Laura Flynn '16, Hope Kwiatkowski '17, Chelsea Bond '17, Sonja Prins '16 Awarded Fellowships
The California International Law Center (CILC) is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2015 UC Human Rights Fellowships and John Paul Stevens Public Interest Fellowships. Laura Flynn '16 and Hope Kwiatkowski '17 will receive John Paul Stevens Public Interest Fellowships, including grants of $5,000 to support work in public interest law. Chelsea Bond '17 and Sonja Prins '16 will receive UC Human Rights Fellowships, with grants of $4,500 to support work in human rights law.
Laura Flynn will be spending the summer with the Natural Resources Defense Council's San Francisco Office. NRDC is a leading public-interest litigation firm that marshals science and law to protect the environment and public health. Working closely with NRDC staff, she will assist with campaigns related to air and energy, oceans, land and forests, and water. She will conduct legal research, draft memos and briefs, and attend hearings.
Hope Kwiatkowski will work with Accountability Counsel (AC), an organization that serves to promote corporate and institutional accountability for human rights abuses abroad by assisting communities in filing complaints, ensuring grievance mechanisms are accessible and transparent, and supporting policy reform. As a Law Fellow, Kwiatkowski will work on issues concerning corporate accountability, draft legal memos regarding current cases, and support the work AC does abroad through complaint drafting and research.
Chelsea Bond will work at the East Bay Community Law Center in the Education Defense and Justice for Youth Clinic. The clinic's goal is to end the school-to-prison pipeline by providing holistic juvenile defense and educational advocacy that allow clients to stay in school and out of detention. She will advocate for clients as they navigate through the juvenile justice system, assisting in delinquency hearings and probation compliance. She will also work to address unmet educational needs that present barriers between the client and the opportunity to succeed in school and beyond.
Sonja Prins will be working as a legal intern at the Office of the State Public Defender (OSPD) in Oakland. The OSPD represents more than 130 men and women on death row in California and Prins will participate in all stages of post-conviction death penalty defense in California State Court. She will work on complex legal research and writing assignments, including drafting memos and legal pleadings to be used in direct appeals to the California Supreme Court. Her work will advance the office's goal of providing high quality legal representation to indigent death row defendants.
The 2015 fellows will be recognized at the Public Service Graduation on April 24. CILC would like to thank the Fellowship Selection Committee - Law Professor Karima Bennoune, Professor and Director of Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas Almerindo Ojeda, and Career Services Associate Director Timothy Griffiths - and all applicants.