JD #Changemaker Stories

Molly Hamlin was born and raised in Oregon, and that’s where she’ll be putting her law degree to work – starting as a judicial clerk to the Honorable Debra K. Vogt, Presiding Judge of the...

A dyed-in-the-wool Rhode Islander, John W. Caruolo earned his undergraduate degree at Brown University, and then decided to take advantage of RWU Law’s status as Rhode Island’s only law school to get the academic and experiential chops he needed to succeed in the legal profession.

For Kirby Gordon, the broad spectrum of RWU Law’s curriculum, experiential opportunities and alumni placements offer exactly the flexibility she sought. But it was the school’s 50-hour public service requirement – and its unique experiential guarantee that helps fulfill it – that turned her definitively toward public interest.

Noah Kilroy ’13 maintains a solo practice and is co-founder of Transcending Through Education Foundation (TTEF), which helps former convicts obtain higher education.

As he enters his eighth and final year as Rhode Island’s attorney general, Peter F. Kilmartin ’98, B.A. ’88, can claim by several measures to be the school’s most prominent alumnus. But he claims there was never any master plan.

Maria became the Associate Director of Compliance at UnitedHealthcare just over a year after she matriculated as a part-time student here in fall of 2013. Maria told me that RWU Law was the only place where she could pursue her career and educational goals at the same time.

Whether in Flint or New Orleans, “environmental racism” refers to the placement of low-income or minority communities in proximity to environmentally hazardous or degraded environments, such as toxic waste, pollution and urban decay.

Marek P. Bute ’05 has a business law dream job as corporate counsel with Amazon Web Services, Inc. (“Yes, it’s as cool as it sounds,” he allows.) But his most stunning achievement to date may be his work representing a same-sex couple in the case of Sevcik v. Sandoval, which successfully overturned Nevada’s law against gay marriage – helping set the stage for Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned such bans nationally less than a year later.

Elizabeth Colagiovanni ’10 is a senior associate in International Tax at Kahn, Litwin, Renza & Co. Ltd. Certified Public Accountants, Providence. Colagiovanni loves the complexity of international tax treaties and foreign law.

To David M. Holley ’99, managing director of Boston-based Berkeley Research Group, a global consulting firm, there’s a mounting body of evidence that compliance officers now have bull’s-eyes on their backs.