2025 Alumni Impact Award

The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s Toll Public Interest Center (TPIC) recently recognized Dwayne Bensing with the 2025 Alumni Impact Award. Bensing was honored for his continued civil rights work and leadership with the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware (ACLU-DE) across education equity, free speech, and the rights of incarcerated people.

“Dwayne has distinguished himself in his public service career and has been at the forefront of protecting LGBTQ+ students and teachers and ensuring access to public education for low-income students and students with disabilities,” said Ayanna Williams, TPIC’s Director for Public Interest Initiatives.

“Beyond his success as an advocate, Dwayne has also been a mentor to countless Penn Carey Law students and young alumni and served as a pro bono project and post graduate fellowship supervising attorney.”

Premal Dharia and Abby Wright were finalists for the award, presented at TPIC’s annual Pro Bono Recognition Dinner. The event honors the Law School’s longstanding commitment to public service, celebrating students’ and alumni’s dedication to pro bono work as well as the support of attorney supervisors and organizational partners for Penn Carey Law pro bono efforts.

Premal Dharia is the Executive Director of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration at Harvard Law School and co-editor-in-chief of the online publication Inquest. She previously spent nearly 15 years representing people charged with criminal offenses in three different places: the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Baltimore, and the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Additionally, Dharia serves on the boards of the Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop, the Second Look Project, and the Law & Justice Journalism Project. She is on the Fellows Advisory Council of the International Legal Foundation and is on the Academic Advisory Board of the Family Justice Law Center. In addition, Dharia is a co-chair of the Pretrial Justice Committee Criminal Justice Section, American Bar Association, and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

Prior to law school, Dharia earned a degree in History and African-American Studies with a focus on comparative postcolonial studies from Brown University.

She is an editor, along with James Forman Jr. and Maria Hawilo, of Dismantling Mass Incarceration: A Handbook for Change (2024).

Abby Wright most recently served as Deputy Director of the Appellate Staff, Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. She joined the Department in 2008, after clerking for Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court and Judge Michael Boudin on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Wright was an appellate line attorney for 10 years, representing the United States in a variety of cases in the courts of appeals and Supreme Court. Representative matters include serving as the Department’s liaison to the Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services on matters related to same-sex marriage in the wake of the Windsor and Obergefell decisions and defending the federal government’s bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in decade-long litigation, ensuring that taxpayers were fully compensated for their contributions to the government-sponsored enterprises.

Wright also handled and supervised numerous appeals in defense of federal firearms statutes and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regulations, work she continued when promoted to Assistant Director in 2019 and Deputy Director in 2024. In recognition of her work, Wright was awarded the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service—the highest award bestowed by the Department of Justice—and was twice recognized with an Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award.