Felipe Lobo Koerich ’26 knows what it’s like to join a new community — he’s done it many times before.
After spending his early years in Brazil, Lobo Koerich’s family moved to the Netherlands when he was around seven years old, then to the United States when he was 12. In the U.S., he has lived in Houston, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C., before moving to Cambridge three years ago.
“My background has been a lot of moving around and adjusting to new communities and contexts, and meeting people across very different backgrounds and experiences,” he says.
Perhaps that is why Lobo Koerich has prioritized building relationships — and welcoming others — wherever he goes. Especially at Harvard Law School.
“I know quite well what it feels like to not be part of a community that’s clearly established,” he says. “I put the onus on myself to get involved, first so that I feel a sense of involvement in that space or community, but also so I can make sure others don’t feel left out — even accidentally, which is usually the case.”
For his efforts, Lobo Koerich is the recipient of this year’s David Westfall Memorial Award for Community Leadership, which honors a graduating Harvard Law School student with outstanding contributions to creating community within their first-year section and class.
‘The culture at Harvard appealed to me’
After leaving Georgetown University with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in foreign service, international politics, and Latin American studies, Lobo Koerich first took a job as a program officer with the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative. In that role, he supported international development work, such as empowering working women in Mexico and countering the financing of terrorism in South America.
“Because I was the one helping crunch the numbers, I saw how we were having a real, tangible impact on people,” he says. “It was also a really rewarding experience to be able to work with experts in these fields.”
Seeing that many of the professionals he worked with had a law degree solidified his desire to pursue one as well, Lobo Koerich says. As he considered his law school options, he says he wanted a place that offered a wide array of possibilities, from courses and clinics to extracurricular activities. He found what he was looking for at Harvard, he says.
“I came to law school wanting to try out as much as I could,” he adds. “I really appreciated that Harvard gave me the opportunity to test out a bunch of different things, and that there were offerings for anything you might want — and if there wasn’t, there were ways to work with people to create your own.”
But there was another criterion important to Lobo Koerich. “The culture at Harvard appealed to me,” he says. “It seemed more collaborative than other law schools I looked at, and I saw that there was a real community there.”
“I put the onus on myself to get involved [in a space or community], first so that I feel a sense of involvement … but also so I can make sure others don’t feel left out.”
Almost immediately after arriving on campus, Lobo Koerich got to work fostering relationships and creating spaces for first-year students.
“Everyone knows that the first year of law school can be a grueling experience,” he says. “But we don’t have to be overly competitive or cutthroat to succeed.”
As a member of the Section One social committee, Lobo Koerich helped organize many informal events, including game nights, lunches, and a finals study break. He participated in section-wide chat threads where students traded notes and insights.
But Lobo Koerich’s crowning achievement was a section talent show he organized and hosted at the end of the winter semester — one in which he performed “Golden Days” by Panic at the Disco and shared a slideshow of photos to commemorate the completion of their first year of law school.
In nominating Lobo Koerich for the Westfall award, one student wrote that the event was “one of my favorite memories from 1L, because I got to know so many members of my section as people for the first time in that space.”
The nominator added that, beyond creating the conditions for a strong community, Lobo Koerich was always personally available as a friend and colleague, “to listen and to provide a friendly tip, or notes for a missed class, or an explanation for a tough practice exam question.”
Over the next two years of his time at Harvard Law, Lobo Koerich continued to foster community, particularly within international law spaces on campus and with affinity groups such as Lambda, QTPOC, and La Alianza. “Those smaller communities are where I have focused most of my time in giving back,” he says.
He adds that he is honored and grateful to receive the Westfall award: “It was a happy surprise heading into the end of the academic year.”
After graduation, Lobo Koerich will move to London to join Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, where he will get to practice cross-border legal work. He also hopes to find himself back in international development work someday.
But before all that, his goal is to organize one last social gathering for his Section One friends — a way to say good luck, not necessarily goodbye. True to form, even as Lobo Koerich prepares for the next stage in his life and career, he can’t help but foster a sense of belonging.
“I get sentimental at the end of things,” he says.
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