The Squire Patton Boggs Foundation is pleased to announce the 2022 Sustained Impact Puerto Rico Disaster Response Fellowship, welcoming two deserving law students into the program.
Four years ago, the Squire Patton Boggs Foundation created its Sustained Impact Fellowship Program. The Puerto Rico Disaster Response was the inaugural project implemented to focus on post-hurricane disaster relief and community rebuilding by partnering with two organizations in San Juan, Centro para Puerto Rico and Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico. The Foundation’s efforts were in response to post-Hurricane Maria issues. Today the scope of the Fellows’ work has broadened to include access to justice and environmental stewardship.
“The fellowship continues to make a significant impact in Puerto Rico and we are proud to provide this experience to this year’s outstanding fellows,” said John Oberdorfer, Foundation President.
The Sustained Impact Fellowship program runs in tandem with the Foundation’s signature Public Policy Fellowship Program that includes 18 US law schools and the Collège d΄Europe in Bruges, Belgium, as well as its Pulitzer Center Fellowship, in which the Foundation and Case Western Reserve University Law School partner with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting on a Fellowship focusing on law and journalism.
The two fellows who were selected for the 2022 Puerto Rico Disaster Response Fellowship Program are:
Dori Butler brings her passion for environmental stewardship to Ayuda Legal. Dori is completing her second year at Georgia State, having graduated from the University of Georgia where she majored in journalism. She has taught environmental education programs, and now serves as an officer of the Environmental Law Society. A faculty member who worked on the response to Hurricane Katrina describes Dori as “exactly the type of lawyer-in-training that my colleagues and I would have welcomed to join us in the exhausting but deeply rewarding work of post-hurricane long-term community recovery.”
Andi Dorning is a member of the class of 2024 at the University of Cincinnati Law School. As a Fellow, she will work on social justice projects for Centro Para. Andi graduated summa cum laude from the University of Cincinnati and earned Phi Beta Kappa honors. She has done exemplary volunteer activities – interning for the Ohio Innocence Project and raising money to combat childhood cancer – and was a student government and sorority leader as an undergraduate. She has professional fluency in Spanish, and describes herself as “a passionate professional who owns responsibility, works with purpose, and lives to create an impact.”
The Foundation recently announced its 2022 Sustained Impact Racial Justice Fellowship, welcoming three law students to the program. Like the three Racial Justice Fellows, Andi and Dori competed for these opportunities at two levels: first, among their law school peers for their school’s nomination; and then among a group of nominated students from other Foundation Fellowship law schools.