Eight Students Named 2024 Skadden Fellows

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom named eight Yale Law School students and recent alumni as 2024 Skadden Fellows. The Skadden Fellowship Foundation awarded Grace Choi ’22, Diego Fernández-Pagés ’24, Rebecca Harris ’24, Alex Johnson ’24, Helen Malley ’24, Ben Rodgers ’24, Shyamala Ramakrishna ’24, and Isir Said ’22 two-year fellowships to pursue the practice of public interest law full-time.

Grace Choi ’22

At the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project in New York City, Choi will work to implement a multipronged legal project to mitigate systemic barriers and hostile federal policy that currently narrow access to asylum.

 

Diego Fernández-Pagés ’24

At Make the Road New York in Brooklyn, NY, Fernández-Pagés will work to address exploitation of immigrant workers of color in Westchester County by mobilizing two novel legal tools — a reporting app and Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement — to inform legislative advocacy, impact litigation, and workplace organizing building collective, democratic power.

 

Rebecca Harris ’24

At the National Veterans Legal Services Program, Harris will work on direct representation, community outreach, and education and policy advocacy to the families of veterans with serious disabilities seeking caregiver benefits or appealing unfavorable decisions from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

 

Alex Johnson ’24

At the LGBTQ & HIV Project at the ACLU in New York, NY, Johnson will bring impact litigation and develop public education materials to challenge and address state Medicaid programs’ prohibitions of and limitations on providing gender-affirming care.

 

Helen Carstarphen Malley ’24

At the ACLU of Alaska in Anchorage, Malley will work on impact litigation, legislative advocacy, and community education to advance a state constitutional right to shelter and promote access to shelter.


 

Shyamala Ramakrishna ’24

At A Better Balance in New York, NY, Ramakrishna will direct legal services, strategic litigation, and legal education to fight employers’ use of new technologies that deny low-wage workers in manufacturing, logistics, and retail their rights under federal, state, and local laws.


 

Ben Rodgers ’24

Rodgers will work on legal representation of migrant child workers with immigration, employment, and family law needs at the Central West Justice Center in Springfield, Massachusetts. There, he will collaborate with local nonprofit community organizations to provide empowering educational programs.

 

Isir Said ’22

Said will work at CAIR Legal Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. on direct representation, public education, and policy advocacy to vindicate the rights of low-income Muslim women who have had their religious head covering forcibly removed while in police custody.

 

The Skadden Fellowship Foundation seeks to improve legal services for the poor and promote economic independence, funding over 900 fellowships since 1988. Ninety percent of Skadden Fellows remain in public service, and many are still working on the same issues as their original fellowship projects. View a complete list of this year’s fellows.