New John Paul Stevens Fellowship Adds to Summer Public Service Opportunities

The Justice John Paul Stevens Public Interest Fellowship has been established at the University of Virginia School of Law, adding to the mix of opportunities that will enable scores of law students and recent graduates to work in public service jobs this summer. 

Dominique Fenton ’21, Gia Nyhuis ’21 and Carly Wasserman ’21 are the inaugural fellows of the fellowship, named for the late U.S. Supreme Court justice, who died in 2019. Stevens retired in 2010 as the court’s third-longest-serving justice. 

The fellowship was established at UVA Law with the contributions of Stevens’ daughter Susan Stevens Mullen; her husband, Kevin Mullen; and their classmate Mark Scudder, all 1988 graduates of the Law School.   

“Mark, Kevin and I felt it only natural for the foundation to expand to our beloved UVA Law,” Susan Mullen said. 

Through the fellowship program, started in 1997, the San Francisco-based John Paul Stevens Fellowship Foundation provides grants to students at participating law schools to work in the public interest at legal, government or nonprofit offices. Today, 23 law schools participate, with 19 schools receiving grants directly from the foundation. 

This summer with support from the fellowships, Fenton will work for the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights; Nyhuis will work for the Federal Public Defender for the District of Columbia; and Wasserman will work for the Oakland, California-based National Center for Youth Law. 

The Law School announced additional public service awards and fellowships for the summer. 

Claire Corcoran Award

• Kolleen Gladden ’21 will work for the Federal Public Defender Office for the Western District of Missouri in Kansas City. 
• Gia Nyhuis ’21 will work for the Federal Public Defender for the District of Columbia. 
• Nooreen Reza ’21 will work for the Charlottesville-based Legal Aid Justice Center. 
• Eliza Schultz ’21 will work for the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem in New York. 

Ford C. O’Connell Public Service Fellows 

• Scott Jorgenson ’21 will work for the office of U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and the Senate Judiciary Committee. 
• Chloe Knox ’22 will work for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. 
• Brianna Miller ’22 and Sarah Spielberger ’22 will work for the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. 

Katherine and David deWilde ’67 Public Interest Summer Fellows

• Jess Feinberg ’21 will work for Washington, D.C.-based Muslim Advocates. 
• Katharine Janes ’21 will work for the Boston-based Youth Advocacy Division of the Committee for Public Counsel Services and then for the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center. 
• Jen Kelso ’21 will work for the Washington, D.C.-based National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild. 

Monroe Leigh Fellows in International Law

• Katherine Krudys ’22 will work for the Charlottesville-based Legal Aid Justice Center’s Immigrant Advocacy Program. 
• Robert Mathai ’22 will work for the Department of Justice National Security Division. 

Powell Fellow in Legal Services

• Kevin Jackson ’20 will work with Atlanta-based Kids in Need of Defense to provide legal services for unaccompanied immigrant children. 

Public Interest Law Association (PILA) Fellows

• A total of 168 students will receive $710,351 in funding from a grant program supporting summer public interest work. 

Squire Patton Boggs Foundation Public Policy Fellows

• James Harper ’22 will work for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ Court of Appeals Litigation Group in the Office of General Counsel.  
• Morgan Palmiter ’22 will work for the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Virginia, based in Alexandria. 

Virginia State Bar Criminal Justice Summer Interns 

• Linden Atelsek ’21 will work for the Office of the Public Defender for Fairfax County, Virginia.  
• Robert Fisher ’21 will work for the Charlottesville-Albemarle Public Defender Office. 

Virginia Law Foundation Public Service Summer Interns  

• Caroline Bodie ’21 will work for the Public Defender Office of Hampton, Virginia.  
• Anna Cox ’21 will work for the Tysons, Virginia-based Capital Defender Office of Northern Virginia. 
• Nooreen Reza ’21 will work for the Charlottesville-based Legal Aid Justice Center.