Meet Current Wasserstein Fellows

Adam Pulver is an attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group, where he specializes in administrative law and appellate and Supreme Court litigation on behalf of consumers, workers, and civil rights plaintiffs. Prior to joining the Litigation Group in 2017, Adam worked in a variety of public interest positions. Most recently, he was a Senior Attorney at the Office of the Solicitor of Labor at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), working on a variety of litigation and non-litigation matters relating to discrimination, labor union governance, and labor-management relations. Prior to joining DOL, he spent several years as an associate at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP in New York, where he litigated cases in state and federal courts at all levels, with an emphasis on civil rights cases under section 1983 and the Fair Housing Act. Following law school, Adam served as a law clerk to the Honorable Christina A. Snyder, Honorable Stephen G. Larson, and Honorable Virginia A. Phillips, all of the United States District Court for the Central District of California. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 2008, where he was a James Kent Scholar and Dean’s Public Interest Law Scholar, and received the Allan Morrow Prize for Sexuality and Gender Law. Adam earned his undergraduate degree from Tufts University.

Ask Me About: generalist public interest appellate and Supreme Court litigation; transitioning into and out of government; private public interest law firms vs. nonprofits vs. government; administrative law careers; labor and employment law; consumer law; direct representation versus impact litigation versus policy work; practice as an LGBT lawyer.

Jonah’s practice consists primarily of representing unions in arbitration, administrative proceedings, advice matters, contract negotiations, and in litigation at the trial and appellate levels. He was previously a partner at a Southern California union-side law firm. Jonah has presented on a number of legal topics at conferences conducted by the AFL-CIO Union Lawyers Alliance, the California Teachers Association, the IUPAT Professionals Forum & Finishing Industries Forum, and the Bar Association of San Francisco’s Labor and Employment Law Section. He also contributes to the public discourse about the labor movement and has published opinion pieces in Newsweek, The Hill, Truthout, and The Progressive. Jonah graduated from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. He then clerked for three federal judges: Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins (N.D. Cal.), Chief Judge Dolly M. Gee (C.D. Cal.), and Judge Raymond C. Fisher (9th Circuit). Jonah is currently a Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference Lawyer Representative for the Central District of California and regularly serves as an instructor for the Union Lawyers Alliance’s monthly trial skills trainings, which is attended by 30 to 60 practicing lawyers throughout the country. He and his wife recently taught their 5th grade daughter’s after-school inaugural Mock Trial Club.

Ask Me About: representing unions and workers; labor law as a gateway to constitutional, sports, entertainment, and incarceration law, among other areas; approaching cases through an intersectional lens; lawyering as a second career; clerkships; mock trial; writing and pitching op-eds; advocating for yourself; maintaining your values, even when it is inconvenient; movement lawyering as a person of color.

Angelita Baeyens is an international human rights lawyer, advocate, and educator with extensive experience in litigation, policy advocacy, and political affairs. As Vice President for International Advocacy & Litigation at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, she leads high-impact cases before regional human rights mechanisms and the United Nations, advocating for justice in landmark cases involving human rights defenders, journalists, and marginalized communities. She has played a key role in advancing accountability through targeted sanctions, legal reform, and strategic engagement with governments and international bodies. Previously, Angelita worked as a Political Affairs Officer at the United Nations, where she monitored political developments in the Americas, and held diverse roles at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, where she helped shape policies to protect human rights defenders. A passionate educator, she is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law and has lectured globally on international human rights law. She holds an LL.M. from the University of Notre Dame and a law degree from the University of Ibague. She is fluent in Spanish, French, and English.

Ask Me About: international human rights; partnering with local civil society and activists in different countries; defending human rights defenders; international strategic litigation; targeted sanctions; UN advocacy; regional human rights systems; post-graduate fellowships; work/life balance.

Scott Levy is Chief Policy Counsel at FWD.us, a bipartisan organization committed to ending mass incarceration and transforming the immigration system, where he works on criminal justice and immigration policy reform efforts at the state and national level. He currently leads FWD’s work on protecting equal access to education for all children and the intersection of criminal justice and immigration policy, and previously led a successful campaign to obtain executive clemency for people serving disproportionate federal sentences. Prior to FWD.us, Scott worked for 14 years as an attorney at the Bronx Defenders, a holistic public defender office in the South Bronx, where he built and managed the office’s public policy practice. While at the Bronx Defenders, Scott was deeply involved in a number of criminal legal system reform efforts in New York, including the movement to rewrite New York’s bail and discovery laws, a successful campaign to eliminate driver’s license suspensions for unpaid traffic tickets, and the effort to pass Clean Slate legislation to seal criminal conviction records. He also managed the Marijuana Arrest Project and was lead counsel in Trowbridge v. DiFiore, a federal civil rights case challenging delays in misdemeanor cases in Bronx Criminal Court. Scott graduated magna cum laude from the Princeton School of International and Public Affairs in 2002 and received his J.D. cum laude in 2007 from Harvard Law School, where he was the Special Projects Editor for the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. He clerked for the Honorable Nancy Gertner in the Federal District Court of Massachusetts before joining The Bronx Defenders.

Ask Me About: public defense; federal clerkships; state legislative advocacy; the role of lawyers in broad, grassroots coalitions; legislative drafting; combining client representation with policy, community organizing, and communications efforts; moving from state-level to federal advocacy; holistic, interdisciplinary practice; crimmigration; impact litigation from within a public defender office; sustaining a career in public interest; vibes vs. law in high-volume courts.

Maha Ibrahim is a Managing Attorney at Equal Rights Advocates in San Francisco, California. An attorney at ERA since 2016, Maha came to ERA with seven years of federal and state policy experience as a Congressional and California State Legislative professional. At ERA, Maha was part of the ERA legal representation that negotiated a $1 million + settlement for women working in non-traditional fields (tradeswomen). Maha’s representation of education civil rights clients has contributed to over $2 million in settlements in Title IX matters for sexual assault and harassment survivors at the K-12 and higher education levels, as well as far-reaching, multi-year programmatic monitoring and policy reform, the implementation of which Maha oversees. Maha is a lead author of ERA’s school and education district, campus and state policy models, including several large urban school district policies and administrative regulations, university board policies and Complaint investigation and resolution regulations, and California’s landmark SB 493. Devoted to the next generation of civil rights attorneys, Maha oversees and manages Equal Rights Advocates’ national law clerk program and has created a model program using the pivot to more advanced remote work systems during the COVID-19 era as an opportunity to expand access and the quality and intensity of experiential legal learning. Dedicated to experiential legal education and mentorship in a profession rooted in apprenticeship, Maha transformed Equal Rights Advocates’ Law Clerk program over a management period of 7 years, and now co-teaches an externship seminar at Berkeley Law. Maha is a graduate of UC Berkeley (undergraduate) and UCLA School of Law. She is a product of the opportunities afforded to first generation students through California’s Community College System, and was named 2022 Alumni of the Year of her alma mater (2002), Riverside Community College System.

Ask Me About: state law vs. federal practice; administrative law and agency practice, including the use of the APA in civil rights enforcement; legislative drafting, statutory interpretation, and serving as an advisor to elected officials; public interest salaries; financial security as a first-generation lawyer; advocating for progressive workplace change; cultural competency and/or trauma informed lawyering; self-care when working in socially and emotionally difficult practice areas; practical approaches in intergenerational and/or interprofessional (i.e., lawyer and non-lawyer) legal workplaces; pathways for legal practice typically less widely understood during your academic legal education years, such as legislative committee counsel, state and local government internal counsel, and public-interest private-firms and specialized bar association memberships.

Matt Littleton (he/him) is co-founder and principal of Envolve Law, a small firm that consults for and litigates on behalf of clients advancing the clean-energy transition in a just and responsible manner. In the Biden Administration, Matt was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice, supervising all the Environment and Natural Resources Division’s litigation in the courts of appeals, the enforcement of Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, and the defense of federal actions under pollution-control statutes. Matt started his legal career as a staff attorney in the Division’s Appellate Section. Between his stints at Justice, Matt was a partner at another firm—now known as Donahue, Goldberg & Herzog—where he litigated environmental and other public-law cases for NGOs and municipalities. Matt clerked on the Federal Circuit after graduating in 2010 with a joint degree from HLS and HKS. During law school, he worked at the Office of Energy and Climate Change in the Obama White House. Matt holds a chemistry degree and taught English and other subjects in Central America and North Carolina before law school.

Ask Me About: environmental law; appellate practice; federal government service; starting and practicing in a (very) small firm; navigating transitions between government and private practice; striving for equal partnership in parenting; using LIPP to maximum advantage; being a dual HLS/HKS student; clean energy transition; clerking; and effectively using your time in law school to identify rewarding public-interest careers.

Lena Silver is dedicated to combating poverty by elevating the voices of diverse, low-income communities through both direct services and systemic advocacy shaped by the lived experiences of her clients. Lena is currently the Director of Policy and Administrative Advocacy at Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County (NLSLA), where she has worked since 2015. In this role, Lena oversees NLSLA’s public benefits and workers’ rights teams and supports policy and administrative advocacy initiatives across the organization. She began her tenure practicing housing law before shifting her focus to improving access to local, state, and federal public benefits. In 2021, Lena filed Hunger Action Los Angeles, et al. v. County of Los Angeles, et al., on behalf of a harmed client and several community organizations, to enforce the right of food stamp applicants to receive timely emergency assistance. Following the lawsuit, the County improved its processing rate for emergency applications from 50% to 98%. That same year, Lena launched the Benefits Access for Immigrants (BAILA) Los Angeles Network (www.bailanetwork.org), a collaboration among benefits enrollers, outreach workers, and legal aid providers. The network aims to increase immigrant access to public benefits by addressing barriers such as public charge fears and misinformation. Before joining NLSLA, Lena completed a fellowship at the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law in Chicago and clerked for a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. She earned her B.A. from UC Berkeley in 2008 and her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2013, where she was a proud member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau.

Ask Me About: sustaining a career in legal aid; poverty law; public benefits law; housing law; workers’ rights; impact litigation in a direct services organization; policy, legislative and administrative advocacy; serving diverse communities; coalition building; community education and empowerment; being a first-generation lawyer; clerkships and post-graduate fellowships; being a working parent and work/life integration.

Nathan Blake is the Deputy Colorado Attorney General for Consumer Protection, where he oversees the units that protect Coloradans against violations of the law in the areas of antitrust, consumer fraud, Medicaid fraud, consumer credit, false claims, and civil rights. He previously served as Chief Deputy Iowa Attorney General and, before that, prosecuted Iowa Consumer Fraud Act cases as an Assistant Iowa Attorney General. Prior to his state government service, Nathan worked on anti-hunger policy at the United States Department of Agriculture. He began his legal career in private practice before joining the Obama campaign in 2007. In 2016, Nathan received the National Association of Attorneys General Career Staff of the Year Award. A father of three, Nathan is a graduate of Union College, Yale Law School, and Yale Divinity School.

Ask Me About: state government practice; consumer protection and anti-trust law; working on a presidential campaign; leaving the practice of law and coming back to it; living and working in flyover country; remembering why you went to law school; faith and work; why “networking” is both awful and essential; being a working dad.

Azadeh Shahshahani advances a practice of movement lawyering, focused on confronting state repression and dismantling systems of surveillance, incarceration, and deportation. Azadeh has organized for two decades to protect and defend migrants and Black and Muslim communities from systemic lslamophobia, xenophobia, and anti-Black racism. She also provides support to social justice movements in the Global South. Azadeh is a past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She currently serves on the Advisory Council of the American Association of Jurists. She is the author or editor of several groundbreaking human rights reports as well as law review articles and book chapters focused on movement lawyering, immigrants’ rights, surveillance of Muslim-Americans, and using the international human rights framework as a tool for liberation. Her writings have appeared in The Guardian, The Nation, MSNBC, Time Magazine, Boston Review, Slate, and Los Angeles Times, among others. Azadeh received her JD from the University of Michigan Law School and has a Master’s in Modern Middle Eastern and North African Studies from the University of Michigan.

Ask Me About: movement lawyering; human rights; immigrants’ rights; countering state repression against Muslims, migrants, and communities of color; internationalism; forced migration as directly connected with U.S. foreign policy; providing support to social movements in the Global South; creating fellowships with movement organizations to start your legal career; how to maintain your sanity in law school and beyond; traveling; desserts!

Kassi is a Senior Staff Attorney with the Beyond Borders team, where she works on impact litigation and broader advocacy efforts to protect the human rights of immigrants. In her role, Kassi has filed various administrative complaints and been a part of federal litigation teams to hold CBP accountable for violations of civil rights, especially in torts and disability rights. Kassi has also participated in broader advocacy efforts to end programs like Operation Lone Star. She continues to work on behalf of TCRP clients to ensure that they have equal access to justice. Prior to joining TCRP, Kassi was an Equal Justice Works Fellow at Texas Legal Services Center’s Medical-Legal Partnerships. During her EJW fellowship, Kassi worked to advocate for the immigrant community in a federally qualified health care center. She provided direct legal services to about 300 clients and engaged in health policy, especially in light of the pandemic. Kassi received her BA from the University of Texas at Austin and graduated with honors from The University of Texas School of Law. Currently, she is also serving as an adjunct professor for the Liberal Arts Honors Program at UT, teaching the class titled “The Feds & Texas: Expanding the Infrastructure for Border Militarization.”

Ask Me About: immigration and civil rights issues; navigating the intersection of immigration law, disability rights, and border militarization; supporting and mentoring first-generation students and students of color entering the legal profession; managing vicarious trauma and sustaining purpose while litigating high stakes cases; cooking, yoga, weightlifting, and reading fantasy books!

Ben Winters is the Director of AI and Privacy at the Consumer Federation of America. Ben leads CFA’s advocacy efforts related to data privacy and automated systems and works with subject matter experts throughout CFA to integrate concerns about privacy and AI in order to better advocate for consumers. Ben is also an adjunct professor at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law. Prior to CFA, Ben worked at the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, where he was an Attorney Advisor in the policy section focusing on algorithmic harm in the civil rights context and was Senior Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) where he led the AI/Human Rights project and advocated for accountability through legislative and direct legal action.

Ask Me About: careers in public interest technology; working in non-profit vs. government; AI policy; data privacy; consumer advocacy; how to improve your legal writing; being a first-gen law student; working in an area of law that is constantly evolving; birdwatching; being a basketball and football fan (Nets, Liberty, Giants!), very novice gardening.

Ellen Sise is an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Deputy Chief of the National Security and Cybercrime Section. Ellen is a Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (“CHIP”) coordinator as well as the Office’s Disruptive Technology Strike Force coordinator. Before joining the government, Ellen worked as an associate at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, a white-collar boutique firm, and served as a law clerk to the Honorable Ann M. Donnelly of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Ellen is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Pennsylvania.

Ask Me About: prosecution as public service; national security; cyberlaw; careers in federal government; transitioning from big law; clerking for a district court judge; cross-border investigations; trade secrets prosecutions; trying a case at 38 weeks pregnant (practicing law while pregnant/raising small children).

An international litigator, Arthur Traldi provides consulting services on legal capacity-building, rule of law, investigations and litigation, including the investigation, litigation and adjudication of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. From 2010 to 2017, Arthur served as a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, litigating cases involving charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and violations of the laws of armed conflict. Arthur has also served on teams making submissions to the International Criminal Court, United States Supreme Court, European Court of Human Rights, and other courts in the U.S. and abroad. Before joining ICTY, he served in Chambers at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and clerked for Justice Debra Todd and Judge Arthur L. Zulick in Pennsylvania. Arthur received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and his undergraduate degree from the College of William and Mary. He is certified to practice law before the state courts of Pennsylvania, the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, and the United States Supreme Court.

Ask Me About: international criminal law (and where the field is headed); war crimes investigations; living internationally as a young lawyer; litigating in The Hague; early thoughts on your March Madness bracket.

Liv Warren is a criminal defense attorney at Thomas, Ferguson & Beskind, a boutique trial firm in Durham, North Carolina. Liv has a broad practice that includes criminal and civil cases at every level of the state and federal courts. Liv primarily represents people accused of crimes in trial, appellate, and post-conviction proceedings, including in capital cases. She has a special interest in representing people through collateral proceedings in which they are not entitled to counsel, including expunctions, supervised release, probation, and parole revocations, registry removal petitions, and parole and executive clemency. Outside of the courtroom, Liv engages in legislative advocacy at the state and federal level. She has been working with lawmakers on Capitol Hill to pass legislation extending basic civil rights protections to federal judiciary employees since testifying to Congress in 2020 about her experience being sexually harassed by Judge Stephen Reinhardt on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Most recently, Liv successfully advocated at the North Carolina statehouse to extend the time limits for people convicted of crimes to file claims of innocence or wrongful incarceration. Liv graduated from Harvard Law School in 2017, where she was a member of the BSA and PLAP. Prior to entering private practice, Liv was a Staff Attorney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation. In addition to clerking for Judge Reinhardt, she also clerked for then-Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Ask Me About: criminal defense; transitioning from a non-profit to a private public interest practice; the incredible talent in small law across the country; managing trial, appellate, and post-conviction dockets simultaneously; legislative advocacy; the importance of media training; living well on LIPP; and parenting as an unexpected source of joy and radicalization.

Jennie Bradley Lichter is President of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, a pro-life organization best known for hosting the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. She also leads its sister organization, March for Life Action. In the first Trump Administration, Jennie served in the White House as a Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. In that role she supervised rulemaking and policy efforts on a vast array of issues arising from the Departments of Education, Labor, Health & Human Services, Justice, Housing & Urban Development, Interior, and others. Prior to her White House service, Jennie worked on policy issues and federal judicial (including Supreme Court) confirmation efforts in the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice. Jennie has worked in higher education as Deputy General Counsel for The Catholic University of America, where was also a Fellow at the Center for Religious Liberty in the University’s Columbus School of Law. She previously served as in-house counsel for the Archdiocese of Washington, and as an Issues & Appeals associate at Jones Day. Jennie clerked for Judge David B. Sentelle on the D.C. Circuit and for Judge Steven M. Colloton on the Eighth Circuit in Des Moines. Jennie graduated from the University of Notre Dame and from Harvard Law School and earned an M.Phil in Theology & Religious Studies from the University of Cambridge in the UK.

Ask Me About: nonprofit in-house lawyering, including in higher ed; religious liberty law and policy; federal service; how to be an effective policy advocate; transitioning from BigLaw to public interest; how being a lawyer prepares you to run a nonprofit; navigating career seasons and family life; and hiking in national parks.

Kevin E. Jason is Deputy Director of Strategic Initiatives at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (“LDF”). He leads and supervises racial justice litigation and other forms of advocacy in various areas of law. He has argued school desegregation and qualified immunity cases before several federal courts of appeals. He is currently leading a putative class action challenging the NYPD’s racially discriminatory anti-gang enforcement policies and practices. Generally, his docket focuses on police practices and educational equity matters that combine impact litigation with policymaking, community organizing, and strategic communications. Kevin is currently an Adjunct Professor with the Equality and Justice Clinic at CUNY School of Law and was recently a Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School where he co-taught the experiential course, Racial Justice. Before joining LDF, Kevin worked at the ACLU of New York (New York Civil Liberties Union). Immediately after law school, Kevin served as a law clerk to the Hon. Steven M. Gold of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (retired) and to the Hon. Andrew L. Carter, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Kevin received his J.D. from Stanford Law School. He also earned an M.A. in Public Policy from Stanford University and a B.A. from Columbia University.

Ask Me About: racial justice; multidisciplinary advocacy; impact litigation and appellate advocacy; clerkships; lawyering as a person of color; financial realities of a public interest career; being a first-generation lawyer; New York Knicks and New York Liberty basketball.