MAY 10, 2013

BERKELEY LAW CLASS OF 2013 PUBLIC INTEREST AND PRO BONO GRADUATION CEREMONY

Each year the Henderson Center, the Career Development Office, and the Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects (SLPS) host a reception and recognition ceremony that honors and thanks law students for completing 50 or more hours of pro bono work, completing two summers of public service work or serving as coordinators for SLPS, as well as their public interest and public sector mentors.

This year’s award ceremony was held in Booth Auditorium followed by a cocktail reception in the Goldberg room and Steinhart Courtyard. Graduates and their family members and significant others joined us in celebrating the great work these students have done and will continue to do in the future. As a part of the ceremony, the Francine Diaz Memorial Award, the Kathi Pugh Award, and the Eleanor Swift Award were also presented.

Receiving the Francine Diaz Memorial Award were Marissa Ram, Diana Rashid, and Sonja Diaz.  This award recognizes the graduating women of color whose work in social justice best memorializes Francine's own commitment.

The Kathi Pugh Award for Exceptional Mentorship, recognizing the outstanding efforts of the attorney-mentors for the Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects, went to Mike Gaitley and Gina Gemello.

The Eleanor Swift Award,  presented annually in honor of Berkeley Law Professor Eleanor Swift to members of the Boalt community who -- like Prof. Swift -- have made outstanding contributions to strengthening our community’s support for public service, went to Elisa Della-Piana and Stephen Rosenbaum.

Finally, Attorney Mentors were recognized for their dedication, mentorship and supervision of Berkeley Law students.  The Acting Dean delivered opening remarks, and approximately 240 faculty, family, significant others and student honorees attended.

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Francine Diaz Memorial Award Recipients:

Marissa Ram

Following graduation from Berkeley and prior to entering Boalt Hall, Ms. Ram worked as a health educator with young female and male Indian, Nepali, and Bhutanese survivors of sex trafficking. This sparked her interest in refugee rights and the anti-trafficking movement, which in turn led her to Berkeley Law.  Here at Boalt she has worked with the California Asylum Representation Clinic; worked as a Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center; interned at the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties in Australia; participated in the Boalt Hall International Human Rights Law Clinic; interned at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law; interned on the Immigrants’ Rights Project in the San Francisco office of the American Civil Liberties Union; and co-founded the Boalt Anti-Trafficking Project.

Diana Rashid

Dianna Rashid came with her parents to the US from Mexico at the age of five.  As a high school sophomore, she campaigned to pass an in-state tuition bill and the DREAM Act. By sharing her story with the media, she became the face of that campaign. Winning the campaign made it possible for her to attend the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While there, she founded a student organization to support undocumented students and keep up the pressure to pass a national DREAM Act.  As a student at Boalt Hall, she has been active in the La Raza Law Student Association, serving as the Cruz Reynoso chair; participated in the California Asylum Representation Clinic; interned at the Dolores Street Community Services in San Francisco; participated in the International Human Rights Law Clinic; and interned at the ACLU Immigrants’ Right Project in San Francisco and the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago.

Sonja Francine Marie Diaz

Sonja is the niece of Francine Diaz, whose commitment to social justice is memorialized by this award.  Like her aunt, she has been an activist for social change at UCLA (where she earned her masters in public policy) and here at Boalt. While at Boalt, she worked at the East Bay Workers’ Rights Clinic; interned at the White House Domestic Policy Council, where she worked on civil rights issues; worked at the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Justice, where she worked on race and democracy issues; clerked at the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund; volunteered at the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, where she worked in the voting rights section; worked with the National Employment Law Project; and served as an editor with two journals, the La Raza Law Journal and the Berkeley Journal of African-American Law & Policy.

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Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice and the UC Berkeley Center for Race and Gender present:


February 28, 2013
&
March 1, 2013

RACE, DOMESTIC AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE:
FROM PRISON NATION TO COMMUNITY RESISTANCE

2013 Robert D. and Leslie-Kay Raven
Lecture on Access to Justice
with
Beth R. Richie
2013 Raven Lecturer

For more information on the 2013 spring symposium
and 2013 Raven Lecture visit:  http://www.law.berkeley.edu/14777.htm

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