EWOC at Columbia Law

10/15/2020

General body meeting is this afternoon at 4:40pm ET followed by EWOC social hour! Check your email for the Zoom link. If you want EWOC swag this year then you don't want to miss this GBM!

09/16/2020

EWOC's first GBM of the year is TOMORROW! Join us on Zoom at 12:45pm Eastern.

09/04/2020

Joint Affinity Group Event happening TOMORROW!

We will join APALSA, BLSA, CLWA, EWOC, FGP, LaLSA, OutLaws, SALSA, and SKLS for the Joint Affinity Group Event on Saturday, September 5 at 8 PM EST. Please see the flyer attached. This will be a wonderful opportunity for you to meet and speak with board members from each organization and members of your incoming class.

We look forward to seeing you there!

03/23/2020

Dear EWOC Members,

We hope you all enjoyed your Spring Break and that this letter finds you all safe and healthy. As you are all aware, Columbia has chosen to conduct the remainder of the semester virtually in an abundance of precaution for the safety of our students in light of COVID-19. Given these changes and remembering that the safety of our members is of the utmost priority, EWOC's events for the remainder of the semester have been cancelled. We will keep you updated if events will be rescheduled over the summer or at another time. We will also keep you updated if we choose to have any virtual events via our weekly emails. In the meantime, we have resumed the weekly update emails to keep our members informed of external and other career-related opportunities.

We understand that these times are difficult, unforeseen, and scary. Many of us may be worried about the health and safety of our families, friends, and communities, moving and uprooting our lives, and determining how this will affect our academics, the remainder of our semester, and our summers. EWOC will continuously be in contact with the Law School’s administration to remain informed of changes and to see how we can continue to support you. In the meantime, we encourage you to continue reaching out to us, Student Services, or any other resources available at Columbia should you find the need or have any concerns or questions.

In these difficult times, EWOC will continue to find ways to provide community and support to you remotely. While we are saddened that we will not be able to close out the semester together, we hope that you will remain strong, informed, and in contact with one another for support. Check in on friends, make time to take care of yourself, ask for help when needed, and take the necessary steps to remain safe and healthy. It is through our community and our care for one another that we find strength, resilience, and perseverance. As with all difficult times, this too will pass.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected] or through our social media if you need anything. We look forward to seeing you all once this passes and hope to keep in touch with our Class of 2020 as you finish your law school journeys. Best of luck with the remainder of the semester.

In solidarity and with warm regards,

Empowering Women of Color

03/20/2020

In late February, EWOC honored Former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Keerthana Nimmala ‘16 at our 5th annual Constance Baker Motley Gala! Check out this story highlighting the event!

The Columbia Law School student group Empowering Women of Color honored former U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch at the annual Constance Baker Motley Gala, which is named for a Columbia Law graduate who became a pioneering African-American civil rights lawyer, public official, and federal judge.

01/14/2020

EWOC's video for prospective students is now live! A lot of us did not know about EWOC until we arrived on campus, so we wanted to let prospective students know that there is a community for women of color at CLS. Please share this video with anyone who is thinking about attending CLS!

Members of Columbia Law’s Empowering Women of Color share how the mentorship and camaraderie in the student organization has shaped their law school experience.

11/05/2019

Our next Conference speaker is Veronica Relea! Check out her inspiring story from immigrant to partner! Veronica Relea is a Project Finance partner in the New York office of Latham & Watkins. Ms. Relea’s practice focuses on representing commercial and investment banks, sponsors, developers, and private equity firms in connection with the development, construction, operation, and financing of energy, oil and gas, and infrastructure projects. Veronica has earned her numerous honors, including being named by Latinvex as one of Latin America’s top 100 female lawyers and to the HNBA’s Top Lawyers Under 40. She is recommended for her work in banking and project finance by The Legal 500 Latin America, and for her work in project finance by The Legal 500 US, and is featured in the The Legal 500 Private Practice Powerlist 2019: Mexico Specialists. Last month, the Puerto Rican Bar Association recognized Veronica as their 2019 “Attorney of the Year”. Veronica co-founded Latham’s associate-driven diversity initiative, the Multicultural Promotion and Attainment Coalition (MPAC), and is a member of the firm’s global Diversity Leadership Committee. Veronica is a native of San Juan, Puerto Rico 🇵🇷. She lived her entire life in Guaynabo, a small town about 15 minutes from San Juan, before moving to the mainland for college at age 17. She received her B.A. from Yale University (with a double major in Economics and International Studies) and her J.D. from Harvard University. ⚖️ Veronica is a self-described spicy, sassy and fierce boricua, born to a Puerto Rican mother and a Spanish father 🇪🇸. She learned English in school, but also picked up enough “real talk” from long afternoons watching Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and cheesy courtroom dramas (squeezing them in between telenovelas). She excelled in school and saw a career in law as opening many doors and creating opportunities for herself (a sort of “get it, girl” moment) – a nice change from having seen her dad lose multiple jobs, experiencing bankruptcy as a child, and losing her dad to violent crime in Puerto Rico. Now living in the best city in the world, Veronica finds joy in the little things. 💁‍♀️

11/01/2019

Our next featured Conference speaker is Iris Chen! Iris is a Vice President in the Legal Department at Google, LLC where she leads a team of 130+ attorneys and contract managers responsible for supporting global product development and all commercial transactions in North America and EMEA for Google’s advertising, analytics, commerce, payments, search, research, health, geo, emerging markets and core systems services. Iris regularly advises the company’s executives across Product, Engineering, Sales, Business Development and other functions. She began her career at Google in 2006 as a commercial attorney supporting the company’s ads business and was also the lead attorney for Google’s legal staff in New York before relocating to the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA, in 2011. She is a member of Google’s executive oversight committee for some of its diversity and inclusion initiatives and is the co-sponsor of the Google Legal Department diversity and inclusion committee. Before joining Google, Iris was a corporate associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett (2001-2004) working on securities, M&A, private equity fund formation and non-profit organization matters. She then joined Ropes & Gray (2004-2006) where she was a member of the firm’s investment management practice. Iris is a Vice President on the Board of the Columbia Law School Association. ⚖️ She is also an advisory committee member for PracticePro, a San Francisco-based legal education startup that provides skills training, career development training, diversity programs and technology with the aim of improving how new lawyers are trained and bringing more diversity to the legal profession. Iris was also a recipient of The Recorder’s Women Leaders In Tech Law Awards in 2017. Iris received a BA in 1997 from Yale University and a JD in 2001 from Columbia Law School where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and Joseph Solomon Arts Fellow. She also completed the Advanced Leadership Program for Asian-American Executives at Stanford Business School in 2017. Outside of work, Iris enjoys running, following interior design blogs and spending time with her husband and three daughters. 👧

11/01/2019

Our next featured Conference speaker is Chisun Lee! Chisun serves as senior counsel in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, where she works to advance money-in-politics reform and voting rights. She leads and produces legislative campaigns, research reports, and public advocacy initiatives and is an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law.
Lee has authored or coauthored several nationally recognized reports, along with op-eds in outlets such as the New York Times and the Atlantic. She has provided policy advice to lawmakers across the country and delivered testimony and briefings before federal and state legislators.
Lee returned to the Brennan Center in 2013, after having served as counsel five years earlier. In the interim, she represented indigent criminal defendants in New York City’s federal courts and covered legal issues as a staff reporter for ProPublica, the Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative news organization. At ProPublica she scrutinized voter fraud claims, the Guantánamo detentions, scientific evidence standards, and wrongful convictions, winning numerous awards. Her ProPublica projects were copublished by the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, the National Law Journal, and PBS Frontline, among other outlets.
Prior to joining the Brennan Center in 2007, Lee served as a law clerk to the Honorable Gerard E. Lynch in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She received her JD in 2006 from Harvard Law School. ⚖️ For many years before and during law school, Lee worked as a journalist, principally as a staff writer at the Village Voice. Her reporting on civil liberties, government, and politics earned many honors, including the Knight Foundation fellowship at Yale Law School. Prior to becoming a journalist, Lee was press secretary to New York City’s first public advocate. She graduated magna cm laude from Brown University with a degree in history. 📚

10/31/2019

Our first featured Conference speaker is Kathryn Isom-Clause (Taos Pueblo). ✊Kathryn is the Vice Chair of the National Indian Gaming Commission. As such, she is one of three commissioners responsible for regulating and ensuring the integrity of the more than 506 Indian gaming facilities, associated with nearly 244 tribes across 29 states. Isom-Clause was appointed by the Secretary of Interior on March 14, 2016 for a three-year term.

Prior to joining the NIGC, Isom-Clause served as a senior counselor to the Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior. In this position, she advised the Assistant Secretary on Indian gaming matters, including tribal-state gaming compacts, environmental compliance issues and revenue allocation plans. She also chaired interagency working groups on sacred sites and homelessness, and coordinated listening sessions and roundtables with tribal stakeholders. In addition, her portfolio included the restoration and protection of tribal homelands. Prior to joining the federal government, Isom-Clause provided legal advice and representation to tribal clients on a wide range of federal Indian law and policy issues important to Indian Country.

Isom-Clause graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wellesley College, Mass. and received her juris doctor from Columbia University School of Law, N.Y. ⚖️

10/21/2019

10/16/2019

Save the Date!

Please join EWOC as we host our 6th Annual Women of Color Conference on November 9, 2019. Titled “Lifting As We Climb: Building Community and Advancing Diversity,” this year’s Conference will highlight women of color as driving influences in corporations, law firms, and activist movements, and will illuminate the challenges that women of color face in the legal field, exploring how women of color can empower society, each other, and themselves.

We hope you will join us for this special event. CLE Credit is available. Please reserve your ticket by submitting an RSVP here: https://forms.gle/nfW8pqcHmCJ3CVBi7

See you there!

The EWOC Board

Please contact Archana Vasa at [email protected] or Kelley Chang-Fong at [email protected] with any questions.