We hope you will join with us in welcoming the newest members of the Stein Scholars Program. Twenty 1Ls have joined the program, and they are already busy planning events and making connections, on top of learning how to be law students! Meet 19 of them.
Driven by personal experience, Samantha Baran is interested in disability law. She completed a graduate certificate in disability studies, which not only taught her about the challenges people with disabilities face but also gave her a chance to interact with people with various disabilities and learn about their individual 
experiences. Samantha has been studying disability in an academic setting for several years and believes a legal education will enable her to make a difference in the lives of everyday people with disabilities. She aspires to become an advocate for disability rights and hopes to alleviate some of the challenges people with disabilities face, including discrimination and accessibility, and help them to live more independent lives.
Louis Cholden-Brown joins the Fordham Law and Stein communities in the evening program. A graduate of Columbia University’s School of General Studies and the Jewish Theological Seminary, he currently serves as the deputy chief of staff for legislation, planning & budget for New York City Council member Corey Johnson. Louis looks forward to applying the law to addressing the social determinants of health.
Tyler Crawford is strongly interested in developing, discussing, and imagining strategic legal practices which can benefit the organizing efforts of working and marginalized people. He is particularly inspired by the labor movement in the United States, whether in the history of unions, or in the 
innovative approach to membership and representation taken by workers’ centers. The immediate questions he hopes to wrestle with in the beginning of his legal career are: what is next for low-wage worker movements, how can we build a lasting legal framework to protect working people and their organizations, and what might a more economically democratic society look like?
For the few years prior to law school, Leanne Fornelli has been an investigator at the Civilian Complaint Review Board, where she investigated 
complaints against members of the New York City Police Department. This experience fomented a passion for the rights of women and racial minorities, areas in which she plans to dedicate her legal career. She is honored to be a Stein Scholar and looks forward to the opportunities this will afford her.
While studying at George Washington University, Miyoshie Lamothe-Aime discovered her interests in international development and human rights, and her passion to help the advancement of Haiti and Latin America. After graduating, she spent 3 years working as a Law Clerk at Kramer 
Levin Naftalis and Frankel LLP, learning more about the field of law and assisting pro-bono matters. She also mentored 8th grade students of color applying to boarding prep schools with the Wadleigh Scholars Program. She begins her studies at Fordham excited to learn more about human rights issues and government reform in developing countries, while balancing her commitment to public service here at home.
Rachel Manning is a 2014 graduate of Oberlin College and has spent the last two years working in New York City on public health and 
environmental justice initiatives, which she hopes to continue in her legal career. She served as a Community HealthCorps AmeriCorps member at the Institute for Family Health, where she helped 22 public schools in the South Bronx adopt policies that promote healthy eating, physical activity, school gardening, and nutrition education. Most recently, she worked at Mount Sinai Hospital as a project coordinator for community outreach and education within an NIEHS-funded environmental health research center. Projects included working on legislation to bolster asthma-free housing practices in NYC, creating environmental justice themed educational videos, and collaborating with community partners to host an environmental health professional development course for teachers. Rachel is thrilled to join the Stein Scholars community.
Dana Kai-el McBeth’s passion is a result of watching friends and loved ones get displaced by gentrification, marginalized by poverty, and attacked by racism, classism, sexism, and other constructed injustices. As a result, she is interested in criminal law and social reform, as well as traveling the world. She had the chance to visit her dream city, Paris, as well as Barbados this summer after interning with a private firm. She is the product of Brooklyn, Howard University, and a God-fearing mother.
Will Passannante graduated from Oberlin College in 2014 having majored in history, minored in computer science, and led a circus. From July 
2014 to June 2016 he worked as a paralegal in the civil frauds unit of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. He is interested in white-collar law enforcement and hopes to become a prosecutor. He and a friend are trying to break the world record for ‘fastest time to visit all New York City Subway stations’ using a novel algorithmic approach. Non-law interests include urban infrastructure, computer programming, and outer space.
This past summer Vick Paul completed his fourth year as a teacher while working at a university in Malaysia with students from all over the world. 
Upon his return to the United States, he spent much of the summer at his home in Texas reading, dabbling in Spanish language study, and resting up for law school. As he returns to student life this fall, he is keen to learn more about education law and the process by which education reform moves from policy decisions to real world changes in classrooms.
A New Yorker born and raised, Christopher Pedro is a Fordham University Class of 2015 graduate. After taking a year to act as his grandmother’s caretaker, he is excited to be at Fordham Law School and to start to work on issues he’s passionate about, including bail and criminal justice reform, to help those who live in the city that has given him everything.
Praatika Prasad spent part of the summer working on a petition on behalf of various trans* groups to implead into the hearing about Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Section 377, formed during colonial rule, criminalizes sexual intercourse between consenting LGBTQ adults in India. The petition was recently accepted and will be included in the upcoming five-judge constitutional bench hearing. She also took a few weeks off to backpack across Cambodia. Apart from visiting the Angkor temples, she also visited important sites from the Cambodian genocide, and got the opportunity to interact with survivors and people involved in Case 002.
Jonian Rafti comes to Fordham Law as a recent graduate of Bard College, where he founded a nonpartisan voter engagement group in a county with a history of student voting rights abuses. After graduating from Bard, Jonian continued his voting rights work at The Andrew Goodman Foundation, an organization named in honor of Andrew Goodman, the twenty-year-old civil rights worker who was murdered in Mississippi by the Ku Klux Klan during Freedom Summer 1964. At the foundation, Jonian refined and expanded Vote Everywhere, a national, campus-based, civic engagement program established in 2014. Today, he serves as co-chair of the foundation’s alumni association and sits on Bard’s Young Alumni Advisory Council.
Elena Rosen-Checa graduated from the George Washington University in 2013, where she studied sociology and women’s studies. Since then, she has worked at several nonprofits, including the Amara Legal Center in Washington, DC, and the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault. As a Stein Scholar, she hopes to further explore her interests in racial justice and combating sexual and gender-based violence, through both legal services and law reform.
Johanna Sanders is a political activist and community organizer, passionate about achieving justice and equality across intersectional identities. 
Most recently, at The Vaid Group, she focused on advocating for criminal justice and economic reform, and maintains additional areas of interest that include LGBTQ advocacy, feminism, and immigration reform. She is excited to join the Fordham Law community and the Stein Scholars family.
Erin Shahinfar has previously worked as an ESL teacher as well as an editor at a national travel magazine. At Fordham, she plans to combine her experience working with children and her interest in language by focusing on children’s rights law.
Milan Sova graduated magna cum laude from Saint Lawrence University in 2011, with a double major in global studies and performance & communication arts. Since graduating he has travelled to Australia, India, and around the United States. During his travels he has done various 
community service activities such as working with FEMA through AmeriCorps and volunteering at a women’s refuge in India. Milan hopes to use his legal education at Fordham to work in criminal justice system reform.
Over the summer Krista Staropoli said goodbye to her full-time job at JPMorgan, where she worked for the past two years. She also spent some time this summer planning a back-to-school event for the nonprofit Photo Patch, which exists to help children with incarcerated parents. She’s interested in both women’s rights and prisoner’s rights, and hopes to ultimately have a career that is involved with either or both.
Eliel Talo was born and raised in New York and spent most of the past year working with a New York-based startup. Before that, he lived in New Delhi, India, working with an organic food startup as an American India Foundation Clinton Fellow. He has a background in public policy and spent three years 
working in the House of Representatives. He is interested in legal defense for marginalized and persecuted populations and environmental law, and is hoping to pursue a career in civil and human rights litigation or federal policymaking.
For the past two years, Anthoula Vasiliou worked as a paralegal at a real estate law office while completing her undergraduate degree. She also conducted research on education issues, such as immigrant parents’ struggles with being involved in their children’s schools and charter school teachers’ grievances in the workplace. This research contributed to Anthoula’s passion for education law and policy. She hopes to establish a career in which she can advocate for underprivileged students and a more equitable public education system.