Law Alumni Society Honors Seven Leaders in Their Fields
The LAS awards were presented to Jena Griswold L’11, Damon Hewitt L’00, Tsiwen Law L’84, the Honorable Gene E.K. Pratter L’75, Ed Rock L’83, Andrew Jay Schwartzman L’71, and Tiffany Southerland SPP’08, L’11.
Griswold and Southerland were recipients of the Young Alumni Award, which recognizes extraordinary achievement in the 10 years following graduation.
Griswold, the Secretary of State in Colorado, has dedicated herself to the protection and expansion of voting rights, instituting automatic voter registration and increasing polling locations and mail-in drop boxes across the state. She was the director of the Washington, D.C., office of former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and served as a voter protection attorney for President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012.
Southerland is Director of Diversity & Inclusion at Troutman Pepper in Washington, D.C. She held similar positions at Pepper Hamilton and the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. She is a Lecturer of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and a member of the advisory board of the Law School’s Future of the Profession Initiative.
Law Alumni Society Honors Seven Leaders in Their Fields
The LAS awards were presented to Jena Griswold L’11, Damon Hewitt L’00, Tsiwen Law L’84, the Honorable Gene E.K. Pratter L’75, Ed Rock L’83, Andrew Jay Schwartzman L’71, and Tiffany Southerland SPP’08, L’11.
Griswold and Southerland were recipients of the Young Alumni Award, which recognizes extraordinary achievement in the 10 years following graduation.
Griswold, the Secretary of State in Colorado, has dedicated herself to the protection and expansion of voting rights, instituting automatic voter registration and increasing polling locations and mail-in drop boxes across the state. She was the director of the Washington, D.C., office of former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and served as a voter protection attorney for President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012.
Southerland is Director of Diversity & Inclusion at Troutman Pepper in Washington, D.C. She held similar positions at Pepper Hamilton and the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. She is a Lecturer of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and a member of the advisory board of the Law School’s Future of the Profession Initiative.
A civil rights stalwart over the last 20 years, Hewitt, who has been a voice for voting rights, fair housing, police accountability, and criminal justice reform, is President and Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He also was Executive Director of the Executives’ Alliance for Boys and Men of Color and a top attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF).
The Howard Lesnick Pro Bono Award, named for the founder of the Law School’s public service program, went to Law, an activist for Asian Americans and founder of Law & Associates LLC in Philadelphia. The award recognizes sustained commitment to pro bono or public sector work during a career in the private sector.
Law was one of the founding members of both the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Pennsylvania and the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association. Among his many achievements, he successfully advocated for a program in Pennsylvania that requires the appointment and use of certified interpreters in administrative and court proceedings for those with limited English proficiency or hearing deficits. Law also helped stop the proposed construction of a baseball stadium in the heart of Philadelphia’s Chinatown.
Judge Pratter received the Alumni Award of Merit. She has served on the United States District Court of Eastern Pennsylvania since 2004. A prolific writer on professional responsibility and frequent speaker at Bar and other professional gatherings, Judge Pratter has been co-chair of the ABA Committee on Ethics and Professionalism, chair of the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Professional Responsibility Committee, and member of the Judicial Conference Rules of Practice and Procedures Standing Committee. Prior to the bench, she had a distinguished career at Duane Morris in Philadelphia, becoming the firm’s first general counsel.
This year’s winner of the Distinguished Service Award was Rock, former Saul A. Fox Distinguished Professor of Law at the Law School who, with Michael Wachter, William B. and Mary Barb Johnson Professor of Law and Economics Emeritus, built the Law School’s Institute for Law and Economics into a powerhouse cross-disciplinary research center that brings together practitioners, judges, and scholars to analyze high-level corporate issues.
Now Martin Lipton Professor of Law at the New York University (NYU) School of Law and Co-Director of NYU’s Institute for Corporate Governance & Finance, Rock spent 27 years at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He designed and initiated the three-year Francis J. & William Polk Carey JD/MBA program and launched dozens of Massive Open Online Courses as senior advisor to the President and Provost.
The final honor — the James Wilson Award for Lifetime Achievement — went to Schwartzman, considered the “dean” of public interest communications attorneys. Schwartzman is best known for his 34-year tenure at the Media Access Project, a nonprofit public interest telecommunications firm where he promoted media diversity and opposed media consolidation, advocated for affordable access to broadband, and fought for network neutrality and online privacy.
One of the first public interest lawyers to specialize in media and communications, Schwartzman serves today as a senior counselor to the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, an organization rooted in the values of access, equity, and diversity.
In 2003, Scientific American honored Schwartzman as one of the nation’s 50 leaders in technology.