs education sessions, and strategic campaigns as needed. Erin serves as a primary point of contact with national and global labor, political, advocacy, and civil rights organizations, in addition to other outside legal counsel and organizations. She co-leads the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion player leadership committee, sits on the AFL-CIO’s sports council, assists with the Union’s internship program. Erin is a member of the Union’s collective bargaining negotiations team that secured the historic and transformational 2026 CBA. Prior to joining the WNBPA, Erin clerked for Judge Diane P. Wood on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Judge Robert L. Wilkins of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Born in Nashville, TN, Erin graduated from Harvard University in 2014 and from Yale Law School in 2020. She is a member of the Tennessee Bar and admitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Ask Me About: working in-house at a labor union; advancing racial justice, women’s rights, civil rights, queer justice, and workers’ rights through the labor movement; movement lawyering; coalition building; developing and executing strategic campaigns and demonstrations; working with elected officials; working with the media; working with public figures; public speaking; narrative crafting, effective writing, storytelling, and communications; crisis management; clerkships; charting non-traditional career paths; working on a small staff; value-based work; budgeting for a public interest career; theater and other creative outlets; my cats.

Christine Monta is a Supreme Court & Appellate Counsel at the MacArthur Justice Center (MJC) in Washington, D.C. There she briefs and argues important civil rights and criminal justice appeals in federal and state courts around the country, on issues including the felony murder rule, extreme sentencing, conditions of confinement, excessive force, qualified immunity, and incarcerated persons’ access to courts. Christine also supervises and mentors junior attorneys and law student interns on briefing, oral argument, and career paths. Prior to joining MJC, Christine was a Senior Attorney in the Appellate Section of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, where she worked to enforce the nation’s civil rights laws in federal and state appellate courts across two presidential administrations. Christine’s docket at Civil Rights covered a wide range of issues, including voting rights, sex discrimination, disability discrimination, juvenile justice, police and correction officer misconduct, servicemember rights, and access to justice. Christine also served as an Investigative Counsel in the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, working to improve Department operations and hold high-level government officials accountable for misconduct and abuses of power. Christine started her legal career as an appellate attorney at the D.C. Public Defender Service, where she briefed and argued dozens of appeals on behalf of accused and incarcerated persons. Christine clerked on the Ninth Circuit following her graduation from Harvard Law School.

Ask Me About: appellate litigation; indigent criminal (public) defense vs. government vs. non-profit impact litigation, and transitioning between those sectors; criminal justice and civil rights; working for the DOJ across multiple presidential administrations; representing unpopular people; forging cross-ideological connections; holding government officials accountable; state vs. federal practice; criminal vs. civil practice (and doing both!); working with incarcerated people; living in D.C.; balancing career and family life; pickleball; my favorite board games.

Todd Grabarsky (he/him) is a Supervising Deputy Attorney General with the California Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General. He specializes in federal constitutional law, and in his practice he defends the constitutionality of California laws and policies including gun-control legislation, Internet and A.I. regulations, public health laws, anti-discrimination law, labor protections, election laws, and policies that expand access to affordable housing. He also supervises litigation in which California is challenging unconstitutional actions taken by the federal government. He teaches courses in constitutional law and the Supreme Court at U.S.C.’s Gould School of Law, and he recently completed a Supreme Court Fellowship with the National Association of Attorneys General in Washington, D.C. Todd earned his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York (Yeshiva University), where he served as editor-in-chief of the Cardozo Law Review. After law school, he served as a law clerk on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. And he also spent a brief period as an associate at a large corporate law firm in Los Angeles. Todd is a father of two.

Ask Me About: state government practice; litigating against the federal government; constitutional law; clerkships; California; being an adjunct law professor; transitioning from BigLaw to the public sector; mental health & work-life balance; being a working dad; backpacking.

Michelle Lapointe (she/her) is the Legal Director at the American Immigration Council, where she leads impact litigation and oversees the Council’s legal advocacy to advance the rights of immigrants and promote a fair and just immigration system. Prior to joining the Council in 2024, Michelle served as a Deputy Legal Director at the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), where she litigated immigrants’ rights cases and advocated for immigrant worker rights. At NILC, she served as co-lead counsel on a class action arising out of a worksite immigration raid, which resulted in a settlement of over $1 million. Michelle began her legal career and spent nearly 12 years at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project. At SPLC, she represented farmworkers and guest workers in class and collective actions for unpaid wages and other employment violations, and litigated cases against federal and state officials for violations of immigrants’ civil rights. Michelle received her law degree from American University Washington College of Law in 2008, where she was a Public Interest/Public Service Scholar, and her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College.

Ask Me About: immigrants’ rights; the intersection of labor and migration; building a public interest career in non-coastal cities; learning to embrace communications strategies alongside litigation; raising children as a litigator; taking up running later in life; live music and sports as essential counterbalances to a demanding career; my summer working as a tour guide at Fenway Park.

CJ Sandley (he/they) is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), where he focuses on anti-carceral and racial injustice litigation. Before joining the CCR, CJ was a Senior Staff Attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center. CJ’s work has included complex litigation challenging conditions of confinement and forced labor in state and federal prisons and immigration detention centers, efforts to increase immigration habeas representation in the Deep South, and federal policy advocacy to abolish solitary confinement. CJ also sits on the board of directors of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. CJ completed a federal judicial clerkship in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia. He is a graduate of Case Western Reserve University School of Law and Auburn University.  He is based in Birmingham, Alabama.

Ask Me About: public interest law in the Deep South; movement lawyering; being a lawyer and a parent; practice as an LGBTQ lawyer; navigating vicarious trauma; federal clerkships; post-grad fellowships; unionized nonprofits; immigration habeas; solitary confinement; vegetable gardening.

Elisa Vari is an international human rights lawyer and forced migration expert from Italy. Elisa works as an attorney for the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) Jordan office, where she provides legal assistance to refugees and displaced individuals throughout the region. Prior to IRAP, Elisa worked in administrative investigations for UN agencies including the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization, and, previously, she was a fellow with UNHCR’s Caribbean Protection Unit in Washington, DC, where she assessed protection claims of Venezuelan, Colombian, and Cuban asylum seekers. She has further collaborated with London-based NGO Reprieve on US death penalty issues, and US-based nonprofits and law firms focused on immigrants’ rights. Elisa holds a JD from the University of California Law, San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings), and an MSc in International Human Rights Law from Oxford University. She is bilingual in Italian and English and speaks Spanish and some French and Arabic.

Ask Me About: lawyering internationally; internships and jobs with UN agencies; international human rights; refugee law; managing student loans; being an international JD; living in the Middle East, managing secondary trauma when working with survivors of violence; navigating uncertainty/self-doubt/imposter syndrome; pursuing a specialized LLM degree.

Michaela Martin Strout (she/her) is a proud career public defender. She currently serves as Staff Counsel in the Strategic Litigation Unit of the Committee for Public Counsel Services, Massachusetts’ state-wide public defender agency, where she works with attorneys across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to break down systemic barriers to justice for all. Michaela began her legal career in Tennessee, serving as a trial public defender in Nashville from 2019 to 2023. There, she assisted many hundreds of Davidson County residents charged with criminal offenses ranging from criminal trespass to first-degree murder. She was also previously a board member and board chair for Open Table Nashville (OTN), a non-profit organization that works to end homelessness. Through her work with OTN, Michaela supported amici in the United States Supreme Court Grants Pass case and has written about the impact of that case on housing law and policy. Michaela has adjunct faculty appointments at the University of Massachusetts School of Law, and Vanderbilt Law School, where she also previously held a year-long full-time faculty appointment.

Ask Me About: public defense (particularly in the American South); direct representation vs. systemic impact work; legal teaching/academia; staying grounded and values-focused in law school; any sport; my dogs and other animal family members.

Allen Dreschel (he/him) is an attorney at the Federal Reserve Board, where he specializes in consumer protection and banking law and runs the agency’s whistleblower program. Prior to joining the Federal Reserve Board, he worked at the Federal Trade Commission, where he served as a litigator and a policy advisor under Chair Lina Khan. At the FTC, he spearheaded an effort to revive enforcement of the Robinson-Patman Act, a once-vigorously-enforced antitrust statute. Before that, Allen worked at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, a private public-interest firm, where he represented plaintiffs in securities and civil rights cases. Allen has also clerked on a federal district court and worked as an attorney at Better Markets, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the public interest in financial markets. Allen maintains an active pro bono practice that includes Fourth Amendment, landlord-tenant, and child immigration matters. He earned his law degree from the University of California at Hastings and his undergraduate degree from Georgia Tech.

Ask Me About: banking, securities, and antitrust law; federal government service; representing plaintiffs in private practice; policy advocacy in and out of the government; sustaining a career in public service; clerkships and fellowships; life in D.C.; hiking trails; early ideas for your March Madness bracket.

Saeeda Verrall (she/her) is an international criminal lawyer who has worked in international prosecutions and investigations for over 15 years across the United Nations common system. She is an alumnus of Harvard Law (LLM 2008) and a recipient of the Frank Knox fellowship. Saeeda started out as a Judge’s Clerk and a criminal prosecutor in New Zealand. After completing her LLM, Saeeda interned at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. She subsequently worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Court, and currently works at a United Nations international investigations agency. She has also worked for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, providing capacity building assistance to domestic states conducting maritime piracy trials on the basis of universal jurisdiction. In her current role at the United Nations, she is involved in a wide range of investigative and legal work, ranging from drafting legal and factual opinions and compiling case files through to conducting field missions and interviewing victims of mass atrocities, including survivors of sexual violence.

Ask Me About: the international justice and accountability framework; human rights investigations; career paths in international criminal law; conflict related sexual violence; applying for jobs and internships within the United Nations; competency-based interviewing; transitioning from domestic to international practice; being a working parent; gender in the workplace; do I really need five internships??

Julia is an award-winning attorney who has championed fundamental freedoms at the highest levels of federal, state, and local government. In 2024, Julia launched GovAct — creating a central platform for cross-state coordination to protect fundamental freedoms and improve people’s lives. GovAct builds upon Julia’s work founding the 23-governor Reproductive Freedom Alliance as senior advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom. Before her state service, Julia litigated high-impact cases on immigration, voting rights, and other matters in the Santa Clara County Counsel’s Office; served as senior advisor to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power; clerked for Judge M. Margaret McKeown on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; and researched on armed conflict in east Africa. She has taught several law and policy courses on foreign affairs at Stanford University.  Julia earned a B.A. from Stanford University, M.P.A. from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, and J.D. from Yale Law School. 

Ask Me About: governors and politics; careers at all levels of government; working in law and policy on reproductive rights, immigration, voting rights, public health, and consumer protection; federal clerkships; careers in international vs. domestic law; public policy school / dual degrees; U.S. foreign policy and constitutional law; National Women’s Soccer League (and the kid soccer industrial complex).

A South Louisiana native, A’Niya (she/they) is a farmer, organizer, attorney, and senior strategist with over 16 years of front-line experience building structural democracy across the American South. Currently the Director of Policy and Organizing at the ACLU of Alabama, she anchors the development and execution of high-stakes legislative agendas, complex field campaigns, and leadership development initiatives that power grassroots advocacy. Previously, as the first-ever Racial Justice Fellow for the ACLU of Louisiana, she authored the groundbreaking, first-of-its-kind empirical assessment of the state’s pretrial system, Justice Can’t Wait, and engineered dynamic political engagement strategies centered on systems-impacted communities. Her extensive legal and organizing background spans redistricting, economic justice, land use, housing equity, and systemic decriminalization, including critical tenures with the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice and Disability Rights Louisiana.

A’Niya holds a JD from Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. She was named one of the “Best 40 LGBTQ+ Lawyers Under 40” by the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association in 2024. Deeply committed to the South, A’Niya continues to farm, cook, and garden on her family’s land when she is not shaping policy.

Ask Me About: movement lawyering; legislative advocacy; the current state of voting rights; criminalization of bodily autonomy; using your legal education now to support communities; interdisciplinary strategies; building a sustainable legal career; working in policy; the role of attorneys in broad, grassroots coalitions; being a first-generation law student; Beyonce’s Act I & II.