WASHINGTON, D.C. — When Alejandro T. Reyes was attending college and law school he saw for himself a future as a public interest attorney, but he didn’t know anybody in the field. Thankfully, he landed an Equal Justice Works fellowship upon graduating from Howard University School of Law, which set him on his path.
After joining the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in 2010, he began to discuss the idea of developing a fellowship that helped cultivate the next generation of people committed to working in public advocacy and social justice both as attorneys and in other capacities.
“We want to give new emerging leaders access to what we’ve learned after being in the field,” said Reyes. “We want to give them access to our networks, to the lessons we’ve learned. We want to provide them access to civil rights leaders that have been working on social justice issues for their entire careers. That’s part of the programming.”
Last week, the Lawyers’ Committee introduced its two inaugural fellows, Tania Chairez and Najaah Daniels, who were selected from an outstanding pool of applicants. Both are the first in their families to attend a higher education institution (thus the FirstGEN designation) and intend to pursue careers in the civil rights field.
Chairez is from Phoenix and attends the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, studying marketing and sociology. She is vice chair of the Latino Coalition at her school and co-founder of the student group Penn for Immigration Rights.
Daniels, a 20-year-old New Yorker, is part of a six-year B.A./J.D. program at St. John’s University. Involved in social justice organizations since age 14, at 16 Daniels was the youngest person ever elected president of the New York state youth and college division of the NAACP.
