Class of 2014
Alejandro Francisco Delgado
Alejandro Francisco Delgado earned M.Phil and M.A. degrees in History from Yale University and a B.A. from Colgate University. He organized academic, service, and hotel workers with UNITE-HERE in and beyond New Haven, Connecticut, and more recently worked with Proyecto Defensa Laboral in Austin, Texas, providing legal assistance to undocumented construction workers. Alejandro is interested in working in legal aid, impact litigation, community outreach, and policy advocacy.
Maria Sofia Corona Gomez
Maria Sofia Corona Gomez earned an M.A. in History from the University of Texas and a B.A. from California State University, Fresno. She has worked at California Rural Legal Assistance as a community worker since 2009, and has coordinated union campaigns and immigrant rights coalitions. Sofia is deeply committed to unincorporated communities in the Central Valley.
Class of 2013
Sonja Diaz
Sonja has extensive work experience in the public sector, facilitating advocacy campaigns, directing qualitative and quantitative research projects, and organizing multi-cultural programming. As an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Sonja was a research assistant, teaching assistant, and student director for outreach and retention programs. After her undergraduate studies, Sonja advocated on behalf of communities of color in the most recent California health expansion debate as a Health Fellow at Latino Issues Forum and architected the first interactive online advocacy portal specifically designed to increase the civic participation of Latina registered voters in California as an associate at Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE). As a graduate student, Sonja directed a longitudinal participatory research study on neighborhood public school choice reforms within LAUSD as a researcher for UCLA’s Center X, documented the propensity of telemedicine to benefit urban communities as a Summer Associate at the Greenlining Institute, and advocated against the budget cuts to public higher education statewide. Sonja is a Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) fellow, a graduate of the Applied Research Center’s Racial Justice Leadership Institute, and holds a Masters of Public Policy from UCLA’s School of Public Affairs. Born and raised in urban Los Angeles, Sonja hopes to refine the skills necessary to advance civil rights laws and equitable public policies for marginalized communities on federal and municipal levels.
Diana Rashid
Diana was born in Michoacan, Mexico. Her family immigrated to the US when she was five. She was raised in Chicago where became a leader in the immigrant rights movement during high school, when she began organizing youth to fight for financial aid and access to higher education for undocumented students. As a high school student, Diana was instrumental in passing Illinois legislation granting in-state tuition to undocumented students. As an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, she founded a student organization that worked to advance the DREAM Act and organized in the local community for comprehensive immigration reform. After college, Diana organized in Seattle where she won community benefits agreements at local hospitals and advanced language access in local hospitals. Most recently Diana was an organizer with the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy in Oakland, where she developed a coalition of labor unions and community organizations to advocate for immigration reform that protected immigrant workers’ rights to organize. After law school, Diana plans to continue fighting to change federal immigration laws to protect immigrant workers’ rights and provide undocumented students access to higher education.
Class of 2012
Yanin Senachai
Yanin was born in Bangkok, Thailand and raised in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles. She worked for six years at the Asian & Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence, fostering national collaborations and ethnic specific organizing to develop and promote culturally relevant advocacy for Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander victims of domestic violence. As a summer intern at Bay Area Legal Aid, Yanin assisted undocumented women in applying for U-Visas and advocated for low-income, homeless and disabled clients in appealing their denials of social security and disability benefits. She is currently an intern at the East Bay Community Law Center, assisting individuals being sued over consumer debt. Along with Makda Goitom (Class of 2012), Yanin is co-chair of the Boalt Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. Through her future career in law, Yanin aims to advance the availability and effectiveness of legal services for survivors and ultimately improve victims’ access to personal safety, financial security, and well-being.
Amaha Imanuel Kassa
Amaha is proud to be a first-generation African immigrant, a social justice organizer, and a lawyer in training. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Amaha emigrated to the United States as a child. At Brown University, he was active in the student movement for financial aid reform and minority admissions. After college, he worked as a union organizer with poultry workers in Alabama, nursing home workers in Detroit, and public sector workers in the Silicon Valley. In 1999, he became lead staff person, and eventually Executive Director, of the start-up economic justice nonprofit East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, and helped grow the organization into a nationally recognized leader in its field. Amaha plans to use his legal education to become a more effective advocate and lobbyist for progressive Africa policy and for African immigrant communities in the US.
Class of 2011
Tam Mai Ma
Tam has worked on a wide range of poverty law issues as a law clerk with Legal Services of Northern California, East Bay Community Law Center and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation. She also served as a judicial extern for the Honorable Kimberly J. Mueller, United States Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of California. Prior to attending law school, Tam was a California Senate Fellow and spent six years working as a policy consultant to State Senator Sheila Kuehl, where she advised the Senator on legislation before the Senate Judiciary Committee and issues relating to housing and tenants’ rights, gender-based crimes, social services and immigrants’ rights.
Tam served on the board of the Women’s Foundation of California. She is a long-time volunteer with My Sister’s House, a Sacramento-based shelter for Asian and Pacific Islander survivors of domestic violence and has served as its board chair. Tam’s volunteer work with the Women’s Policy Institute of the Women’s Foundation of California and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum has helped to develop the capacity of progressive women leaders to influence California public policy.
Tam received her B.A. in Political Science with a minor in City Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. As an Americorps volunteer, Tam ran a literacy program at a juvenile probation camp. A native of Los Angeles, Tam has lived in Northern California all of her adult life. She plans to combine her legal training and her policy experience to continue working for social justice.
Tam is now a Legal Graduate Fellow at Legal Services of Northern California in Sacramento, California.
Aaron Bianco
Aaron is a former foster youth from Richmond, California, who is devoted to the cause of supporting foster youth in the transition to adulthood. In 2001, Aaron successfully helped lobby Congress to supplement foster care spending with $47 million in scholarship grants. As part of his Phoenix Fellowship, he created a best practices manual to guide foster youth and interested practitioners, through the process of emancipation. Aaron worked with Bay Area organizations to preserve funding for California and foster youth services. Aaron graduated from Princeton University and plans to use his law degree to improve the national infrastructure for emancipating foster youth.
Class of 2010
Samika Boyd
Samika hails from New Orleans, Louisiana, and strives every day to build bridges that help people who share her humble beginnings access higher education. Samika earned both her B.A. and M.A. in Political Science from Howard University, with honors, where she mentored and tutored high school students at the Maya Angelou Charter School. At Boalt, Samika participated in the Board of Advocates (Moot Court); served as Academic Chair of Law Students of African Descent (LSAD); and was active with the Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy (BJALP). Samika’s commitment to academics and community service is inspired by the words of jurist Charles Hamilton Houston: “A lawyer is either a social engineer or a parasite on society.”
Samika is now a litigation fellow at Bernabei & Wachtel. Her bio is available here.
Miguel Manriquez
Miguel is a passionate advocate on issues relating to Latino communities, youth of color, and education. He earned his BA in Political Science from UC Berkeley. After graduation, he worked as an admissions officer for the UC Berkeley Office of Undergraduate Admissions. As a law student, Miguel volunteered at the Centro Legal de la Raza’s Worker’s Rights Clinic in Oakland, and mentored youth through the Center for Youth Development through Law. He has also played leadership roles in several Berkeley Law student organizations, including serving as co-chair of the Coalition for Diversity, managing editor of the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, and executive editor of the Berkeley Business Law Journal.
Miguel is now an attorney at the National Labor Relations Board.
Class of 2009
Samorn Selim
Samorn Selim is an associate at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. Her bio is available here.
Vina Ha
Vina Ha is an attorney at Google.
Taina Gómez-Ferretti
Taina Gómez-Ferretti is an attorney at the Fresno County Public Defender’s office.
Kiywhanna Kellup
Kiywhanna Kellup is an attorney at the Social Security Administration.
Class of 2008
Jessica Mendoza
Jessica Mendoza is an associate at Pillsbury. Her bio is available here.
Jennifer M. Gómez
Jennifer Gómez is a legal fellow at the Institute for Policy Integrity. Her bio is available here.
Class of 2007
Daniel J. Aguilar
Daniel Aguila is an attorney at Winston & Strawn LLP. His bio is available here.
C’reda Weeden
C’reda Weeden is an attorney at the Office of the Secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Class of 2006
Bethelwel Wilson
Bethelwel Wilson is an attorney with Cummins & White LLP in Newport Beach, California.
Wanda Hasadsri
Wanda Hasadsri is an attorney at the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, Department of Industrial Relations in Sacramento, California.
Lillian Hardy
Lillian Hardy is an associate at Hogan Lovells. Her bio is available here.
Class of 2005
Luz Valverde
Luz Valverde is an associate at the Law Offices of Cliff Gardner, specializing in appellate and habeas corpus post-conviction proceedings. Her bio is available here.
Salomon Zavala
Salomon Zavala is an attorney in private practice in Los Angeles.
Class of 2004
Sarah Bond
Sandra Gallardo
Class of 2003
Alegria De La Cruz
Alegria De La Cruz was both a Phoenix Fellow and a Post-Graduate Fellow. She was also awarded the 2008 Thelton Henderson Social Justice Prize.
Alegria is now the Legal Director of the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. Her bio is available here.
Class of 2002
Isela Castenada
Eduardo Luna
Class of 2001
Monika Batra Kashyap
Monika came to law school with a history of advocacy on behalf of disempowered immigrants. Before entering Boalt, she co-founded Worker’s Voice (Worker’s Awaaz), the first organization in the country with the goal of organizing South Asian immigrant low-wage workers in different industries for education and empowerment.
Monika Batra Kashyap is now Associate Director of the Access to Justice Institute at Seattle University School of Law. Her bio is available here.