 So my name is Veronica Perusio. I'm the assistant dean for career development here at the law school. And I'm honored to serve as the chair of the steering committee for the Will Lecture series. By way of background, this series was created after our first women initiative in 2019. And I think some of you are here for that. So thanks for coming back every year. That program recognized the first women to be admitted to practice law here in Rhode Island. So we wanted to continue this important narrative into today to ensure that we are keeping the issues of gender and the law front and center. I would like to recognize and thank our sponsors for this event tonight for their continued support. We have the law firms of Adler Pollock in Sheehan and Cervanca Green and Ducharm. Thank you so much. We also have first women honorees who have donated, Louise Durfee, who was admitted to practice in Rhode Island in 1966 and Merth York, who was admitted to practice in 1977. Their generous donations not only make up this possible, but also help support a stipend program that we have to help law students who are pursuing the important work on women's issues. So if you are interested in supporting either the lecture or stipends, there is a link in your program tonight. So we thank you for your generosity. I'd like to give you a brief overview of what tonight is going to look like. So after this program, after the fireside chat, there is going to be Q&A. So if you are online, if you are joining us remotely, thank you for being here tonight. We're very excited to have you here with us as well. So if you do have a question, make sure you put it in the Q&A portion at the bottom of your screen, and we will have somebody monitoring that and hope to get to all of the questions that are included via remote as well as here in person. Then after Q&A, we will announce the winners of our How Has Justice? Ruth Bader Ginsburg inspired me contest. This was an essay and artwork contest for K through 12 schoolchildren here in Rhode Island, and our winners are here tonight. I will now turn the presentation over to Associate Dean Jared Goldstein, who will introduce tonight's speakers. So thank you so much for joining us, and we hope you enjoy yourself. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Women in Law Leadership Lecture. I want to first thank Veronica for introducing me. As many of you know, today is Veronica's last day at the law school, and this is her last event on her last day at the law school. So I want to thank you not just for your work on this, but for your work over the years at the law school. So thank you for that. Don't be a stranger. And I want to thank all of the organizers of this event for your hard work and for your work over the years in making this event such an important part of our law school experience. Before we begin, I want to take a moment to reflect on the lands on which we reside. We are coming from many places physically and remotely, and we want to acknowledge the ancestral homelands and traditional territories of indigenous and native peoples who have been here since before recorded history, and to recognize that we must continue to build our solidarity and kinship with native peoples across the Americas and across the globe. Roger Williams University School of Law is located here in Bristol, Rhode Island, and so we acknowledge and honor the Narragansett and Poconokit people and Soems, the original name of the land that our campus resides on. We also acknowledge that this country would not exist if it wasn't for the free enslaved labor of black people, and we recognize that the town of Bristol and the very land our campus resides on have benefited significantly from the trade of enslaved people from Africa. The economy of New England, Rhode Island, and more specifically Bristol, was built from wealth generated through the triangle trade of human lives. During this time of national reckoning with our history of slavery and the disparate treatment of black people, we honor the history of the African diaspora and the black lives, knowledge, and skills stolen due to violence and white supremacy. While the movement for justice and liberation is building and we are witnessing the power of the people, many are still being met with violence and even being killed. As upholders of justice, our hope is to become agents of change for members of our society who have been met with violence, physical, mental, emotional, through our privilege. And as upholders of justice, we believe that our students who soon will be practitioners of law can be and already are agents of change as well. And for those of you who are not familiar with this practice, why do we do land and labor acknowledgments? I just saw a Native American comedian who said, I think land acknowledgments are hilarious. Either give the land back or don't. Imagine if I stole something from you and every time I saw you it was the first thing I brought up. Still, we hope that this isn't just an empty gesture, a bunch of words we say at the beginning of events to make us feel better. Perhaps if we begin by acknowledging this history and how we got here, we will take steps toward making things right. And with that, let me introduce our speakers for tonight. First, Professor Emily Sack joined the Roger Williams University Law Faculty in 2001 where she teaches in the areas of criminal law, domestic violence law, death penalty law, women in the law, and feminist legal theory. She is a nationally recognized expert on domestic violence and reform of the court system. She is co-author of one of the leading domestic violence case books and has published several articles in the field. US Supreme Court Justice Stevens cited and quoted from one of Professor Sack's articles in his opinion in Castle Rock versus Gonzalez. Prior to joining the RWU Law School Faculty, Professor Sack served as the deputy director of the Center for Court Innovation where she helped develop and implement the first domestic violence courts in New York. She has also worked intensively with several jurisdictions in assessing and improving their response to domestic violence, including Louisville, Kentucky, Anchorage, Alaska, Portland, Maine, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Professor Sack previously practiced in the areas of criminal defense and family law in New York City and was part of the legal team representing Mia Farrow in her custody dispute with Woody Allen. She's a graduate of Smorthmore College and New York University School of Law. I'm also delighted to welcome Amy Barish Esquire to RWU Law for our third annual Women in Law Leadership Lecture. Since Amy is a Brown University graduate, we also welcome you back to Rhode Island. So welcome back to Rhode Island. Ms. Barish is the executive director of Her Justice, a nonprofit that connects over 7,000 low-income women and children who have legal needs in the areas of family, matrimonial, and immigration law to pro bono attorneys every year. Her Justice provides critical free legal services to those who must go through the civil justice system to access basic rights like financial autonomy and freedom from abuse. Ms. Barish has devoted most of her career to the issue of intimate partner violence at nonprofits, government agencies, and law firms. Until the fall of 2012, Ms. Barish served as the executive director of the New York State Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence. During her tenure, Ms. Barish was central to the implementation of improvements made in New York City's response to intimate partner violence, such as the launch of a statewide database of police-reported domestic incidents. The inclusion of domestic violence is a high priority issue in state-level anti-crime initiatives, the creation of a state-level fatality review process, the issuance of domestic violence and the workplace policy in all state agencies, and ensuring responsive and up-to-date training for local governmental employees in the areas of child welfare, public safety, temporary assistance, health care, and probation. Prior to joining government, Ms. Barish was a member of the New York City Office to combat domestic violence, where she designed and ran an interagency high-risk case conferencing program in Brooklyn in the Bronx, which became the basis of the Brooklyn Family Justice Center. Ms. Barish led the design team and ran the Brooklyn FJC until she joined the state. That is the Family Justice Center. Prior to joining the city, Ms. Barish represented victims of domestic violence in family court in order of protection, custody, and visitation, and abuse and neglect cases in private practice and as the creator and director of a law student externship program in Westchester, New York, at the Pace Women's Justice Center. She has a graduate of Brown University and Columbia Law School. And with that, I'll turn it over to the two of you. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you, Jared. And really, thank you all for coming and to our virtual friends, too, for joining us. Amy, really, thank you so much for being here. I've known Amy for many years, and I'm just delighted to have her at the law school. So let me just start with all of the career steps that Dean Goldstein just mentioned. Not only in law, but working as a journalist before law school, and then working in a variety of sectors throughout law, as well as teaching, one theme seems to be a focus on women's needs and women's issues. So maybe you could start by telling us why you chose to go to law school, and how did you get involved in this type of work, and in particular, intimate partner violence work. Sure. It's always so interesting to hear what you've done read back to you, and it actually makes it sound almost like you planned it. And for those who are law students here, you don't always have a plan starting out. I certainly did not really have a plan starting out. But I took about seven years, or there were seven years between college and law school for me. So whether that was because my dad was a lawyer or for other reasons, we'll never know. But I was really interested in journalism. I lived in France for three years. I did a lot of other things before sort of biting the bullet and going to law school. And one of the reasons I did go to law school honestly was to get people to answer my phone calls. I had been working as a freelance journalist for about three years. And it's really hard work. You make 100 phone calls, and you maybe get one person pick up your call, and you get a piece of sign. And I knew that lawyers were considered smarter, powerful, important people. And I thought, well, I want some of that. Maybe someone will return my phone call. Seriously, though. And that is truly serious. I mean, I think it is important to understand that if you're becoming an attorney, attorneys have a role in our society that is perhaps outsized to, frankly, what we deserve. But it's important to recognize that role and to use that role mindfully. There's a lot of opportunity that opens up when you have that role. But I also realized that as a journalist, although I loved doing that work, there were, I could count on one hand the number of journalists who I thought were really making a difference in the world. The last big article I wrote was on sunscreen for Elle magazine, I think. And while sunscreen, you know, you should wear it all the time. Very, very, very good. That was not sort of what I'd hoped for myself. So after doing those things, law school seemed to me both a place where I could get access to rooms, you know, the famous Hamilton. You want to be in the room where it happens, where I could maybe be in those rooms. People would return my phone calls. And I thought there was an opportunity to make change. I will say that I actually, my dad is an attorney. I'm lucky that he's still with us. He's 93. And so I'm still convincing him that he should no longer be practicing. But he was very generous and had, he introduced me to folks who were both practicing lawyers and lawyers who had stopped practicing. So I could talk to them before I made the final decision to go to law school, because I really wanted to understand, did I need to know that I wanted to be a litigator for the rest of my life, or could this degree be valuable in other ways? And I really learned that it could be valuable in so many other ways, which has certainly been my experience. And so that made it final decision. In terms of why women, it's interesting. I really, I think it's so interesting to talk to women who are coming up or maturing at this moment in time, because when we were maturing as women, it was very different thinking about what women's issues were and what it meant to focus on women's issues. I looked back after I had been in Paris for a couple of years working and deciding to go to law school. I looked back at all of my papers in college and all of my final papers had been on women's issues. And I hadn't set out to do that, but even in medieval art, because I actually was an art history major at Brown, I was an independent major, because you know, that's what we do at Brown, but it was mostly art history. And my final paper in my medieval art class was about the only two images of women on the front entrance of a medieval church and the two images were the Madonna and Lust. And that seemed meaningful to me, so that's what I wrote my final paper about. So when I looked back over college, I realized that that theme had always stood out to me and was kind of the footnote to a lot of what we read and learned in school was, oh, and then there were some women who did other things. And so I think it was a slowly burning interest and by the time I went to law school, I knew that women's issues, if law was to effectuate change and having lived in the world as a woman, I knew that there was some change women needed. That was where I wanted to aim my direction. And the partner violence piece really came out of the fact that I was in law school, as my son would say when dinosaurs roamed the earth. So the Violence Against Women Act, which was reauthorized, was originally passed in 1994, which was when I was in law school. And that was a huge watershed piece of legislation. And so if you wanted to do women stuff and law in 1994, partner violence was kind of the place to be where there was a lot of new activity. So the partner violence piece I almost stumbled into, that was the exciting place to be in women's issues. And then I stuck with it because it really is a fascinating intersection of power and gender, so kept at it. And you mentioned obviously that your path to law school was not clear cut from the beginning. So when you went to law school, did you know how you wanted to use your law degree once you got it? And also, given that you've had so many different positions, how has your law degree been important to those positions besides people returning your phone calls? Yeah. And you find out they still don't always return your phone calls, but usually when they don't it's for a reason now. You know why they're not returning your phone call. Yeah, that's a great question. I think I knew more what I didn't want to do. And it was while I was in law school that I was able to better figure out what I did want to do. But given that I've done a lot of different things, it's clear that I keep doors open. So I was pretty clear I didn't want to be a transactional attorney. I will try to speak in a conversational tone, but I am from New York City and I'm a trained attorney and litigator, so I tend to speed up. So I've talked a lot since I was small, so litigation, you know, if the law branches kind of in transactional litigation, I figured litigation was where I wanted to be. I wanted to do social change work. I wasn't completely sure what that would mean to be honest as an attorney, even though I'd been out seven years and spoken to other lawyers. I think a lot of lawyers aren't sure what that means and it can mean a lot of different things. Pretty sure I wanted to work in the public interest, but wasn't sure which branch of the public interest. And yeah, I think those were the things I knew. I did, because I came to law school a little bit later than a lot of my classmates, I would say, and I'm a big fan of people taking some time, maybe not seven years, but two years between college and law school, because I think it helps you understand where the law has an impact. So when I went to law school, it wasn't just an intellectual exercise, although it can be that, and a lot of people use it as just graduate school generally, but I could put the law in context. I'd had enough lived experience that I knew where the law lived and it makes you think about it and ask different questions and even read different parts of court decisions sometimes than you might if you're just looking for the holding and the dicta, you know? Yeah. And I mean, given what you said, you've already started to say this, but what advice would you have for law students and young lawyers who are starting out in their careers? You know, I would keep, I would ask a lot of questions. You know, it's true as I'm not to say there's no such thing as a dumb question, but I really think it's true. People love to talk about themselves. I mean, look, I came here to talk about myself, but honestly, people do love to talk about themselves and so ask other attorneys you know, attorneys with more experience, ask them questions, ask them how they got to where they are because they'll love telling you and you'll learn a lot about decisions that were available. I really do think a law degree opens enormous numbers of doors and some of the paths are less obvious than other paths. Like if you choose to go to a law firm right after law school, you know, the path to becoming a firm partner while difficult is at least clear. It's straightforward, kind of what you need to do to get to that place. But the path to becoming somebody who works in a general counsel's office or who works in government or who works in not-for-profit might not be as straightforward. So I think always find the folks you think have interesting careers and ask them questions and I think retain a sense of humility. You know, as your dean's introductory remarks, obviously you have a sense of humility sort of woven into how you talk about yourself here which I think is really great. But as attorneys, it's very easy to lose sight of that humility because of the way our community regards lawyers and we should be humble. We have one expertise and even that expertise, frankly, is very narrow. You know, people look at lawyers and think we know the answers to all legal questions and you, I hope students will know you do not. You know, there is a huge sector of law and so I think humility is really important because law is only as helpful if it can respond to the human condition and if you don't know much about the human condition yet, the legal piece is just an academic exercise. I also think, I think I would recommend for most people even if you don't think you wanna be a practicing lawyer for your entire career as I have not been, it's great to practice for at least a couple of years out of law school. Both because you learn what it means, it's hard to really understand what that looks like until you've done it but also in the legal field, I find that lawyers think about other lawyers differently if they've never practiced and that can matter and so it's a useful thing to think about. I mean, I was at a firm for three years which was both to get practice and to pay off loans so really practical reasons but I'm very grateful that I had that experience it taught me a lot. Now, you know, as Dean Goldstein mentioned, you've had a lot of leadership positions, obviously your current position, executive director of her justice but also head of the New York state office for the prevention of domestic violence, et cetera and I think it's fair to say that a lot of women but also men have what we might call imposter syndrome or are often afraid of taking on the sort of number one position at a place and so I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what you think led you to not have that fear or if you did have that fear, how you got over it and you know, what advice you might have for people who are sort of holding back from applying for those types of positions. Yeah, it's a great question and it's a really complicated question I think. I think, I mean, I've had leadership titles, I was thinking about this as we discussed this question. I've had leadership titles but I am very mindful that anywhere I've worked there are lots of leaders who may not have those titles necessarily. So there's somebody who may be at the top of a certain chain of command. You know, when I worked in state government, there was a very clear chain of command I reported up to somebody who and they reported up to the governor but you can lead from many, many different places. So I think that's one thing that's important to remember and also to be humble about when you have leadership titles. In terms of imposter syndrome, I mean, I still have imposter syndrome. I don't know that it will ever fully go away. I do think that women tend to suffer from it more but I have found that if you lean into what you know, you're always unsure of footing when you lead with what you know and then other kinds of leadership can follow. You know, when I went to the law firm, for example, I was already older than most of the other first year associates because I'd taken seven years between college and law school. So I knew some things that my younger colleagues just didn't know. They could have been smarter at the law, better at law school, better at a lot of other things but I had simply moved through the world, lived into different countries and had other jobs. So for example, I brought on, I was the associate in charge of Pro Bono. So again, I got that in charge of title because honestly, it meant that I could do my billable hours and do extra time doing Pro Bono at the law firm. That was the benefit of being in charge of Pro Bono. But I took it because I knew I wanted to leave and work in the public sector so that led to my credibility and I learned a lot. But what I knew how to do is actually run something or make things happen because I'd had jobs before and that wasn't as self-evident to some of the other first year associates who were right out of law school. So I think that's some of the leadership is figure out what you already know and you'll feel less of an imposter if you're playing to your own strengths. And also just remember that there's nothing like going to family court to remind yourself that you may be the smartest person in the room and it doesn't matter how everybody else is acting and how loud they're speaking and how much they're stepping forward. That could be behind their own imposter syndrome. It could be an inflated sense of self but sometimes you can go into other rooms and just think I actually do know as much if not more than the people around me and you don't have to lose your humility to do that. It's just a factual assessment and then you can act with a bit more confidence but I don't think, I think there's a big difference between leadership and hubris and bragging. I do think that leadership is bringing people with you and bringing folks along with you and that may also be a slightly different model of leadership than a lot of us have seen before. So I run a not-for-profit now and we're all reading books on how to lead leading from behind and inclusive leadership and I mean I've got like a pile of books this high and it's really important stuff but a lot of what I take from it is that notion that leadership is about listening well. If you know how to listen, if you know how to listen and hear and then process that information and lead from what you do know that isn't as scary as it might otherwise sound. I know that you teach a class in gender violence and the law and maybe you could talk a little bit about what led you or brought you to teach it because I think it's relevant to your career experience. Yeah, I've loved teaching it. It's been I guess six or seven years now so I just teach it in the spring. So I have class on Thursday but I have a guest lecturer so it's probably a former or I don't know if you know Michelle Kaminsky so she's the head of the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office in New York City because I'm not a criminal law expert. So the class is gender violence and the law and I spend about the first half of the class talking about intimate partner violence and the second half of the class talking about other ways in which I think a knowledge of intimate partner violence helps people understand other intersections of gender violence and law. So the other classes will change depending upon what's going on with current events. So I have a class on sexual harassment. I didn't teach it last year because I teach in New York I'm probably gonna teach it this year. I have a class on the incel movement and mass gun violence and how that intersects with gender violence and law. We have a class on what else are we doing? Well, sexual assault, sexual harassment. So a lot of things that are not directly intimate partner violence although they may share some Venn diagram. But the reason I wanted to teach it honestly was to figure out what I thought about all this stuff. One of the things I envy full time law professors one of the many things I envy is kind of the time to sit still and think because I'm running a not-for-profit organization. So I spend a lot of my day doing management work and I've got all these ideas in my head about what we're doing with clients and what's going on in the world but I don't always have the luxury of being able to sit still and think about it. So the class kind of gives me a moment and excuse almost to sit down and think about it as well as to hear from the new generation of lawyers and activists how they're perceiving and receiving this information that's going on because the law evolves and we need to evolve with the community that is coming up in the world. So that's why I like to teach it. And it really raises partner violence. I can obviously go on for an entire semester and probably longer about what studying and working in the area of partner violence has taught me but what we talk about often is that it's a dynamic of power and control. So if you're thinking about law which is a field of power and control, the law was created in many ways to make sure that white men could hold on to their power and privilege and in many ways continues to function to do that. If you are not a white man and you learn those tools and then you wanna go into the world and make social change, I think it's incumbent upon one or at least I feel obliged to figure out how do I do that in a responsible and respectful way. So one of the ways in which I'm very close to that power place, I'm a white cisgendered woman but I am a woman so I kind of start from that, I'm that off kilter from the norm. And then I work with my students to talk through all the other ways in which gender and other non normative or non normative other people who for whom this system was not necessarily designed, how the system operates on them, for them, against them and how folks can operate within it. So all of that to me can get encompassed in gender violence and the law. So it's a broad ranging class and it's the second half of the class is led in large part by the student interests which is great. Well, I know that in your history of working particularly in New York state, you worked for some governors who had good policy but themselves abused power in their own private lives or not so private lives. So Spitzer and Cuomo. So I wondered if you could talk a little bit about kind of how you make sense of that situation of men who support good policy but actually are themselves abusers. Yeah, so I have a, one of the millions of op-eds I have half written because I don't seem to find the time to sit down and finish them is I'll just give a brief version of it because I think it's an answer to your question. And in my head, it's called in the filing system in my head, it's called Funny Story. So I was hired, I was appointed by Governor Spitzer to run the state, New York state office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence which is a great honor. And I met Governor Spitzer and he like many leaders and charismatic people have that kind of shine about and it's really exciting to meet people like that and it's very flattering frankly to have someone like that pay attention to you and wanna hire you for this position. So I was really excited to go up to Albany and take this job. And at the time, and I don't know how much folks know about what goes on in New York but he really was sort of the shining star. He'd come out of the Attorney General's office, he'd held Wall Street accountable and he had a lot of really smart people in his office. He was bringing with him to Albany. Everybody said he was gonna be the first Jewish president. It was like, it was the train to be getting on if you wanted to be making a policy going into the future. And my first year there before things took a turn I did a public awareness campaign with the Family Violence Prevention Fund which some people may have seen which has pictures of a boy in a hoodie and it says, do your homework, eat your vegetables, respect women. And this was a public awareness campaign the Family Violence Prevention Fund had created and then with another group we could localize it to the state of New York. So I was pushing these posters out through the state of New York. And my office had just finished putting stickers over all the brochures that said pataki on them because we still had the brochures in the office and they were still true, but he wasn't governor anymore. So we were just stickering them all with Spitzer stickers. So as we were coming out with these posters I thought, usually if you do, I ran an agency if you do an agency poster you put the governor's name and your name the head of the agency's name. And I said, let's make these evergreen. This seems ridiculous. We keep having to put stickers on things. So we didn't put the governor's name or my name on the posters and they went out in the state. And then as many people know, not too much later he resigned after in New York a variety of scandals. I think what was known more generally was the fact that he hired a prostitute in Washington DC and he used state troopers to make that possible. There were a lot of other things going on there that were happening in New York trooper gate and various other gates that I don't need to get into. But the big headline was, does the governor have a sex problem? It was kind of the conversation that was going on. So first of all, I was really glad I hadn't put his name on my posters which said we're women because that would have been uncomfortable. And I really did it just because of the stickers. But everyone asked me at the time, do you think Governor Spitzer has a sex addiction? And I said, I don't know the man well enough to answer that question but I think he has a hubris addiction. So then funny story, I stay in the job even though this crazy thing has happened Governor Patterson, David Patterson becomes governor he'd been lieutenant governor and actually domestic violence had been one of his areas when he was lieutenant governor. So great, he's gonna be the governor. And while he is the governor, his very close aide is found to, is in court because he has allegedly physically assaulted his girlfriend and has possibly used state resources to reach out to the girlfriend to communicate with the girlfriend. And it turns out that the governor called the girlfriend because he knew the girlfriend and wanted to see if she was okay. Which is not in the governor 101, like that's not. So Governor Patterson made a poor judgment call in my view as governor. He was not involved in that directly but there was a lot of noise in New York state because this was a very close advisor to his who was being tried in family court and the state troopers were in some way involved. And during that situation, my direct boss at that point was Deputy Secretary Denise O'Donnell who went on, she had been a judge in Buffalo, she went on to run BJS in DC. She resigned because she had not been given accurate information from her, the agencies that reported to her including the state police. So my boss resigned. And so that happened, so that was a year into that. Now it's two years and two governors. And I thought, okay, well I'm gonna keep the job because I'm still doing good work. I think this matters at the end of the day. I can still, you know, I'm enough below what's going on up there that I can still get good work done. And I stayed about two more years and then I decided to step down after Cuomo took office. And we all probably know what happened with Cuomo, although Cuomo doesn't seem to know what happened with Cuomo. But, so we may get to have him running in the state of New York again, it's unclear. So, and then interestingly, also Eric Schneiderman had been the former attorney general in the state of New York. He was elected to the Senate. He was a great senator and my office worked with him on the anti-strangulation law in the state of New York, which is a really important law. And I always like to emphasize that strangulation had been illegal in New York, but it had to be charged as an assault. And because of the way that strangulation often does not leave physical injuries, New York was very hard to charge. So the strangulation law was written in a way such that it was possible for prosecutors and police officers to charge it appropriately. And the day after the law was signed into law, so many strangulation charges were brought that it was proof to me that this was a tool folks were waiting to have because there were all these cases that were going uncharged. And then Schneiderman also, you know, many women alleged that he had harmed them, including strangled one of them. So, you know, I call this in my head funny story because you just keep standing up again and thinking, okay, we're gonna keep on doing this. You know, it can't be everybody. And then another one falls to the ground. And it is hard to kind of get the energy to stand back up again. But I think the lesson I take from all of that is you do have to keep getting up again. And it goes back to the gender violence and the law question. It is a hubris and power problem. It's not a sex problem. And, you know, with Cuomo too, everybody asks me, does Cuomo have a sex problem? Did you see this when you worked with Cuomo? Did I see that he was not so nice to work with sometimes and was maybe abusive to people who had less power than he was and, you know, worked through bullying tactics? Sure. Did I see him come on to young women? No, I wasn't in his orbit every day. But those two things are not, it's not surprising to me because if a person in power wants to inappropriately exercise their power, they're gonna exercise it against the folks around them who have less power than they do. And for a white man, oftentimes, that's younger women. So I think that it causes us to rethink what is this messy nexus of gender and power? That it's actually not about sex, just like it feels like a million years ago, but we're still saying it. We've had to talk about how rape is not really a crime of sex. It's a crime of violence that uses sex as the tool of violence, that most sexual assaults happen between people who know one another, not that sort of cloaked guy in the alley, although that can happen, but that's the minority of cases. So I think that's, you know, for me, again, it goes back to why I teach the class. As you said, that it's about the complicated nature of gender and violence and that it's not gender, just as we're not talking about gender on a binary, the way that violence and gender and gender norms get complicated when you throw power into the mix is kind of a mess. And understanding how that plays out in intimate partner violence scenarios has helped me understand these things. I mean, we know in intimate partner violence, you know, physical abuse is often not only the thing that the victim of the violence may complain the least about, it may have the least, have less long-term effects than the psychological, emotional, and financial abuse. So it's changed the way we think about intimate partner violence. So if you think about intimate partner violence differently, if you think about it as abuse of power, as restraining somebody's autonomy, as embarrassing them publicly, as making it impossible for them to make free choices about themselves, it starts to sound a lot more like some of these other complicated messes of gender power and violence as well. Thank you. So we're running short on time because we wanna make sure we have time for cute questions and answers. I just have two very quick questions for you. So one is obviously you're in your current position, as we know, her justice connects women in need with lawyers to do work on their cases as we've talked about. And I know you have a concept of what you consider meaningful pro bono work, and I just would like you to, I don't wanna leave without you saying something about that. Yeah. And my communications director would be very sad if I did not say that I am the executive director of her justice. And there's an amazing not-for-profit in New York City that does connect, New York City has more lawyers per capita than almost anywhere else in the world. So there are all these attorneys who want to give back, which is great. And so we connect them with women in poverty who really need their help. The complicated, and there's been a lot written about pro bono in academia, a little less in the public, but more now pro bono is actually going through a bit of a sea change right now. And I think in the legal services world, which is kind of my background, and certainly where a lot of my colleagues come from and are in now, pro bono has a bad reputation, frankly, because it's seen as kind of this wallpapering over of private sector lawyers. Their private sector lawyers are in it to make a lot of money, and they're representing bad actors, and they can feel better about themselves by doing a couple hours a year helping a good cause. That's sort of the bad story about pro bono. And while I'm sure that happens, I would argue that why not? Like, you know, if it is helping some people and some causes will take it, because there's not enough lawyering to go around. But I also think working as closely as I do with over 80 firms in the city that not only is pro bono changing right now, and there's so much interest from students coming out of law school now, right, saying we want our work to be meaningful to us, and the law firms having to respond to that, and not that corporations aren't important. They're very important. But there's a different kind of meaning that comes from representing a low income person who desperately needs your help and whose life will be changed by your help than representing a large corporation along with 35 other lawyers. Both jobs are important, but they have different meaning in people's lives. So I think the way we think about pro bono at her justice and is that we, because we are a pro bono first organization, we don't have huge caseloads of our own. The pro bono that is done by say legal aid, legal services, all across the country, I think is vital and important, but it can be really hard for those attorneys because they have caseloads. They've got 100 people they're responsible for, and then they have one or two clients who they are handing off to the volunteer lawyer, and the volunteer lawyer needs them, the lawyer as much as the client does, frankly, because the volunteer lawyer is an intellectual property lawyer who's volunteering in housing court or something. So as I said before, just because we're lawyers, we don't know everything. We know one very narrow thing, and that's not necessarily translatable. We're a pro bono first organization, so what that means is that the vast majority of people we meet will be represented by a volunteer lawyer, and that means we put our resources into mentoring the volunteer lawyers so that when we hand a case off to a volunteer, we practically second seat that case. We're kind of riding that case with the volunteer lawyer, reviewing all the documents. If the client is having not hearing back, which doesn't usually happen, but should that happen, they can call us and we can follow up. So we're making sure the client doesn't fall between the cracks. We're making sure that the volunteer lawyer feels confident in their knowledge. I mean, no lawyer wants to walk into a situation and feel they don't know what they're doing. The law firms certainly don't want that because they have, you know, humane concerns and liability concerns. So I think as long as you provide sufficient support to the volunteer lawyer, you can go a really long way, and then we get attorneys who come back and volunteer again and again, and so the firm will develop, believe it or not, firms like Scad and the Narps, White and Case, you know, these huge, white shoe law firms, may now have a little expertise in house, in family law, or in UVs immigration practice, because they've done enough pro bono cases. And then that becomes really quality pro bono because we're always there as sort of a backstop to support them, but they never have to worry that they're not up to date on the changing law, that their attorney doesn't have the support they need on brainstorming the strategy for the case. So I think that's really the difference. And I will just add that, you know, pro bono is changing a lot right now, both because law firms are changing a lot right now, COVID has changed how every business operates, and firms are having to think hard about that. There's a lot of lateral movement in firms. As I said, younger associates, I think are coming up thinking we want that mystical work-life balance. We also want our jobs to matter to us, and pro bono can be a nice balance for that. And then finally, just to add sort of to the opening remarks, I think we have been starting to push harder, frankly, on our law firm colleagues who are phenomenal allies to us and really provide incredible resources, but pushing hard to say, I know you want the English-speaking attorney who has a case in Manhattan that is not litigated or is only gonna last a year, but do you understand that that's the case we can place with anyone? And if you really wanna make a dent in the problem, which we're trying to address, is our clients of color who don't speak English as a first language, who have a litigated case out in the Bronx, which if you don't know New York City, work in a Manhattan law firm, you never go to the other boroughs, right? So going to the Bronx when we used to go places in person feels like going very far away. So we say honestly to the firms now, we will give you cases where you can get lawyers because it will help everybody, but we're asking you to stretch a little bit because the people, if we don't do that, we're just ratifying the systemic oppression that has resulted in people like our clients not having lawyers in the first place. So please see if you don't have a lawyer who speaks a language other than English who might wanna take a case. It's really exciting to use a skill that is unique to you when you do volunteerism. It feels really, really good. I happen to speak French fluently for no good reason except that I'm a total Francophile. And so I actually took a VAWA case, I hadn't done a VAWA case in forever and I joked that the poor woman had the worst law lawyer in the firm, in the organization, but she spoke Haitian Creole as a first language. I speak English, but we both speak French as a second language and we didn't have a French speaking attorney at the time. So I did, you know, that was a service to our organization. She got to feel a little bit more comfortable with me, I hope, and we were able to process another VAWA transaction. So I think that's where, I think Pro Bono is really, really important and is it a vital compliment to legal services? We'll never replace legal services, but I think it's a valuable compliment. And I always say I have one more thing, but I do have one more thing, which is just that that's why I talk fast. And I actually think partly I talk fast, not only because I'm from New York, but because I'm a woman. You asked earlier about women. I think that I talk fast because I'm never sure I'm gonna get the airtime and so I just, and I will say we have started to grow a policy program within our organization over the past couple of years. And I think there's a lot of untapped Pro Bono opportunity out there. There's direct service for sure, but there's a limit there, right? Transactional attorneys don't wanna go to court. So we get transactional attorneys to handle immigration filings that don't have court appearances. But there's always folks where it's not quite the right fit. Where the policy pieces, and members of law are really, really important. And we actually, for the first time as an organization, have legislation we helped to draft that has been introduced in both chambers of the New York state legislature that may mean that custodial parents get child support faster than ever before. We should be a huge win for clients like ours. So that was done in partnership with law firms and we're actually doing a town hall tomorrow with law firms saying, would you guys consider signing a letter of support for a state law? It's not what law firms normally do, but there's not really a downside for them. There's no conflict here for them. They do enough pro bono that they see that it matters. And maybe it'll be in another thumb on the scale that'll make a difference at the state legislature. So I think there's a lot of opportunity on that policy piece of pro bono that hasn't been fully thought through. Great. Well, I think we should really turn it over for questions and answers so that we get some time in. So I wanna thank you so much, Amy. Thank you, Emily. And turn it over to one of these questions. Maybe I can pitch out the first question, Amy, if you don't mind. In my role as assistant dean for self-element, do you hire interns? We have a lot of students here. We do. I'm afraid we're full for the summer and I will say that our internship program has shrunk during COVID. Not only because we are not fully in person, but because our courts have not fully been in person. So we've just had to adjust a lot of that. What we do and all of our internship opportunities are posted on our website, herjustice.org. And please check us out. And feel free to send it an email if you don't see something posted. But we're always interested in eager and interested students. Thank you. I have Mike available here. If anybody in the room has questions, I know we're collecting questions online right now. Sure. Hi, I'm Nancy Mary and I'm a student here. Roger Williams, University School of Law. So my question is this, I know that... So I know you're helping litigators doing pro bono work. And the thinking is that at the end of the day, there's winners and losers, right? But in domestic violence cases, it's a little different, right? So a win might look very, very different than a win in an insurance claim or something like that. So I'm just curious to how you tell those attorneys and how to explain what a win looks like, what does the success look like? Because again, it is so different. Yeah, for sure. It's a great question. I mean, sort of measuring success in the law generally, I think, is complicated. I mean, it is wins and losses, I suppose. But I think when I talk to clients no matter what kind of law I'm doing, it's setting expectations of the client about what is winning look like for them, right? And how much of that do we think we can achieve depending upon what's in front of us? And that would be true for a commercial transaction or a litigation. I should clarify that we only do civil law, right? So when you think about domestic violence, and not all of our clients are victims of partner violence, about 85% are. So we do family divorce and immigration. All of our immigration clients are victims of partner violence. So their case is a win means they get to stay in this country. A win is pretty straightforward. They get work authorization, they get a pass to a green card, and possibly citizenship. So there's really, in my view, no loser in that one. So that's not litigation. On the litigation side, we have the family court cases, custody, orders of protection, child support, things like that. So we're not doing the prosecution piece. But it's a really good point. What does a win look like? I mean, we will have clients come in who we may advise, we don't think given the facts and the law that you are likely to get full custody of your children, for example. That's a horrible thing to have to say to a client. But it's really important that you set expectations properly. So the win for the client might be to get the best outcome given the circumstance. So I think a lot of what we talk about with our volunteer attorneys is that expectation setting. Because we do so much pro bono, we talk to the clients first. We do the initial intake with a client and set their expectation about, here's what you can expect your lawyer to be able to do with you, to not be able to do with you. And we do the same thing with the attorneys to set their expectations. And then hopefully the two can have an open conversation. But I don't know if you are getting at another angle on your question might be, what about the people on the other side of the case? Because for example, when we're advocating for more equitable child support laws in the state of New York, we don't say we want women to get more child support. We say we want parents to pay as much child support as they can afford for the wellbeing of their children. So it will ultimately benefit a lot of women because the reality is the majority of single parent households are run by women. But what's fair in the law is to make sure that parents, whoever they are, can pay as much as they can afford for the wellbeing of their children. Does that answer your question? Yes. Okay, thanks. We'll go to one online. And then we'll come to you next. All right, so we got a question online asking what the most challenging part of your job is. I only get one. I mean, I will say very honestly, in the last two years, the most challenging part of my job has been doing it from my living room. And I say that because for me personally, you can probably tell by my affect, I am a people person. I'm actually kind of an introvert, which may be surprising. So I don't dislike being home and in my little cubby. But because I work for my living room, I don't see clients, I don't hear clients, I don't see my staff, I don't hear my staff. And I feel very disconnected from the reason I do the job in the first place. So you asked earlier, Emily, about leadership. One of the things about having the jobs that I've been privileged to have is that I get farther away from the reasons I took the jobs in the first place. So I started representing low income women in family court and now I run the organization that represents low income women living in family court. And I love being in the office on Thursdays when our helpline runs because from 11 to one, the phone is ringing off the hook, I hear people talking, I see the attorneys conferring and it reminds me why I'm doing this. So for me, the last two years have just felt very isolated from the heart of the work. And I think you'll hear from a lot of professionals that's the case, the upside is more time with my own child. I get to cook dinner more often. The downside is I handle a lot more management, a lot more questions about do we or don't we impose mask rules and a lot less about what do the women, our organization exists to serve, need, what are they seeing right now? So that's a very like in the moment challenge. I would say a bigger picture challenge goes also back to the leadership and kind of the imposter syndrome piece, which is I have to constantly remind myself that I know stuff. And it's funny, my son is a first year in college and I'm sure when he looks at me, I know he sees a person of a certain age, but those of you who are maybe closer to my age know that in your own head, you kind of forget how old you are and you're just yourself. And when I walk into rooms, I sometimes don't realize how much I have to share or offer other people in the room. And the reason that matters is a clear example for me when I worked for the state, I ran this relatively small agency for the, to combat domestic violence. No, sorry, New York City was combat, state was prevent. I can never remember why or anyway. And I was part of the public safety sub-cabinet of the state of New York, which sounds very important and I guess it was. But my colleagues in that sub-cabinet were the head of probation, the head of parole, the head of state police, the head of Homeland Security. I mean, all these big guys with medals on and me and our boss would sit around at the sub-cabinet meetings. And I realized after a couple of those meetings that they were raising gender issues and domestic violence issues more often than I was. And it was a moment that I, it wouldn't occur to me that I was self-censoring. As you can tell, I can talk a blue streak. But in that room, I felt really intimidated by the other knowledge in the room and thinking, well, I'm not even really a public safety person. That's not what I do. So I think the hardest thing for me is remembering still to lean into my confidence, to know what I have to share, to share it from a place of humility, but to recognize that anybody in this room has a point of view and a life experience that is an important compliment to whatever else is in the room. And hopefully that'll be a challenge always because I think it's a good challenge to have. Isn't it a very young law student type? I don't like to sit down. Hey, Amy, how are you? Good. So first, my name is Jonathan Neerman. I'm proud daddy first. But in my daytime life, I serve on the executive team of a large nonprofit in Boston focused in workforce development. So my question is less about kind of the law piece and more about your work as the ED of this agency. And for us, removal of barriers, particularly the immigrant and refugee populations, which make up a huge percentage of those we serve, the removal of certain barriers. We try to look holistically at the situation and someone might need to learn English, but for them to access our services, they need a stable home. They need housing. They need food security. There are lots of pieces to that puzzle. And so we really try to work with other agencies in Boston to approach that kind of from kind of a community lens and with all of the players in place to make that, we are one cog in a wheel. I'm just wondering how you think about that both for your agency, but also as kind of a learning opportunity for lawyers that are particularly the younger ones coming in pro bono who are mindful of social justice and these other issues. Are you kind of thinking about that? This is one piece of helping these families, whether it's domestic violence. Chances are there are other issues that they're facing. Just curious to your take on that and how you guys leverage that or how you think about it. Yeah, it's a great question. I think that we have an unfortunately siloed approach getting through life in terms of supporting folks who need support and a law is a typically siloed space. And so I used to co-teach my class actually with a social worker and we had social work students and law students, because I believe really strongly working hand in glove with folks who have complimentary expertises. I am not a social worker. So if you work with low income communities, you become sort of a pop psychologist or a pop social worker, but they deserve real social workers and real psychologists. So I guess a sort of shorter answer would be, I think, I both think that the law sometimes is underutilized for things that, for which it has more power than we give it credit. So for example, we have a marital debt project right now. Everybody knows that when you get divorced, you divide your assets, but people forget that you also divide your debts. For our clients, they don't have a lot of assets, although the assets they have are that much more important because there aren't a lot of them. So they may have a pension, they may have a home, but there's a lot of debt. And very often, especially if our clients have been victims of financial abuse, there's debt that their husband has accrued in their name. And if they don't separate from that, they are way behind the eight ball. They can't get back on their feet, they can't get jobs, they can't get apartments. They may not realize that their credit score, we now run credit scores for all of our clients because they can't get out of shelter and rent an apartment if they don't have a good credit score, but they don't even know what their credit score is or if they're an immigrant, they may not have a credit score. So you're right, all of these things are completely interconnected. And I do feel that having done partner violence work, which basically means families are collapsing and you're kind of having to start that back up again, you become like a professional dilettante. I know a little bit about housing law, a little bit about consumer debt. So what we do is we partner really closely with expert organizations because we don't want to grow into a space if there's already a group that knows how to do that. We are also, we have a social worker on staff and part of her job, she does support the clients, but it's actually to support the pro bono attorney sometimes so that if they have a client whose life is falling apart in many ways, they don't try to, with good intention, solve a problem they don't know how to solve because that can be challenging and clients will just tell you their whole story and they meet a well-positioned attorney. They're like, great, help me because I'm getting evicted and help me because this is going on. And so we want to make sure the attorney knows they can come back to us and we will redirect. But I do think it's really important to have those tight knit connections with community groups. And I think lawyers haven't always done that so well. Some law organizations have that embedded within their organization, but we certainly do that a lot. And I will say that's another place where we are leaning into the pro bono relationship. So we actually are bringing in financial organizations to see if some of their staff might be able to similarly, for example, provide financial advising to our clients getting divorced. A high net worth person has an assets manager. There's no reason a low income person shouldn't have a debts manager or whatever equivalent to make sure that they come out that as financially sound as possible. I encourage it. I'm happy to talk to you about it. And the firms love to do it. I mean, honestly, we have such great people in our law firms who want to see things change. They understand they're good problem solvers. They do have these transferable skills. And so they're happy if they're leveraged properly. We had to learn how to ask the question better, honestly. Okay, we'll take one more question online. This individual wanted to follow up on your thoughts on Supreme Court Justice nominee Judge Katanji Brown Jackson and particularly, how optimistic you are regarding representation of black women in the highest court. Wow, that's a big last question. I don't know the candidate personally and I have not had time, unfortunately, to review her background. But I am thrilled that we are looking to get some diversity. A whole variety of kinds of diversity. And I'm very hopeful that she's earned. And I can't imagine a, from what little I have read, I can't imagine a legitimate objection to her qualification to sit on the bench. I think that representation is so important. It's not the end game, but it's so important for everybody to feel as though somebody who understands where they're coming from can make decisions about their lives and make informed decisions. Justice Sotomayor, I was lucky enough to work with her very, very briefly when I was in law school and she talked about being a wise Latina on the bench, I think. And I think got some condemnation for it and I thought it was a really smart comment because we need all kinds of wisdoms on the court. And just like in every other system that I was talking about, the systems have been built and run by the same kind of person for a really long time and we will have better decisions and more equitable decisions, the better the representation is. In terms of my optimism, I guess I would say I'm cautiously optimistic. I mentioned that my son is a first year in college. He's also a philosophy major, so he asks really hard questions all the time. And he was arguing during spring break that it's kind of the end of civilization as we know it and making me defend the fact that it wasn't, which is his job as my child to do things like that. And I do fear, and this is kind of bearing a bit of field from the question, I guess, but I feel we're in a really complicated moment in our country and in our profession. And I think that something has to give and I hope it gives in a positive way. I hope that we get to the other side. I mean, I feel that political discourse in this country is no longer meaningful in the way it was when I was growing up and I'm not quite sure what to do with that and I don't know how we get to the other side of that, but I think it will only help to have more voices being heard and more perspectives being heard from positions of power. So that's why I'm also really hopeful that the nominee is confirmed because that is a strong voice and it is a voice that right now, I think is being given less respect than it has been historically, which then undermines our entire profession, which is a problem. Can I say one more thing? I know we're running over, but I hate ending on such a downer note because I am generally an optimistic person. It's just feeling like a heavy time right now, really, really heavy. And I wanna say that to the law students too because I actually did this with my own students during my last class. Before class, I just said, I asked everyone to put in the chat one word, how are you feeling today? And it was heavy. And I really profoundly believe that you can be an agent of change as a lawyer and you can be an agent of change from wherever you sit as a lawyer. So if you decide to go to a private law firm and represent big corporations, that's great. You're gonna have a lot more financial power to put behind your opinions and the places you wanna make change. You can use that power in the corporate rooms, the conference rooms that you're in to have a voice to make change. You can make change working at not-for-profits for no money. You can make change in all sorts of places. You can make change in academia. There is no place from which you can't make change. So I would just say that I think lawyers can get into lots of different rooms and you've learned amazing ways to think about and analyze problems. So go where your heart dictates you care. I had a student come up to me after the women's marches a couple years ago and saying, I'm starting at a law firm in the fall. I feel guilty. I shouldn't do that. I should do something else. And I said, no, go get a great experience at the law firm. You can make a really big difference there and if you change your mind in a couple of years, change your mind. But pay off your loans, free yourself up and then you'll have choices. So I just wanted to say that I think in the introduction that Dean mentioned being agents of change and I think all lawyers can be agents of change from wherever. So there's no perfect right job or career path. Make the choice that feels right at that time and you can be a change agent from there. I think that's great advice, Amy. Thank you so much. I would now like to introduce the president of the Women's Law Society here at Roger Blaine's University School of Law and the Dinner Steen and she will announce the winners of our RBG essay and artwork contest. Hi everyone. Thank you Veronica and thank you Amy for sharing your story and wisdom with us tonight. Justice Rick Bader Ginsburg once said, whatever you choose to do, leave tracks. That means don't just do it for yourself. You will want to leave the world a little bit better for having lived. I think there is no doubt that RBG did just that. She has left a resounding legacy that has left tracks and has left the world a better place. For the last few years, our law school has invited Roger Williams and Rhode Island students from grades K through 12 to submit essays and drawings and these Roger Williams students through our Women's Law Society Executive Board have graded them and they have been inspired by the legacy of the late associate, Ruth Bader Ginsburg who passed away on September 18th, 2020. The contest allows students to express themselves in their connection to RBG and how she inspired their lives. All the entries truly encapsulated RBG's inspiring nature through their words and drawings. The students were able to take Justice Ginsburg's inspiring and amazing career. So please enjoy this video of our winners. It's gonna be behind us. Hopefully this works. If I do it right, if I follow the instructions. All right everyone, gonna make it full screen. My name is Emma Mai Dinterstein and I am the president of the Women's Law Society that had the great honor of judging this year's Ruth Bader Ginsburg Writing and Drawing Contest that answers the question, how has RBG inspired us? This year we had an amazing array of applicants, everything from our K elementary school grades that submitted an amazing array of drawings to our middle school and high schoolers who submitted their one to two page papers answering an amazing prompt. Really digging into what it means to have been inspired by RBG. I want to thank my fellow judges and e-board members who put in the work. And I also wanna thank the admin who continues to support this contest and lastly, the Rhode Island Lawyers Weekly who continue to support also this contest and who is going to publish our winners. So without further ado, here are our winners. My name is Aviva Nierman. I go to North Smithfield Elementary School. I'm in third grade and I'm proud that I won the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Contest. One way that Ruth inspires me is because she always wanted to stand up for others. Another way she inspires me is because she was always determined to make sure others were changing equally. I find myself looking out for my classmates and my friends like she did her whole life. That's how she inspires me. This is my picture titled Justice Justice Shall You Pursue? And the words around it describe her personality and what she believed in. Like, determined, justice, and equal rights. I wanna end this with a little quote that was my favorite that she said. Do something outside yourself. Something to make life a little better for people less fortunate than you. That's what I think a meaningful life is. Living not for oneself, but for one's community. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Thank you. This is such an honor. How has Ruth Bader Ginsburg inspired me by Carter Me? Ruth Bader Ginsburg has inspired the world in many different ways, especially for women. But here's how she has personally inspired me. The first way she has inspired me is that she was one of the nine women in her class of 500 at Harvard Law School. She even graduated top of her class. How this inspires me is that when I grow older, I want to become a lawyer. At the time, being a lawyer was a rare job for women since they were thought to be less intelligent or less capable than men. This fact makes it more inspiring because she defied the expectations of society at the time. In addition to that statement, another way she has inspired me is that she did many things for women's rights. How this inspires me is that women at the time were oppressed and treated as less intelligent or less capable when being compared to men. Even though I am not a woman, I feel inspired by this because I am an Asian-American and quite a few Asian hate crimes occur throughout America due to the spread of COVID-19. People of my culture are currently being oppressed, kind of like how women were at the time. So seeing someone stand up for their people in order to prove what they think is right truly inspires me. Lastly, the final way she has inspired me is that she kept working at the Supreme Court, even though she was sick with colon cancer. How this inspires me is that throughout my life, I've experienced a few deaths and have seen loved ones struggle to stay alive while they were sick. Now, to see someone who has the strength and willpower to work, even though they were sick with a disease like cancer, is truly inspirational. In conclusion, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an inspirational figure, not just for women, but the entire world as a whole. Even though she's gone now, she will not be forgotten for the ways she has inspired the world. Ruth Bader Ginsburg not only paved the way for feminists, but she demonstrated what true leadership looked like. Throughout her career, she worked with others and led a nation to fight for what they believe in and encourage others to join them no matter their beliefs. She practiced what she preached with her friendship she found within Justice Scalia. Although the two justices had differing ideologies, they battled in good faith and had a lasting friendship. Her actions and words have inspired me because not only did she fight for justice, but she fought for civility among differing opinions. This is a key value that I impose as I lead a nonpartisan political action committee called Students for Change. Giving students and young members of society a voice in local democracy is a powerful skill to cultivate meaningful change. Ruth Bader Ginsburg inspired me to lead this platform to give everyone a collective voice, no matter their viewpoint. Our country is lacking good faith actors on the local, state, and national level. Citizens can become cruel and vile when fighting for what they stand for, as demonstrated during the insurrection. Ruth Bader Ginsburg never gave in to foul play or bad actors. She chose to lead in a way in which others will follow. Her passion and leadership inspired me to fight for what I believe in during local municipal meetings, as well as encouraging others to do so despite controversy and opinions. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was also an avid fighter for voting rights and wanted to grant equitable access for Americans to exercise this right. In the court case Shelby County versus Holder, Ruth Bader Ginsburg specified that she believed that any states who have had a history of racial discrimination in voting under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 should be required to get federal approval before changing their voting laws. Because of the history across the nation of gerrymandering, limiting ballot drop boxes, and stigmas around mail-in ballots, RBG's Fight for Equitable Voting Rights inspired me to join the Letter I Vote campaign and worked with elected officials to ensure voting rights in Rhode Island. These provisions include no excuse mail voting, a permanent absentee list, rigorous voter registration list maintenance, early voting, enhanced signature verification, online mail ballot requests, ballot drop boxes, no witness requirement, and new primary dates. I do not have providence to inform citizens on this new act and encourage them to send Letter I Vote postcards to their state senators and representatives. My political action committee also met with Atlanta DeMario, one of the lead state senators sponsoring this legislation to discuss how efforts can be increased to ensure it's passing. As RBG puts it, throwing out pre-clearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet. As a feminist, Ruth Bader Ginsburg continuously stood up for women's rights in equal representation. She gave us a seat at the table and showed us that the voices of women need to be heard and respected. Her perseverance has inspired me to fight for equitable access to abortion in Rhode Island. Under the current system, not all healthcare covers this cost. This disproportionately affects women of color and women with lower incomes. We all deserve equitable access to these programs. Throughout her career, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has worked to protect the rights of so many Americans. Her actions and words of wisdom inspired me to fight for what I believe in and my own town and state. She leaves a great legacy behind of leading in a way where others will follow and she proved that what makes a great leader is inspiring others to also fight for change as she laid the groundwork for so many after her. Thank you, those were amazing. So now I get to hand out all the fun gifts. First up is Aviva Nierman. Come on up. I have many things to give you, but we blew up your artwork. So I'm gonna hand this to you first. We can take a picture with it. For you. Let's give a round of applause for Carter Me. I hope your essay, I'm so sorry. For you. I'll just speak from here. Thank you so much, Amy. Thank you so much for your conversation and all of your insights into all of the school, the students that are here today. Congratulations on the contest and winning and thank you to all the students who participated in the program. So I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge a few people to put in a lot of hard work for this evening's event, including Chelsea Horne and Jane Gewednick. We have Michael Bowden, Nicole Dyslewski, the members of the Will Steering Committee and of course our generous sponsors. So thank you so much for all that you've done to help make this happen. We do have a reception immediately following right outside in the atrium. So we encourage you to join us and enjoy some food and conversation and some drinks. And thank you so much for coming tonight. That ends our program. Thank you.