Do Grades Matter? What Really Counts in Public Interest Hiring

Join OPIA for a community discussion with Wasserstein Fellow Alessandro Terenzoni, who is Deputy Director of the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs. Alessandro will take you behind the scenes of hiring for government service and other public interest jobs and what really goes through hiring officials’ minds as they’re looking at your resume, reading your cover letter, and hearing your answers to interview questions. Alessandro has hired legal interns and attorneys across the public interest community, including at three government agencies, and will candidly answer your burning questions about the hiring process and how decision makers choose the perfect candidate for a position with their agency or organization.

Lunch provided. RSVP below.

Alessandro Terenzoni has been the Deputy Director of the Office for Civil Rights within the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs since 2016. Before joining the DOJ, he was a supervisory attorney with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education. Formerly, he created and managed one of the first self-help centers in the nation for unrepresented litigants at the administrative level for the DC Office of Administrative Hearings.

Alessandro has significant ties to the DC legal services community, having worked at the Legal Aid Society of DC, the DC Bar Pro Bono Program, and Bread for the City. Alessandro was a member of the adjunct faculty at GW Law for a decade, teaching in the Legal Research and Writing Program since 2008 and also teaching Public Interest Lawyering. Prior to law school, he was a middle school science and language arts teacher in Newark, NJ as part of Teach for America. He is a graduate of GW Law and Tufts University and also holds a certificate in diversity and inclusion from Cornell University.

If you or an event participant requires disability-related accommodations, please contact HLS Accessibility Services at accessibility@law.harvard.edu two weeks in advance of the event.