Meet the 2018 Chayes Fellows

Thirteen Harvard Law School students have been awarded 2018 Chayes International Public Service Fellowships for work in 13 countries:

Elise Baranouski ’20
Reprieve, United Kingdom

Emma Broches ’20
Commission for International Justice and Accountability, Europe

Cristina Cornejo ’20
World Bank Office of Suspension and Debarment, Washington, DC

Niku Jafarnia ’19
International Refugee Assistance Project, Lebanon

Ji Yoon Kang ’20
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia

Ayoung Kim ’20
Oxfam, Philippines

Samantha Lint ’20
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia

Ava Liu ’20
Natural Resources Defense Council, China

Laya Maheshwari ’20
Médecins Sans Frontières, France and Switzerland

Patrick Maxwell ’20
Geneva Call, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Kate Peiffer ’20
United Nations World Food Programme, Italy

Lilianna Rembar ’20
Legal Resources Centre, Ghana

Natalie Trigo Reyes ’19
José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective Corporation, Colombia

The Chayes International Public Service Fellowships are dedicated to the memory of Professor Abram Chayes, who taught at Harvard Law School for more than 40 years. These summer fellowships provide Harvard Law School students with the opportunity to spend eight weeks engaged in public service with an international scope and/or relevant to countries in development or those making transitions to peace, stability, and democracy.

Read more about the 2018 Chayes Fellows here.

Meet the 2016 Chayes Fellows

Nineteen Harvard Law School students have been awarded 2016 Chayes International Public Service Fellowships. This summer the fellows will be working in Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, Guam, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Mexico, Poland, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Ukraine, as well as San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Read the 2016 Chayes Fellows biographies.

Chayes Fellow Elizabeth Loftus on working with World Bank Integrity Vice-Presidency in Washington, DC

World Bank photo courtesy of Elizabeth Loftus

Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Loftus

I am loving my time at the World Bank; it is incredibly rewarding to be using my (partial) law degree to do substantive work that I care so much about.

Throughout the summer, I have had a wide variety of projects, ranging from policy research to investigations to editing statements of accusation and evidence. I am currently working on drafting my own statement of accusation and evidence from an investigation that is entirely in French (which is challenging but exciting). Serendipitously, the two policy topics I was assigned to research exactly matched my corruption-related academic interests.

The World Bank’s work environment is fantastic. One of the reasons I applied to INT was because I wanted to get a sense of what it is like to work in a professional, international setting. I feel like I have obtained exactly the sort of insight I was hoping for. I can walk around the office and hear conversations in four different languages and I’ve learned a lot about the legal cultures of different jurisdictions. My experience here has confirmed that I really derive a lot of energy from working in an international atmosphere. As a result, I’ve thought a lot about what I want to do with the remainder of my time at HLS.

Like the attorneys and investigators, the interns come from all over the world (Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Germany, China, Afghanistan) and I’ve learned as much from them as I have from INT staff.

Elizabeth is one of 22 HLS students working this summer in 14 countries under the auspices of the Chayes International Public Service Fellowship. Please visit our Chayes Fellowship page to learn more!

Updates from the 2014 Chayes Fellows

The 2014 Chayes International Public Service Fellows are beginning to arrive and settle in to their summer placements.

Rebecca Donaldson arrived in Washington, DC, and started her work at Namati, which includes researching national legal aid frameworks to develop a toolkit for communities advocating for quality legal aid at scale. Rebecca is also working with Abigail Moy, ’09, a former Chayes Fellow who is now Namati’s program director of global operations.

Over in the Phillippines, Saptarishi Bandopadhyay, who is working for the Institute of Environmental Science for Social Change, reports: “…on the day after I got here I was packed off to the southern island of Mindanao and the rural villages of Bendum and Selahi, where I spent most of the week doing field visits with farmers who are enduring landslides, climatic changes, crop failure, debt, and loss of land and livelihood. The weekend was spent at a conference on land and water governance drawing physical and social scientists, community organizers, and theologians from across Europe and SE Asia, and where I assisted with documentation and, at the end, presented a synthesis of all the talks given under one stream of conversations (on sustainability). This is now the end of my second week, and have moved on to reviewing the progress of  post-disaster housing projects; leave for field-visits tomorrow…”

Stay tuned for more reports from the 2014 Chayes Fellows.

Meet the 2014 Chayes Fellows

Twenty-two Harvard Law School students have been awarded the 2014 Chayes International Public Service Fellowship this summer. They are working abroad in Cambodia, Colombia, France, India, Israel, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, Switzerland, and Uganda, as well as in Washington, DC. Please click here to read brief biographies and descriptions of their summer placements.