Claudia Carvajal Lopez and Alina Das: “Telling Your Story”

Birnbaum Women's Leadership Network

Recorded in March 2017 - Claudia Carvajal Lopez ’18 is a third-year law student at NYU School of Law. She is an AnBryce scholar and is on the Law Review, and she previously served as executive co-chair of the Latino Law Students Association (LaLSA) during the 2016-17 academic year. Carvajal Lopez was born in Sinaloa, Mexico, and moved to Oakland, California, when she was five years old. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science in May 2012. After graduating from college, Carvajal Lopez spent a few years working as a paralegal at an immigration law firm. She was an SEO scholar the summer before she started law school and spent the summer after her first year of law school at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York. She worked this past summer at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco. Alina Das ’05 is a Professor of Clinical Law at NYU School of Law, where she co-teaches and co-directs the Immigrant Rights Clinic. She and her clinic students represent immigrants and community organizations in litigation and advocacy to advance immigrant rights locally and across the country. In addition to her teaching, Das engages in scholarship on deportation and detention issues, particularly at the intersection of immigration and criminal law. Das also serves as faculty director of the NYU Latinx Rights Scholars Program. Prior to joining the Law School, Das was a Soros Justice Fellow and staff attorney with the Immigrant Defense Project, and clerked for Judge Kermit V. Lipez of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Das graduated magna cum laude with an AB in government from Harvard University, and graduated cum laude from NYU Law as a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar with a joint MPA from NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service. Das is a recipient of the LexisNexis Matthew Bender Daniel Levy Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement in Immigration Law, the NYU Law Podell Distinguished Teaching Award, the NYU Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Faculty Award, and the NYU Center for Multicultural Education & Programs Nia Faculty Award.