The Skadden Fellowship Foundation has named Hugh Baran ’17, Jason Pedraza ’19, Molly Rugg ’19, Gabriela Siegel ’19, and Victoria Wenger ’19 among this year’s 28 fellows. Since 1988, the foundation, established by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, has been granting two-year fellowships to recent law school graduates working full-time in public interest law. The fellowships provide a salary, loan repayment assistance, and other benefits.
Hugh Baran ’17, a Root-Tilden-Kern (RTK) scholar, will use his fellowship to work at the National Employment Law Project in New York, representing low-wage workers in mandatory arbitrations involving sexual harassment, discrimination, and wage theft claims. Baran is currently a law clerk for Judge Victor Bolden on the US District Court for the District of Connecticut. While at NYU Law, he served as editor-in-chief of the Review of Law and Social Change. In 2017, Baran was awarded the Vanderbilt Medal for outstanding contributions to NYU School of Law.
Jason Pedraza ’19, a D’Agostino Scholar for Women and Children within the RTK program, will work through the Education Law Center in Newark, NJ, where his responsibilities will include both direct legal representation and know-your-rights trainings to safeguard the educational rights of preschoolers from disadvantaged families. This year, Pedraza served as a Deborah T. Poritz Public Interest Legal Fellow at Northeast New Jersey Legal Services, where he represented low-income clients facing eviction. Pedraza previously worked as a research assistant for Dean Trevor Morrison, helping to develop curricula for New York City public high school students.
Molly Rugg ’19, a Filomen D’Agostino Scholar in Civil Rights, Civil Liberties, and/or Criminal Justice with the RTK program, will use her fellowship to work at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem in New York, where she served as a legal intern this summer. Rugg will work to reduce the permanent exclusion of residents from Manhattan public housing due to contact with the criminal justice system. During her time at NYU Law, Rugg served as a legal intern at Brooklyn Defender Services and was the political action chair for OUTLaw. This spring, Rugg will be a Pro Bono Scholar representing low-income tenants with the New York Legal Assistance Group.
Gabriela Siegel ’19 will be joining the Workplace Justice team at Make the Road New York in Brooklyn, NY. Siegel will be providing direct representation, community education, and policy advocacy on behalf of immigrant domestic workers and cleaners who face exploitation and hazardous conditions in the workplace. While at NYU Law, Siegel interned with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and Brooklyn Defender Services, where she worked on the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project. Siegel is currently an articles selection editor of the Review of Law and Social Change.
Victoria Wenger ’19, a Furman Public Policy Scholar and staff editor of the Review of Law and Social Change, will work with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in New York, focusing on litigation and community education to protect voting rights in the South, including challenging obstacles to voting and expanding voter registration access. This spring, Wenger will serve as a Racial Justice Clinic student advocate with the ACLU, where she has served as a volunteer media strategist since 2017. Wenger was previously a student fellow at the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law and the chair of the Prison Reform and Education Project from 2017 to 2018.
Posted December 19, 2018