When Reda Taleb (McLean Class, 2015) talks about “giving back,” she isn’t just reciting a slogan — she’s living by example. The daughter of immigrants from Bint Jbeil, Lebanon, Taleb’s parents, along with her six older siblings, laid roots in Dearborn’s south end, an area known for its pollution-emitting factory smoke stacks and community of Arab Americans seeking the “American Dream.”
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Adriannette Williams fights for justice as a George Floyd Foundation founding board member, updates The Florida Bar handbook and is now the DEI connector for students and faculty at Lincoln Memorial Law School.
Sumayya Saleh’s Syrian parents, Bilal and Abida Saleh, immigrated to the United States in the mid-1980s, seeking opportunity after their families had been forced to flee oppression in Syria. When her parents arrived in the United States, they married in Tennessee, had two daughters, Layla and Aamena, then moved to Florida and had twin girls, Maryam and Sumayya. The children learned their parents’ heritage and their story of oppression and immigration, and experienced firsthand what injustice looked like in this country. It would certainly inform their lives growing up, but it turned into a passion when it became personal.
To describe the most recent couple years in Jigisa Patel-Dookhoo’s life as a whirlwind would be an understatement of epic proportions. Many people in the world went into a sort of hibernation during the pandemic. Not the Hon. Jigisa Patel-Dookhoo (Coleman Class, 2009).
Neena Sterling (Gray Class, 2022) knew she wanted to be a lawyer since she was a young girl. When she graduated from college she was on track, but ended up hitting some bumps and taking time off to work for a year. In 2016, she had a daughter, and her dream of law school was put on the back burner.
Below is a conversation surrounding Standard 303. Curriculum with Demetria Frank, Associate Dean for Diversity & Inclusion, University of Memphis Law In February, 2022, the ABA adopted a new Standard for Legal Education. The new Standard, 303(c), provides:
Stephanie Ray was a very quiet child, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have a lot to say. "I think people found my opinionated self quite a shock, especially since I didn't really speak much as a child," laughed Ray. Born in Medellin, Colombia, Ray came to New York City to live with her adoptive parents, Stratton Ray and Virginia Ann Wright, in 1992.
Cooley Law School 2005 graduate Janelle Benjamin is the founder and CEO of the company All Things Equitable. Benjamin, located in Toronto, Ontario, works with organizations and companies all over the world. Her consulting work focuses on diversity and inclusion in the workplace. She helps employees from historically marginalized groups feel safer at work, and she helps employers figure out how to create diverse and safe workplaces that are fair and equitable. She does her work by speaking, interviewing, conducting focus groups, surveys, and training sessions. Benjamin started the company in 2020, pulling together more than 15 years of skills acquired through her work on the staff of high level policy makers in Human Rights and Fairness government commissions. She earned her J.D. with a focus on International Law, ADR, and Litigation. She believes she is the only firm in Toronto that focuses on all historically marginalized groups – there are consultants on racial equity, or accessibility equity, or LGBTQI equity, for example. She helps companies create fairness for all its employees by examining such issues as implicit bias and micro-aggressions, but also explicit bias and dismantling sexist, racist, ableist and other practices that are a barrier to fairness. She credits some of her own experiences of discrimination and micro-aggressions in the workplace with helping her recognize and validate the experiences shared by marginalized employees. She credits her policy experience with helping her problem-solve with employers. After the events of the summer of 2020, including the shooting of George Floyd, Ms. Benjamin realized she wanted to do more. She also realized her own race and gender posed challenges to being promoted within corporate culture. With the support of many people with whom she had worked, who advised her that she had the perfect skill set to take action to improve employment settings, she launched her own business and has been busy ever since.
What does being a lawyer mean to Yveline Dalmacy? Well, it doesn’t mean driving the fanciest car or living in the biggest house. To her it means touching and empowering as many lives as you can in your lifetime. That’s the legacy she wants to leave. As a proud Haitian who immigrated to New York when she was 14 years old, she met many challenges but still managed to help others along the way.
On Thursday, July 22, 2021, Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced the appointment of Kwamé L. Rowe to the 6th Circuit Court of Oakland County, in southeast Michigan. Rowe served as a special assistant prosecuting attorney with the Trafficking Unit for Oakland County, working on felony cases involving human trafficking, complex narcotics, and homicide.
