Kelly P. Boozer

Kelly Boozer is a rising third year student at the University of South Carolina School of Law. In May 1996, she graduated from the University of South Carolina with a BA in English. Since May 1997, she has been a Kellogg law clerk with the Office of General Counsel at the South Carolina Department of Social Services. She is interested in pursing a career in Child Welfare and Family Law.

Rachel Chazin

Rachel Chazin graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1996. Currently, she is in her second year of a joint degree program in law and social work at New York University. She hopes to be able to use her background in these areas in a career in child welfare. This summer she will be working at Lawyers for Children, Inc. in New York City.

Sara W. Clash

Sara Clash is a first year law student at the University of Michigan Law School. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 1996 with a degree in History and a minor in Women's Studies. While in college, Sara held the position of Coordinator of Volunteers for Dartmouth Community Services. She facilitated an outreach program on violence and abuse for high school students and developed a mentoring program, which paired a junior high student with a Dartmouth student. She interned with Women Helping Battered Women, a domestic violence agency in Burlington, Vermont where she served as a legal advocate for victims in court and with welfare and housing assistance agencies.

Sara Compton

Sara Compton currently attends Boston College Law School, class of 2000. She graduated from Western Washington University in 1995, Magna Cum Laude. Before attending law school, she worked at Eastside Domestic Violence Program as the Children's Services Coordinator and at Women Care Shelter for battered women as an advocate.

Sacha Coupet

Sacha Coupet is a second year law student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She graduated from Washington University in 1991 and received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Michigan in December, 1997. Throughout her graduate training she worked with children and families in the dependency and juvenile court systems and consulted with student attorneys in the Child Advocacy Law Clinic. Currently she assists low-income families with custody and support matters under the guidance of Philadelphia Legal Assistance. This summer she will be working at the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia.

Joy Davis

Joy Davis is completing her third-year at Mississippi College School of Law. She graduated from the University of Mississippi with a bachelor in Public Administration in 1993. Joy attended law school to become an advocate for children. She volunteers at the Hinds and Rankin County Youth Courts where she has mentored and tutored children as well as assisted the prosecutor for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Ila Casy Deiss

Ila Casy Deiss is a second year law student at the City University of New York School of Law where she has been focusing on family and immigration law as well as alternative dispute resolution techniques and venues. She has been on a number of research teams looking at the foster care system in New York City, specifically kinship care. She received a Masters in Public Administration from New York University where her thesis was on girls' education in Gambia, West Africa. She received a B.A. in International Relations from the University of California at Davis.

Andrew Don

Andrew Don is presently attending Boston College Law School after 13 years of working with children. He has worked as a supervisor in residential treatment programs in Massachusetts, as a high school and university teacher, and with street children and the staff that serves them at Kuleana in Mwanza, Tanzania. He has a Master of Divinity degree. He is married with one child.

Matthew H. Drexler

Matthew Drexler is a first year law student at the University of Michigan Law School. He graduated from Duke University in 1995. After graduation, he participated in the New York City Urban Fellows Program, where, as a staff member in the Department of Homeless Services, he negotiated budgets and contracts for the development and renovation of facilities for the homeless.In college, Matthew coordinated and participated in tutoring programs. He is also a religious school music teacher in Ann Arbor.

Alan Goldman

Currently a rising 3L at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Alan Goldman is a native of Brooklyn, NY and practiced social work for three years before coming to law school. He has a BA in Political Science from Columbia University and his MSW from Yeshiva University's Wurzweiler School of Social Work. Beyond his work, he is very involved in Jewish communal life, and enjoys reading literature and writing (both fictional and scholarly). He lives with his wife, Sara, and his two sons, ages 6 and 2, in University Heights, Ohio.

Emily E. Granzotto

Born the youngest of eleven children, Emily Granzotto was raised in Three Rivers, Michigan, where she attended grade school and high school. She enrolled in Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but transferred to the University of South Carolina, where she received her Bachelor's degree in Psychology. She then chose to continue her education at the University of South Carolina School of Law. She will graduate in May of 1999.

Kyle D. Jewell

After getting his Sociology degree, Kyle Jewell worked for 2 years as a counselor at a residential school for severely emotionally disturbed (SED) male adolescents. He then went to graduate school at Umass-Lowell, and received a Masters in Education and a teaching certification. He moved to San Diego and returned to residential treatment, working as a supervisor at a co-ed residential treatment center for SED teenagers for 3 years. Then, for the next two and a half years he taught at a Charter School for At-Risk high school students. Most of the students were behind academically for a variety of reasons, pregnancy, truancy, or problems with the law. He is currently attending CUNY Law School in Queens, NY and is active in the Children's Rights Association and our Public Interest Law Association chapter. He spent last summer in Johannesburg as a law clerk for Justice Edwin Cameron and worked for the Centre for Applied Legal Studies on the new land legislation in South Africa.

Alexamder D. Jones

Alexander Jones graduated from Binghamton University in 1996 with a BA in both Sociology and Philosophy, Politics and Law. Currently, he is enrolled in a joint degree program at Boston College, combining a MSW with a JD. In addition to working with adolescents in a day treatment program, he has been running an adventure-based counseling program for the past year at the Waltham YMCA for a risk adolescents in Waltham, Massachusetts. He also works in the Financial and Legal Department of AIDS Action, helping to provide pro bono legal services to HIV+ clients. After graduation, he is hoping to continue to advocate for children's rights, combining both social work and law.

Edna Jones-Stringer

Edna Jones-Stringer is first and foremost a very spiritual person. She is the mother of two adorable girls, Mariah (6) and Trenese (3). She has a wonderful husband, Trent, who has been a pillar of support. She received an undergraduate degree from Jackson State University in Criminal Justice with a concentration on Juvenile Justice and a Masters in Social Work from the University of Southern Mississippi. She is currently enrolled at Mississippi College School of Law.

Karin Klapper

Karin Klapper is a first-year student at the University of Michigan Law School. She graduated from Cornell University in 1996 with a B.S. in Communication and spent the next year as a Raoul Wallenberg Scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Somewhere between Israel and the U.S., she picked up a special interest in prompting humanitarian and community-building activities among young people. Karin is from New York City where she will be working this summer with the Legal Aid Society Juvenile Rights Division.

Jacqueline Kozlik

Before coming to law school, Jacqueline Kozlik worked with at-risk youth as a Peace Corps Volunteer and Resident Services Coordinator. Her duties in both of these capacities were nearly identical: She was responsible for creating programs and providing counseling for low-income families. She currently serves as Vice President of the Association for Family and Child Advocacy at the University of Arizona College of Law and plans to devote her career to child welfare.

Chung-Han Lee

Chung-Han is a first year law student at the University of Michigan Law School. He graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor's degree in American Studies. He also holds a Master's degree in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley. At Stanford, he founded a mentoring program for at-risk Asian American youth, which promotes leadership, education, cultural identity, and community involvement. He also worked for the San Francisco Unified School District where he conducted a needs assessment of the social, economic, and health barriers to academic achievement.

Claudia Melo

Claudia Melo just finished her first year at Northeastern School of Law and she absolutely loved it. She grew up in Boston and graduated from Brown University in 1995. She worked as an assistant Special Education teacher before starting law school. Her interest in child welfare law stems from her parents experience as foster parents.

Frank Rivera

Frank Rivera graduated from New York University in 1996 with a Bachelor's in Social Work. His internship was at the Crisis Nursery; a respite program where he worked with abused children and overwhelmed parents. He continued at NYU and got his Master's in Clinical Social Work in 1997. He was placed at F.E.G.S., a Bronx Mental Health Clinic. Frank worked as a therapist for the year and was hired through the summer until he began to study law at Brooklyn Law School. He is also a minister at his local church, which is very active in working with the community.

Allie Schlechter

Allie Shlechter is a first year law student at the University of Michigan Law School. She graduated from Bernard Baruch College with a degree in business in 1996. This summer, Allie worked part-time as a Research Assistant at the University of Michigan Child Welfare Law Resource Center and part-time developing a children's code for her tribe - the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians.

LaShanda Taylor

LaShanda Taylor is a second-year Root-Tilden-Snow Scholar at New York University School of Law. In the first summer after starting NYU Law, she worked in the Child Advocacy Unit of the DeKalb County Juvenile Court located in Decatur, Georgia. There she represented the rights and interests of abused and neglected children. This summer she will be working with The Children' Law Center, a non-profit legal organization located in Washington, D.C. In the fall, she will be working with the Family Defense Clinic at NYU. She is the recipient of a Public Interest Committee (PIC) grant.

Jeanine Volpe

Jeanine Volpe is a first year law student at Boston College Law School. She graduated from Boston College in 1995 with a BA, majoring in psychology. She received her Masters in Child Development from Tufts University in February of 1997. She has worked at a family Visitation Center, Supervising visits between children and their non-custodial parents, interned at Children's Legal Services, Inc. in Boston, and interned at Nassau County Medical Center in Child Development Center in New York. Throughout her educational experiences she participated in two research projects, one evaluating variations in parenting practices and beliefs between Asian-American and European-American families, adn the other evaluating and promoting Community Partnerships for Children, which is a collaborative effort among preschool services for children throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Lillian Wan

Lillian Wan is a frist year law student at Albany Law School. She graduated from Binghamton University in 1997 with a degree in English. During her senior year in college, she interned with the Broome Country of Social Services working with abused and neglected children. This experience prompted her to go to law wchool to become a child advocate.