Public Service Graduation for Class of 2019

Last week, UC Davis celebrated the Class of 2019! First, an elegant Public Service Graduation for the Class of 2019. More than one half of the class was honored as Public Service Law Program Scholars, Martin Luther King Jr. Service Awards Honorees, and other students dedicated to the public interest.

Sofia Parino of the Career Services Office and the Public Service Graduation Committee (Estela Barajas, Anibal Lopez, Evan Reid, AnaStacia Nicol Wright, Mina Arasteh, Tatiana Bush, and Muhammad Kenyatta) organized the ceremony.

The ceremony culminated with the naming of the winner of the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Award. Among an amazing group of public interest students, Angela Yahaira Breining was bestowed the honor for her dedicated work for immigrant workers. Earlier this year, she was named a 2019 Skadden Fellow. The Skadden Fellowships provide two years of funding to help launch the careers of public interest lawyers. Breining, one of my former research assistants, is the second-ever UC Davis Law student to receive this highly competitive fellowship. Breining will work with Centro Legal de la Raza to create mobile clinics that provide legal services and community education to low-wage immigrant workers in Yuba, Sutter, Butte and Colusa counties. During law school, Breining has been a student leader serving as former co-chair of the UC Davis La Raza Law Students Association and helped build the Workers’ Rights Clinic, a student organization that provides legal assistance to low-wage workers in the area.