Careers in Child and Family Policy: Law Advocacy

This event will feature Shajuti Hossain, associate attorney at Renne Public Law Group, Chavis Jones, associate counsel in the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Peggy Nicholson, supervising attorney, Children's Law Clinic, Duke Law. Prior to joining Renne Public Law Group, Hossain was a law fellow on the Metropolitan Equity Team at Public Advocates, based in San Francisco. She worked on local, regional, and state level housing advocacy with a racial justice lens. Hossain received her J.D. from Duke University School of Law in 2018. Jones is a proud graduate of Morehouse College, where he studied philosophy. He then studied at Harvard Divinity School, where he was a fellow of the Harvard Graduate School Leadership Institute, a staff writer for the Harvard Journal of Human Rights Policy at the School of Government, and a ministry fellow. In May of 2020, he graduated from law school at Duke University, where he focused primarily on civil and human rights issues. Peggy Nicholson joined the Duke Law faculty in 2020 as a lecturing fellow and supervising attorney in the Children's Law Clinic. In this capacity, she works with law students to represent children and their families in special education, school discipline, and public benefits cases. Nicholson received her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and her B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This speaker series is for Duke students who want to learn more about careers in child and family policy. Meetings are designed to help students explore the wide range of job opportunities and careers available in the field of child and family policy while creating a network of students who share their professional interests. At weekly meetings, we will discuss how to forge a career in policy by speaking with people doing policy work in education, health, juvenile justice, child welfare, economic security, and other areas. Learn from people who went straight into policy jobs, pursued law school, joined Teach for America, or have made a careers in academia. Speakers will talk about how they got started, about the turns they took along the way, and what they have enjoyed most. They will also share tips for launching your career and what they look for when hiring.