Nonprofit Expertise

Katie Ahern ’07 leads RWU Law’s Business Start-up Clinic, which serves nonprofit and small business clients. Students in the clinic learn substantive business lawyering skills, work directly with clients, and interact with the Rhode Island nonprofit and small business community.

Professor Ahern was previously an associate at Hinckley, Allen & Snyder, where her legal practice focused in all areas of federal, state, and local tax matters affecting businesses, individuals, governmental entities, and tax-exempt organizations. Her research and analysis of client tax issues includes those surrounding formation, ongoing operations, and winding up of an organization, application for tax-exempt status of an organization, ongoing tax-exempt organization requirements, tax-exempt bond issuances, and state and local tax requirements. She has regularly published and presented on a variety of tax, business, and nonprofit law concepts.

Professor Ahern previously served as a legal intern and later an associate in corporate and tax law at Tarlow, Breed, Hart & Rodgers, P.C. in Boston; as a legal intern at PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP; and as a legal, investor relations and international tax intern at Hasbro, Inc.

Professor Ahern also teaches business-law related classes at the University of Rhode Island and has served on the board and as President of the Rhode Island Women’s Bar Association. She is an active member of the Rhode Island bar and an inactive member of the Massachusetts bar. She is a 2011 recipient of the Providence Business News Forty Under 40 award and a 2015 Super Lawyers Rising Star.