Meet Current Wasserstein Fellows

Michele D. Hall is a criminal defense and civil rights attorney at Brown, Goldstein & Levy. Michele’s civil rights practice at BGL is broad, and includes disability rights, employment discrimination, and prisoners’ rights. Michele also supports BGL’s work obtaining compensation for wrongfully convicted folks primarily in Maryland. Michele’s criminal defense practice builds upon her prior work as a public defender at the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, where she worked as a trial and appellate attorney. As a trial attorney, Michele represented children in Prince George’s County charged in juvenile court and children charged as adults. As an appellate attorney, Michele worked on general criminal appeals and led statewide juvenile appellate strategy.

Michele also engages in legislative advocacy in the Maryland General Assembly. At OPD she supported several juvenile policy initiatives including the Juvenile Justice Reform Act, ending the practice of automatically charging children as adults, and the fight to remove police from schools. During the 2023 legislative session, Michele worked closely with legislators in the Maryland General Assembly to pass House Bill 1071, which prohibits law enforcement from relying on the odor of cannabis to conduct a stop or search of a person or vehicle. At BGL Michele has continued her legislative advocacy, supporting House Bill 1086 which expanded the relief available to exonerees under the Walter Lomax Wrongful Conviction Act. HB 1086 passed on its first attempt in the 2024 legislative session.

Michele graduated from Harvard Law School in 2017. While at HLS, Michele was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and the Harvard Black Law Student Association. After graduating law school, Michele clerked for the Honorable Catharine F. Easterly on the D.C. Court of Appeals.

Ask Me About: appellate practice; public defense; clerking on state courts; being a Black woman in the law; commitment to narrow practice area as a way to create future opportunities; transitioning from the public sector to the private sector; combining litigation with legislative advocacy and community organizing; all Bravo television and Survivor.

Richard Saenz is Counsel and the Criminal Legal System Strategist at Lambda Legal, the oldest and largest national legal organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of LGBTQ+ people and those living with HIV. He focuses his work on the criminal legal system, coordinating litigation and policy work on behalf of incarcerated people and against the criminalization of LGBTQ+ people. Richard is also the project manager and co-author of Protected & Served? 2022, Lambda Legal’s groundbreaking community survey on the experiences of LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV with the criminal legal system. The report is available at www.ProtectedAndServed.org.

Richard has authored numerous amicus briefs throughout the federal court system concerning access to the courts, the rights of incarcerated people, and the availability of claims against prison systems. His legislative work includes coalition work on New York State’s Gender Identity Respect, Dignity, and Safety Act. He is part of the legal team defending California’s SB 132, The Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act, on behalf of intervenors. His work has been featured in the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Magazine, Washington Post, NBC News, USA Today, Newsweek, and The Advocate.

Richard received his Juris Doctor from Fordham University School of Law, where he was a Stein Scholar for Public Interest Law and Ethics. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Georgetown University.

Ask Me About: making a career in public interest law (local direct services and national impact organization); federal litigation and prison litigation; movement lawyering for LGBTQ+ Rights; establishing advocacy projects within nonprofit organizations; creative ways to support litigation; being a first-gen college grad/lawyer; fighting racism as an attorney of color; being in the service of others.

Tara Isa Koslov is a Deputy Director of the Bureau of Competition. In her 27+ years at the FTC, Tara has served as the agency’s Chief of Staff; Acting Director and Deputy Director of the Office of Policy Planning; attorney advisor to three Commissioners; and staff attorney in BC’s Mergers II Division. Tara began her career as an antitrust associate in private practice. Tara was a 2017 recipient of the FTC Chairman’s Award, a 2013 recipient of the Commission’s Award for Excellence in Supervision, and a six-time recipient of the Commission’s Janet D. Steiger Outstanding Team Award. In 2020, she was honored with the inaugural ABA Antitrust Law Section Bar Service Award and was the 2021 recipient of the ABA’s prestigious Nelson Award recognizing outstanding contributions to the ABA by a government or public sector lawyer. In 2022 Tara was inducted into the Section’s Women Connected Hall of Fame-inism to honor her contributions as a role model for and promoter of women in antitrust. She recently completed the Federal Internal Coach Training Program and is working toward certification by the International Coaching Federation. Tara graduated from Brown University and Harvard Law School.

Ask Me About: why competition enforcement is central to a well-functioning economy; the intersection of antitrust and ____ (healthcare, digital markets, intellectual property, regulation, labor, occupational licensing, etc.); transitioning between private practice and the public sector; why so many high-achieving women face imposter syndrome; “balancing” work and family/parenting; maintaining extracurricular interests while practicing law; allyship.

Niku Jafarnia is the Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch, where she investigates human rights abuses and violations of international law in both countries, including alleged war crimes, violations of social and economic rights, and cases of arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance. Currently, she is also investigating the destruction of water resources in Gaza. Immediately after finishing her law degree, she worked for Mwatana for Human Rights, a Yemeni civil society organization, on a Satter fellowship. At Mwatana, Niku investigated war crimes in Yemen and led research regarding the use of starvation as a method of warfare. Niku then worked with the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), where she led research on civilian protection in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya, including research focused on the intersections of climate change, environmental destruction, and drivers of armed conflict. Niku graduated from Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School (class of 2020) with a J.D.-M.P.P. She received her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Ask Me About: working on armed conflict; international human rights; transitional justice; partnering with local civil society and activists in different countries; “on the ground” human rights research; post-graduate fellowships; work/life balance and burnout; living and working abroad.

Pamela Devi Chandran is the Director of Legal Affairs and Strategic Initiatives for the Washington State Nurses Association, a union representing 21,000 registered nurses in Washington State. In this position, Pamela develops and enacts strategic roadmaps that foster union nurses’ ability to advocate for themselves and their patients and ensures that the Union functions efficiently so that staff resources are used in the best interest of the membership. In addition, Pamela performs the traditional work of union-side labor counsel: negotiating collective bargaining agreements (“CBAs”), pursuing complaints against bad actor employers, arbitrating violations of CBAs, and providing advice to Union leadership.

Prior to her current position, Pamela represented public and private sector labor unions as both in-house and outside counsel. Pamela is the ABA Section of Labor & Employment’s DEI officer for the union/employee-side constituency and is a strong advocate for diversity and equity in employment specifically and in the legal professional generally. Since 2017, she has served on the board of the Wage Justice Center in Los Angeles, an organization that fights for low-wage workers by enforcing judgments for wage-theft against employers.

She holds an AB from Dartmouth College, an MA in critical studies in cinema from USC, and a JD from UCLA, the Epstein Program in Public Interest and Policy.

Ask Me About: labor law; the difference between working in-house and as outside counsel; movement lawyering; lawyering as a woman of color; lawyering through pregnancy and parenthood; imposter syndrome; leading as and in spite of being a lawyer; lawyering as a second or third career; plowing through barriers; doubt and burn-out; and endeavoring to find joy and fulfillment in what you do.

Angélica Salceda is the director of the ACLU of Northern California’s Democracy and Civic Engagement Program. In her capacity, Angélica supervises and supports a team of attorneys and legal-policy assistants who work on voting rights, open government, and free speech issues. She focuses both on policy and litigation, providing strategic vision and leadership that shapes the work of the Program. In her previous role as a staff attorney at the ACLU, Angélica worked on a range of issues including immigrants’ rights, economic justice, open government, reproductive justice, and voting rights.

Prior to joining the ACLU as a staff attorney, Angélica was an Equal Justice Works Fellow during which she led a project to identify and remove educational barriers impacting pregnant and parenting students in California’s Central Valley. As a result of Angélica’s advocacy, the California Legislature passed and approved Assembly Bill 203 to ensure that lactating students in K-12 schools have access to private, secure place to breastfeed or express milk during school hours.

Angélica is a graduate of UC Berkeley School of Law, where she participated in the International Human Rights Clinic and served as the student body president. She lives with her husband and three kids in a small rural town in Fresno County, California.

Ask Me About: voting rights; working and living in rural communities; lawyering as a woman of color; litigating civil rights in state and federal courts; policy advocacy; managing a nonprofit; navigating work and family expectations; being a first-generation college graduate and lawyer; and being a working parent.

Amrith Kaur Aakre, a dedicated public servant and national civil rights leader, serves as the Director for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Chicago District. Under Amrith’s leadership, the Chicago District enforces the agency’s mission across six states to ensure that workers who seek the EEOC’s help in remedying employment discrimination obtain relief. As a Senior Executive Service member, she also works with the highest levels of federal government to shape and implement civil rights policies, develop litigation, and build relationships with vulnerable communities and stakeholders in preventing and combating workplace discrimination. Prior to this role, Amrith served as the Legal Director for the Sikh Coalition where she led high-impact litigation matters while managing initiatives to protect the civil rights of all Americans in areas such as employment and school discrimination, hate crimes, racial profiling, and bias-based policy issues. Prior to joining the Sikh Coalition, Amrith served as a prosecutor in Chicago’s Cook County State’s Attorneys’ Office for over 11 years, during which time she led transformative efforts to create and expand access to restorative justice and rehabilitative courts.

Amrith serves on the board of directors for the ACLU of Illinois and the SABA Chicago Advisory Board, and is the recipient of the SABA North American 2022 Public Interest Achievement Award, and the SABA Chicago 2021 and 2023 Public Interest Lawyer Awards. A proud Chicagoan, she also coaches volleyball and track and field for the Chicago Public Schools.

Ask Me About: civil rights work; high impact litigation; racial and religious discrimination; policy drafting; recognizing and addressing systemic challenges and creating change; leading people; building coalitions; being a working mom; being a first generation lawyer and first generation American; and bringing minority voices to the forefront.

Bradley Girard is Senior Counsel at Democracy Forward. Throughout his career in civil impact litigation, Bradley has focused on issues of constitutional law, civil rights, employment discrimination, qualified immunity, and consumer protection, among others. He practices mostly in the federal courts of appeals and Supreme Court.

After graduating from Georgetown Law in 2014, Bradley clerked for the Honorable Neal E. Kravitz on the D.C. Superior Court and on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit for the Honorable Martha Craig Daughtrey. Bradley also served for two years as the clinical teaching fellow at Georgetown Law’s Appellate Courts Immersion Clinic, where he taught students public-interest impact litigation in the federal courts of appeals and the U.S Supreme Court and earned an LLM in advocacy. Bradley was a constitutional litigation fellow at Americans United, where he later returned as Litigation Counsel, litigating cutting-edge First Amendment cases across the country. During law school, Bradley interned at Gupta Wessler, Public Justice, Mehri & Skalet, and in the civil-rights division of the Institute for Public Representation. He also interned on the D.C. district court, in the chambers of the Honorable Gladys Kessler.

Bradley serves regularly as lead counsel in courts of appeals across the country and the Supreme Court. His writing has appeared in a variety of legal publications, including the Georgetown Law Journal, the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy, Law360, and SCOTUS blog. He enjoys arguing for hyphenation of phrasal adjectives and against two spaces after a period. Bradley’s non-law interests include woodworking, collecting vinyl (and DJing), crossword puzzles, the cosmos, and jumping off things into water.

Ask Me About: appellate and supreme court litigation; constitutional law; civil-rights work; first amendment litigation; writing; clerking; how to build your network of public-interest lawyers; creative ways to do the work you want to do; unionizing your workplace; why you shouldn’t use Times New Roman; how to not lose yourself in your profession; and the soft skills needed to build your career.

Sapna Khatri is the Director of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Reproductive Justice Unit. She leads the new unit as it focuses on ensuring that Massachusetts remains a national leader on reproductive justice matters. Sapna’s work includes protecting and expanding access to reproductive and gender-affirming care, addressing disparities in maternal health, championing vital tools like protections on data privacy, and working across state lines to respond to national attacks on reproductive and sexual health care. She utilizes a suite of tools including litigation, investigation, policy advancement, and public education in pursuit of her Unit’s goals.

Prior to joining the AGO, Sapna worked as a Sears Clinical Law Teaching Fellow at the University of California Los Angeles Law School. She launched the school’s inaugural Reproductive Justice Externship Program and led efforts to establish the nation’s first Medical-Legal Partnership at a Planned Parenthood clinic, in partnership with the Black Health Initiative at Planned Parenthood Inglewood and the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. Preceding her time at UCLA, Sapna served as a law fellow in the Women and Reproductive Rights Project at the ACLU of Illinois and later as the organization’s Advocacy & Policy Counsel for privacy, technology, and surveillance matters. Sapna earned her law degree from Washington University in St. Louis, where she was honored as the Public Service Student of the Year for her graduating class, and her bachelor’s degrees from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Ask Me About: reproductive justice; privacy; tech policy; high-impact litigation; policy advocacy; public education; community engagement; transitioning between sectors; life as an attorney at a big law firm vs. a non-profit vs. academia vs. government; diversity in the legal profession; lawyering as a first-gen South Asian queer woman; moving across country for the job; clinical teaching pathways; and understanding the financial reality of doing public service work.

David Bernstein recently retired from the World Bank after over 20 years working on justice reform, anticorruption and public sector development. David was a Lead Public Sector Specialist in the World Bank’s Governance Unit working in the Middle East and North Africa region when he retired. David worked on justice reform and anticorruption projects in the MENA countries, including Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and West Bank & Gaza. Before working in the MENA region, David led justice reform and anticorruption projects in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union starting in 2003.  David also worked in the World Bank’s Integrity Vice Presidency where he focused on corruption prevention activities in the East Asia Pacific region and served as advisor to INT’s Policy Director. David has worked on public sector reform projects focusing on the justice sector since 1992 and on anticorruption projects since 2010. Mr. Bernstein worked in private legal practice at WilmerHale (formerly Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering), for the U.S. State Department (in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor) and for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. David has a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Ask Me About: anticorruption work in monarchies and autocracies; rebuilding trust in public institutions; working for the U.S. State Dept; transitioning between practice settings including big law, federal government, international financial institutions; mediating disputes between government officials; attending the University of Michigan’s victory in the recent NCAA football National Championship Game (#GoBlue).

Kirby Thomas West is an attorney at the Institute for Justice, where she litigates cases protecting First Amendment rights, educational choice, and property rights. She is the Co-Director of IJ’s National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse. Kirby litigates property rights cases, particularly related to civil forfeiture. She is currently litigating two class-action lawsuits challenging forfeitures and impoundments of vehicles, in Detroit and Chicago, respectively. She has testified to Congress as an expert on civil forfeiture in support of the FAIR Act, a pending forfeiture reform bill with bipartisan support. Kirby has litigated educational choice cases in state and federal court, including the United States Supreme Court, where she was a member of the IJ team that won the landmark 2022 ruling in Carson v. Makin. Kirby’s First Amendment practice focuses primarily on First Amendment retaliation cases. She has active First Amendment retaliation cases in Wisconsin and Michigan. Kirby received her law degree with honors from Harvard Law School in 2015. While in law school, she served as Articles Editor for the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. She graduated, magna cum laude, from Bucknell University in 2012 with a BA in English and Political Science. Before joining IJ, Kirby was a litigation associate at Baker Botts, LLP. She clerked for Judge Dennis Shedd of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Ask Me About: litigating cutting edge constitutional cases; property rights; first amendment issues; state constitutional litigation; representing clients in the court of public opinion; transitioning to public interest from big law; balancing lawyering and family life.

Fara Gold currently serves as an attorney advisor for the Office on Violence Against Women of the United States Department of Justice, where she spearheaded the development of DOJ’s Framework for Prosecutors to Strengthen Our National Response to Sexual Assault & Domestic Violence and serves as an expert on investigating and prosecuting sexual assault. Prior to her current role, Fara served as Special Litigation Counsel and Senior Sex Crimes Counsel for DOJ’s Civil Rights Division for nearly 14 years, where she traveled throughout the country prosecuting bias-motivated crimes and law enforcement misconduct cases, developing national expertise in prosecuting civil rights offenses involving sexual misconduct. From 2022-2023, Fara also served as Senior Counsel on Sexual Misconduct to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division where she played an integral role in the Deputy Attorney General’s efforts to root out sexual abuse within the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Before joining DOJ, Fara served as an Assistant State Attorney for the Broward County State Attorney’s Office in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Fara also serves as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center where she teaches, “Prosecuting Sex Crimes & Vindicating Constitutional Rights.”

Ask Me About: criminal civil rights enforcement; combatting gender-based violence; prosecution as a public service; trying cases in courtrooms throughout the country and the difference between state & federal practice; what it is like to work at the Justice Department; overcoming being underestimated. 

Lina is an international lawyer, and an expert on sexual and gender-based violence. She’s currently the Head of the Gender and Children Unit of UNITAD where she leads a team investigating sexual and gender-based crimes (SGBC), including against the Yazidis, and crimes against children. Lina was the lead for the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, coordinating investigations on and analyzing evidence of sexual and gender-based violence in the Syrian conflict and was the author of a highly regarded report on this. After leaving the Commission of Inquiry, she served as a legal advisor on SGBC with the Syria IIIM before moving to working with OPCW on chemical weapons attacks. While SBGV has been a focus of her work, she has worked on crimes against children, both in the Syrian conflict and notably with regard to child soldiers in the DRC leading to the Lubanga case at the ICC.

Ask Me About: war crimes investigations; international criminal law; sexual violence in conflict; human rights in post-conflict situations; building an international career; working in the field; managing family expectations as a first-generation university graduate; challenges for women professionals.

Emily has spent the last thirteen years committed to public interest law – first as a public defender at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia representing indigent juveniles and adults, then at the Federal Defender Services Office, focusing on legislative and policy issues that impact federal defender and appointed panel attorneys, and now as an Assistant Attorney General at the DC Office of the Attorney General, focused on affirmative public advocacy litigation. Emily’s current work focuses on consumers and tenants in the District of Columbia, particularly underserved residents.

Emily graduated from Denison University with a degree in Cinema and East Asian Studies. After college, she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bangladesh, teaching at an all-girls school and focusing on public health issues, such as reproductive rights and HIV/AIDS prevention practices. Before law school, Emily worked at the Ohio Justice and Policy Center serving as the monitor for a statewide prison healthcare class action to restore access to healthcare to incarcerated individuals. Emily graduated from the University of Cincinnati College of Law. Emily is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia.

Ask Me About: being a first-generation college and/or law student; community lawyering and client-centered lawyering; using the principles of economic justice to reduce recidivism and rebuild communities impacted by incarceration; dark patterns/fintech platforms; the myth of work/life/family balance.

Michael Santos is the Associate Director at RESULTS Educational Fund where he works with passionate grassroots advocates to influence political decisions on critical federal housing policies that will bring an end to poverty. Prior to joining RESULTS, Michael was an eviction defense attorney at Bay Area Legal Aid. His prior work focused on advocating for homeless youth access to education through public education, impact litigation, and policy advocacy. Michael Santos has had a long history of working on the rights of low-income and underrepresented communities through the Department of Health and Human Services, the Clinton Foundation, and various non-profit organizations. He currently chairs the American Bar Association’s Commission on Homelessness & Poverty. Michael graduated from Brown University with a double concentration in Biomedical Engineering and Ethnic Studies. He received his JD from University of Southern California Gould School of Law and is admitted to the California, New York, and District of Columbia state bars.

Ask Me About: lawyering as an LGBTQ person of color; creative and movement lawyering; immigration law; housing law; eviction defense and litigation; negotiating salaries and promotions; government careers; clerkships; administrative and legislative policy advocacy; direct legal services vs. impact litigation vs. policy advocacy; grassroots lobbying and working on Capitol Hill.

Kenda McIntosh has devoted over a decade to public interest work in various roles.  Prior to becoming a Federal Public Defender, Kenda ran the criminal defense practice at Still She Rises, a non-profit organization in Tulsa which was founded to address the staggering rates of female incarceration in Oklahoma.  Embracing a client-centered and holistic approach, her philosophy of “no case too small” resulted in the dismissal of hundreds of cases, ranging from municipal tickets to homicide charges. This approach not only significantly reduced the state’s interference in the lives of the women served by the organization, but also translated into substantial economic benefit for the North Tulsa community, amounting to millions of dollars saved annually in bail, traffic tickets, court costs, and fines.

Before joining Still She Rises, Kenda served as an Assistant Public Defender at the Oklahoma County Public Defender’s Office where she handled cases ranging from misdemeanors and juvenile delinquent matters to general felony and capital cases. Prior to her time in Oklahoma, Kenda worked as an immigrant rights fellow at the International Institute of the Bay Area in Oakland, California where she assisted undocumented people with various immigration matters and was a pro-bono attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco, where she obtained asylum for three families facing death in their home countries. She received dual bachelor’s degrees in Russian language and political science from the University of Arizona, and her J.D. from New England Law.

Ask Me About: criminal and family defense; immigration; economic justice; holistic representation; trial work; the challenges and rewards of doing public interest work in conservative jurisdictions; pros and cons of government; being a person of color in adversarial spaces; being a first generation college student/and lawyer and the value of that lived experience in public interest work; coping with secondary trauma and avoiding burnout; and experience and skills necessary for early career success.