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Fellowships can be the gateway to new ideas and innovations and a critical component to a successful postgraduate public interest job search. Join OPIA’s Director of Fellowships Judy Murciano for an overview of fellowships, grants, and scholarships that will support public interest work, study, research, and entrepreneurship in the U.S. and abroad. Lunch provided. Please RSVP!

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Join OPIA for an overview of the 2L summer public interest job search. If you are a 2L planning to seek a public interest job and have not yet started your search, we particularly encourage you to attend! Lunch provided. Please RSVP.

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While “the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice,” the journey there is rarely easy, and there are many losses along the way. Join OPIA for a community discussion with Wasserstein Fellow Michele Hall, a former public defender and an attorney at Brown, Goldstein & Levy working primarily in criminal defense and appellate practice, on how to confront losing in public interest practice. Michele will reflect on her experiences taking losses in the Supreme Court of Maryland and turning them into legislative change, reframing individual case losses and understanding how they can be systemic wins, and how to maintain hope and sustain career longevity despite the obstacles public interest lawyers face.

Lunch provided. Please RSVP below!

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Join OPIA for a community discussion with Wasserstein Fellow Richard Saenz, as he discusses his career in the LGBTQ+ movement as an advocate for the rights of incarcerated people. Richard will share how litigation, policy advocacy, and community organizing can be powerful tools to challenge anti-LGBTQ+ bias in the criminal legal system. Learn how Richard centers the lives and stories of his clients—including when movement priorities have left them out—and how, as an openly gay, Latino, and the first in his family to go to law school, Richard’s life experiences have shaped his career as a public interest lawyer.

Lunch provided. Please RSVP below!

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Join OPIA to learn more about the Public Service Leaders Program (“PSL”). PSL is designed to build supportive relationships among Harvard Law School’s public interest community. It offers 1L participants the opportunity to connect with other public interest-oriented students and receive mentorship from like-minded alumni and upper-class students. This welcome event will introduce interested students to one another and begin to co-create our community. Stick around after the program for a happy hour in the HLS pub. RSVP to attend.

Haven’t yet registered for OPIA’s Public Service Leaders Program? Register here by September 20!

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Join OPIA for a community discussion with Wasserstein Fellow Tara Koslov, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Competition at the Federal Trade Commission and a member of the Federal Senior Executive Service. Tara will discuss her 27+ year career at the FTC, where she has served in a variety of enforcement, policy, and leadership roles. She will share her insights on career-track and political-appointment opportunities within the federal government, the best ways to grow one’s legal skillset at each stage of development, and the “joys” of management and executive leadership in a public interest setting. She will also discuss her passion for competition law, what makes it an intellectually stimulating discipline, how it has changed over the years, and why vigorous antitrust enforcement is so important to our economy. When Tara began the practice of law as a baby antitrust associate at a BigLaw firm, she found it challenging to explain her work to her extended family. But antitrust has now become so mainstream that she can even talk about it around the Thanksgiving table.

Lunch provided. Please RSVP below!

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Navigating a career in international human rights may be daunting, particularly during the first few years after law school. Join Wasserstein Fellow Niku Jafarnia ’20, as she describes the path she took to build a career in international human rights while a student at HLS and immediately following graduation. Niku will discuss working as a post-graduate fellow with a Yemeni human rights organization, making the jump from fellowship to a staff position, considerations for living/working abroad, and how to build a skillset (and mindset!) that will ready you for this challenging but rewarding practice area.

Lunch provided. Please RSVP below!