By Andrew Cohen
3L Dana Dabbousi calls sustainability a family passion.
“In true Syrian custom, my grandparents reused glass jars and tubs to store everything from fresh dairy to homemade jams. They shopped from local vendors, avoided waste, and found ways to extend the life of nearly everything in the household,” she recalls. “In high school, I learned about climate change and clean-tech from my parents, who were sustainability pioneers. My father patented novel fuels for hydrogen fuel cells, while my mother led bio-carbon capture projects as one of her company’s first female engineers.”
Dabbousi initially pursued a similar path as a biochemical engineering major at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After compiling a dizzying list of honors there, she worked for a large energy producer in her home country of Saudi Arabia — embracing the dichotomy of being a sustainability advocate within the energy industry, and helping to guide company practices.
Dabbousi’s deep interest in advancing sustainable practices, along with a growing recognition of the need to develop her policy toolkit to help drive innovation and growth in the region, made law school an increasingly compelling path.
“For me, education has always been about acquiring different tools to solve problems,” she says.
Dabbousi has thrived at UC Berkeley Law, working as a commercialization analyst at its Deep Tech Innovation Lab, a legal research associate at the law school’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, and in an array of student organizations, including Women in Technology Law and the Berkeley Immigration Group.
Senior publishing editor for the student-run Ecology Law Quarterly journal and a member of the Alternative Dispute Resolution team, she recently helped UC Berkeley Law win the California Lawyers Association’s Environmental Law Negotiations Competition. Dabbousi was also awarded Brian M. Sax Prize for Excellence in Clinical Advocacy Honorable Mention for her wide-ranging work in the school’s Clinical Program.
Grilling up a new opportunity
This semester, she is part of the inaugural cohort of students in the Global Rights Innovation Lab (GRIL), helping to develop its service model. Dabbousi previously advanced clean energy projects with the Environmental Law Clinic in her 2L year — Director Claudia Polsky ’96 says she demonstrated “smarts, grace, humility, social intelligence, respect for our clients, and a demon work ethic” — and worked on consumer justice projects with the East Bay Community Law Center.
“Berkeley shares my deep interest in technology and in tackling big issues,” Dabbousi says. “The breadth of courses allowed me to explore different ideas, while the certificate programs helped me stay focused and aware of the many possibilities. But more than anything, the community has been instrumental in pushing me to try new things and discover where I fit in the world.”
Operating at the crossroads of human rights and digital technology, GRIL works to help implement data-driven tools to bolster local advocacy, policy, and social change — at home and abroad — in support of human rights defenders and victims increasingly under duress due to hostile political environments and authoritarian governments.
Taught by Clinical Professor and international law expert Laurel Fletcher, the clinic provides a welcome outlet for applying legal knowledge to real-world issues in a practical, innovative, and responsive way, Dabbousi explains, teaching future lawyers how to bridge gaps between law, technology, and policy to create lasting impact.
“Seeing how my background in design thinking, engineering, and technology can be applied in the legal field has been incredibly invigorating,” she says. “I love building things and having the opportunity to help bring this clinic to life has been an honor. I’m particularly excited for the next stage of our work: the workshops, where we’ll get to the truly creative part of developing solutions.”
Dabbousi also credits GRIL for illuminating how emerging technologies such as facial recognition and machine learning can be used for social good, like helping find missing persons or evidentiary analysis, but can also contribute to human rights violations.
“That’s part of why I came to law school: to learn how to advocate for and enable positive uses of technology while shaping policies to limit the harm they can cause,” Dabbousi says. “The same approach applies to working within industries that have historically contributed to environmental challenges — finding ways to push for meaningful change from within.”
An inclusive approach
Dabbousi has long prioritized inclusivity by creating and sustaining platforms for dialogue among diverse perspectives. As an undergrad at MIT, she launched and curated the Arab Innovation Forum at the world’s largest energy conference (CERAWeek) and engaged with industry leaders and their staunchest critics — policy analysts, students, and activists — at the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative annual meeting.
She also founded MIT’s Arab Science and Technology Conference to elevate the voices of Arab innovators on the global stage, and became the youngest member elected to the school’s Arab Alumni Association’s Board of Directors.
Her commitment to inclusion is rooted in her global upbringing. Dabbousi has spent considerable time in the United States, Bahrain, Great Britain, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Greece, a multicultural exposure that made her experience in Greece particularly meaningful. While there, she taught refugee students from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria at the Faros Horizon Center for Refugee Minors.
Like her, the instructors were MIT women with roots in many of the same conflict-affected regions. The program focused on community-driven innovation, drawing from a range of worldviews, design strategies, and cultural norms. Rather than prescribing solutions, it aimed to equip refugees with tools to develop their own.
“I’m committed to bringing together key stakeholders to redesign our systems more sustainably, and to introduce metrics and innovative frameworks that guide investment decisions that serve our current and future needs as a society,” Dabbousi says. “Similar to what we’re doing in GRIL.”
After graduating in May with certificates in both Energy & Clean Technology Law and Public Interest & Social Justice, she plans to work in the U.S. for a year before returning to Saudi Arabia. She says law school has reinforced that while a global perspective is valuable, solutions must be tailored at the local level.
“To achieve effective global policy reform, we need both: a shared foundation of knowledge and tools, but also the empowerment of local communities to adapt and implement solutions that work in their specific contexts,” Dabbousi says. “I’m excited to take what I’ve learned at Berkeley — particularly the lessons from California’s approach to law, technology, and sustainability — and apply it to helping my communities back home to create structures and solutions that address our most pressing challenges.”