Class of 2023
Alijah Futterman
Alijah grew up on the south side of Chicago. She received a B.A. in Sociology at Stanford University, concentrating in data science, markets, and management and a minor in Spanish. During her time in undergrad, Alijah researched alternatives to carceral punishment and the traditional justice system. Following her research experiences, Alijah began to work within the legal system to advocate with communities who are oppressed by the systemic injustices entrenched in our laws. After graduating from Stanford, Alijah was a legal assistant for Medina Orthwein LLP, a civil rights law firm in Oakland, where she worked for two years on race discrimination class action lawsuits and civil rights lawsuits on behalf of transgender people housed in California prisons.
At NYU, Alijah was a research assistant for Professor Vincent Southerland, the community service co-chair of BALSA, a board member of the Solitary Confinement Project, and worked with Bronx Legal Aid as a student advocate in the Criminal Defense and Reentry Clinic. As a 3L, she will participate in the Juvenile Defender Clinic. Alijah interned with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia during her 1L summer and with the Cook County Public Defender during her 2L summer. She hopes to use her legal education to help people fight for their freedom.
Class of 2024
Sam Karnes
Sam (he/him) grew up in Dallas, Texas. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2017 as a Plan II Honors student with a B.A. in Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic. Upon graduating, he spent a year abroad in Meknes, Morocco where he continued his university Arabic studies through the Arabic Flagship Program. When he returned to Austin, Sam served as an employment case manager at Refugee Services of Texas, a local Austin refugee resettlement agency. As a case manager, he supported refugees and other displaced persons in securing employment and pursuing their long-term professional goals. Afterwards, Sam became a Community Fellow at Immigrant Justice Corps where he represented primarily low-income immigrants living in New York as an Accredited Representative. He conducted legal screenings, provided legal advice, and filed affirmative immigration applications for benefits like citizenship, adjustment of status, Temporary Protected Status, DACA, and more. Sam hopes to use his law degree to provide community-based legal assistance to immigrant groups and to help dismantle the US immigration deportation machine.
Class of 2025
Aarya Chidambaram
Aarya Chidambaram grew up in San Diego, California and is the proud daughter of Tamil immigrants. She graduated from UC Davis in 2020 with degrees in International Relations and History. During this time, she became involved with local activist efforts on and off campus and spent time organizing around issues of gender and housing justice. After graduating, she returned home to serve an AmeriCorps term at the Jewish Family Service of San Diego. Around this time, she also began volunteering at a Domestic Violence Crisis Hotline. In 2021, she moved to San Francisco to work at the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank as a coordinator in their Home-Delivered Groceries program. With her legal education, Aarya is eager to support grassroots movements dismantling systems of gender and economic oppression.