Tell us about your community growing up. Looking back, how did they shape who you are now?

My upbringing was very much a prototypical immigrant story. My parents were both educators who moved to the United States in hopes of better opportunities for us. As a result, learning was such an important part of growing up for me and my brother. My late grandmother, who helped raise me, was also an elementary school teacher; she cultivated in me a deep love of reading and instilled in me the importance of following a moral compass. I also feel very lucky that my parents chose to settle in northern New Jersey—one of the biggest melting pots anywhere in the world— because of the perspective that my friends growing up were able to give me.

One formative aspect of my teenage years is that I did competitive debate for eight years in high school and college, which not only trained me to be able to speak in front of an audience about virtually any issue, but also made me appreciate the importance of dissecting an issue and seeing both sides of it. My public high school debate team was also majority female, which was somewhat unusual at the time; I was definitely motivated and inspired by being part of that experience.

Describe your journey to law school. What motivated you to apply?

While I didn’t grow up with lawyers, and I didn’t always know that I would become one, by the time I was in my early 20s, I was certain that I wanted to be a litigator. I also took a lot of classes in college that involved law and policy issues, which I loved. So the idea of continuing to do that on a professional level appealed to me.

What was your law school experience like?

I very much enjoyed law school, especially the hands-on clinical courses. Working as a clinical law student intern at New Haven Legal Assistance Group under the late Frank Dineen and the incredibly talented and dedicated staff attorneys there was a formative experience for me. They taught me how to strategize and write and, perhaps even more importantly, the importance of access to legal representation. And within the law school walls, I had the privilege of learning from intellectual trailblazers. In particular, Lea Brilmayer has been a mentor and friend since the moment I walked into her contracts class 1L year.

Did you know about appellate work in law school? If not, when and how did it first get on your radar and why were you drawn to it?

I did, but I was not necessarily set on pursuing it as a career. I was very interested in the excitement of jury trials — and spent several years working with some fantastic mentors in that space after law school. But law is a dynamic field: there are so many ways in which trial legal strategy tie into subsequent appeals, so I was never far from thinking about appellate issues. And while working in private practice, I took on a number of appellate pro bono matters that further pulled me in that direction.

Tell us about one of your appellate cases that you found particularly meaningful.

As an appellate litigator, I think the moments that are especially meaningful are when you are able to change the outcome after an adverse trial court decision. The most recent example of that for me was State v. O’Donnell, 255 N.J. 60 (2023), which was a case about whether New Jersey’s bribery statute applied to unelected candidates. My team and I were able to get the intermediate appellate court to unanimously reverse the trial court decision and the New Jersey Supreme Court to unanimously affirm that win.

How often do you encounter women, particularly women of color, in the appellate field? Why do you think that representation is important?

Not often enough, and especially so for women of color. It’s not just a problem in the appellate field.

There are so many reasons why representation is important. Chief among them is how the disparity happened and became entrenched: if qualified individuals are dissuaded from or steered away from a career in any part because of who they are, we have to rectify that. And lack of representation also matters because of its impact going forward, including how it can be self-perpetuating for future generations of lawyers and how it can hamper the types of perspectives that are valuable for the case itself.

What advice would you give to a law student of color who aspires to be where you are now?

First, don’t be afraid to grab opportunities and don’t sit for too long at the hesitation station.

Second, always do the work. There is no shortcut to developing persuasive legal arguments and presenting them effectively.

Finally, one piece of advice I’ve held dear comes from the incredible trial lawyer Beth Wilkinson, who taught me so much about being an effective lawyer in any specialty: no matter how junior you are, you are a lawyer on the case. You have to have an ownership mentality to succeed. That advice has never failed me.

What’s one thing law schools and/or the appellate bar can do to ensure our highest courts are representative of all our communities?

Mentorship is important—and precisely why TAP is such a fantastic organization. The number of mentors—and not just women—who have supported me and motivated me over the years are too many to list here. And most of those are not formal; it’s about taking the time to talk to young lawyers who may not even know to seek advice (I certainly didn’t, but luckily received it anyway) or do not feel comfortable asking. I also think that often mentorship of minority students falls on the shoulders of a few, when it is all of our responsibilities. We should all partake in the project of making our profession more representative of our national and local communities.