Meet our Prelaw Resident Tutors:

Susannah Tobin, Committee Co-Chair	This is my fourth year in Leverett and my eighth on Harvard's campus. I look forward to living and working with you all, and especially with those of you interested in applying to law school--I co-chair the PreLaw Committee along with Jessica Budnitz--or interested in studying classics (my old concentration). I also serve as one of the House Committee Tutors, along with Paul Nguyen and Nick Vines, so I'm always happy to hear suggestions about how HoCo can help improve House life and what songs to add to the 80s dance playlist. Before becoming a Leverite, I graduated from Lowell House in June 2000 with a degree in Classics. As an undergraduate I spent a good many of my waking hours at The Crimson, where I wrote for the editorial page and argued over our daily staff positions on issues ranging from the serious (presidential impeachment) to the not-so-serious (more fro-yo in Annenberg!). When not at 14 Plympton, I did read Greek and Latin and always wanted more time for my concentration. I got my wish when a Harvard fellowship kindly sent me to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where I took a master's degree in Classics with a thesis on Ovid's poetry. I loved England (and am happy to discuss everything from the mores of British University life to Pete Sampras's serve at Wimbledon) and spent some memorable weeks traveling in Europe, but Boston is home, so I'm back. All that arguing at The Crimson stuck with me, not to mention a passion for First Amendment rights, so I went to law school and graduated in June 2004. I spent the summer after my first year working on free speech issues at the ACLU of Massachusetts and the summer after my second year doing litigation work at a corporate law firm. Stop me sometime and ask me to try to reconcile these two very different legal experiences. This year, I'll be working at the Federal Courthouse in Boston (overlooking the Harbor) as a law clerk to a trial judge, on my way to figuring out what I want to be when I grow up. I especially enjoy conversations about politics, history, sports (particularly the tragic comedy known as the Red Sox) and even the latest episodes of The West Wing and The Practice, otherwise now known as Boston Legal.
Jessica Budnitz, Committee Co-Chair	I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, went to college in North Carolina, and eventually made my way up to Massachusetts for law school. I work at a new child-focused center at Harvard Law School called the Child Advocacy Program (CAP). We provide Harvard Law School students the opportunity to study and apply innovative lawyering strategies to the area of children's rights. Before CAP, I founded Juvenile Justice Partners, a child-focused legal clinic, which trained Harvard Law School students represented indigent juveniles in Cambridge. Prior to JJP, I served as a law clerk to judges in juvenile courts in Massachusetts. I also worked at The Civil Rights Project at Harvard (studying the relationship between delinquency and education) and at the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project at Boston College Law School (studying girls in the delinquency system). I graduated from Harvard Law School in 2001 and Duke University in 1998. I have been a tutor at Leverett for several years and feel lucky to be a part of such a great community. I've really enjoyed getting to know you and look forward to hearing how you are spending your time this year. In addition to serving as a prelaw tutor, I work on HAND (public service), Race Relations, and once in a while, intramural sports. If you're interested in law school, juvenile justice and children's rights, starting a non-profit, or Atlanta, I'd love to talk to you!
Galit Sarfaty	I'm so happy to be back in Cambridge as a tutor, with my new (and wonderful!) husband Adam. I attended Harvard as an undergraduate and filled my days hanging out at the Lampoon castle and shaking hands with important people at the IOP. While living on a native reservation in Canada for my senior thesis research, I developed a passion for indigenous rights advocacy. After graduating from Harvard, I decided to combine my interest in studying indigenous cultures and human rights with my desire to do international development policy work. So I became a professional student and have spent the last six years reading what I love, waking up late, and watching my friends make 10 times more money. I first spent two years at the University of Chicago starting a Ph.D. in anthropology, and exploring the city's amazing jazz scene every chance I could get. I then took a leave of absence to attend law school at Yale, where I graduated in 2005. (Of course, I still root for Harvard at The Game.) An internship at the World Bank gave me an idea for my Ph.D. dissertation: an ethnographic study of the Bank's institutional culture and the role of human rights in decisionmaking. Over the past year, I conducted interviews of staff at the Bank's headquarters in Washington, DC. While I begin writing up my dissertation this year, I will also be a graduate fellow at Harvard's Center for Ethics and a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School's Human Rights Program.
Ada Sheng	I am very happy to make my debut this year as a pre-law resident tutor! I look forward to meeting everyone and helping out with any law or life related questions and activities! A little background about myself: I hail from Princeton, NJ, although I have spent the last five years here in Boston. I graduated from both Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government in 2005 and am now midway through a clerkship with a federal district judge located in Boston. I attended college not far away in a little city called New Haven, after which I joined the Peace Corps and was shipped off to Nicaragua for two and a half years. My great loves in life are traveling (I've been to over 20 countries, so ask me if you're headed abroad and I may have some tips!), movies of any variety (the good, the trashy, and the ridiculous), choral music, Slavic folk music, violin, Ultimate frisbee, eating anything and everything, celebrity gossip, and just hanging out in general...oh, and Brad, my better half and fiance, who will also be residing with me in F-47! We hope to add a cat and dog to our bunch as well, so please drop by to say hello!

Meet our Allston Burr Resident Dean & Assistant to the Resident Dean:

Catherine Shapiro, Allston Burr Resident Dean

Born in Pittsburgh and raised in Texas, I am happily transplanted in New England, although I remain a Steeler fan and a Texas partisan. I am delighted to be at Harvard and at Leverett in particular. My son Robert, my cats (Lorenzo, Tygmalion, Stella, and Olivia) and I are happily ensconced on the eleventh floor of T-Tower, and Robert and I - not the cats! - maintain a strong presence at the sandbox. I was a Political Science and Economics double major at Rice, then moved to California to get my PhD in Political Science at Stanford. Along the way, I interned for two members of Congress, worked at OEF International (an organization that helped Third World women advocate for themselves), and consulted for Emily's List. For almost ten years I was in the Government Department at Dartmouth College, teaching courses including Introduction to American Government, Congress, and Leadership in Politics. I worked with student groups at the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and led the Dartmouth in Washington, DC Program. My interests outside of political science include reading fiction - comedies of manners, children's books, science fiction, and mysteries for the most part; rock climbing; music of almost all kinds; and movies from the sublime to the ridiculous. I am a terrible athlete and an indifferent musician, but a great spectator, so if you are competing or performing I hope you will let me know. Please feel free to come and talk, whether in the House office, around a meal in the Dining Hall, at the sandbox, or at home in F-110. I am truly interested in how you are doing, your triumphs as well as your tragedies (most of us have some of both in our college years).

Maura Tierney, Assistant to the Resident Dean

In addition to my exciting life as the Assistant to the Resident Dean, I am an artist and the mother of my ten year old son, Sullivan - who makes an appearance here from time to time. I aim to be helpful in all things administrative here at Leverett including but not limited to; recommendation letters, waiver forms, cross registration, and other such topics. I have been at Harvard for a number of years now and know of many resources.

Meet our Nonresident Prelaw Tutors:

Robert Alcala	I am a 2004 graduate of Harvard Law School and currently a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where I am writing a dissertation on the important educative function legal opinions perform in a democracy. This fall I am a teaching fellow in Michael Sandel's core course “Justice.” While in law school, I worked for a large international law firm in New York City. Before coming to Harvard, I taught philosophy at a foreign university. I also have teaching experience in a number of other educational institutions, including public elementary schools and Head Start. I went to Williams for college (with a year at Oxford) and grew up around New York City. Even though I have been a Massachusetts resident for longer than I can remember, I still cannot bring myself to root for the Red Sox. (I prefer the team from the Bronx.) Feel free to talk to me about careers in law or education, including university teaching and research; studying in a dual degree program; applying from abroad; or other less weighty topics.
Kerri-Ann Anderson	Hi, I am Kerri. I am from Kingston, Jamaica. I attended Yale University where I studied Political Science and International Studies and graduated in 2003. After graduating, I taught at The Park School of Baltimore, a small private elementary school, while studying for the LSAT and applying to law schools. I have completed my first year at HLS. This summer I worked at Perkins Coie as a summer associate in their Washington DC office. I also have past experience at the Bronx DA's office and New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. I look forward to speaking with people considering applying to law school. I gained some insights through my law school research and application process that I'm happy to share with any of you. Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions you might have.
Chris Drake	Hi! It's nice to cyber-meet you. My name's Chris Drake, and I'm one of the pre-law Non Resident Tutors at Leverett House. I was born and raised in San Francisco, California, and actually spent most of my 24 years on the West Coast before coming to Harvard to study law (except for a little traveling and a couple of "stints" in other places.. but more on that in a sec). I graduated from Stanford in 2003 with a BA in International Relations and a minor in Management Science & Engineering. My biggest extracurriculars at Stanford were radio sportscasting for the University radio station and playing music, mostly jazz and improvisational keyboards, and mostly solo, although I did play in a number of "impromptu" jazz ensembles and a hip-hop band. I studied in Italy for part of my junior year. After graduating, I kept working in radio, first at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. and then for the CBS Radio Network at their affiliate in San Francisco. I did a little traveling. Then I took the plunge and next thing I knew I was at HLS, where I am now wading through a sea of cases On the lighter side.. I'm what you might call easily enthused. I tend to laugh loudly and often, hopefully not to my own embarrassment, although that probably happens all the time and I'm so used to it that it doesn't bother me. I like all the cliche stuff like long walks on the beach, drinks at sunset, etc., but I'm also big into languages and cultures and geography and astronomy and lots of other random things (and when I say random, I swear it's about as random as you could think of, for the most part). As you can see, I also tend to be long-winded when I write, so I should probably stop now. But anywayz, thank you for putting up with my bio, which I hope was entertaining in at least some small measure. I hope you have a great day and/or a great night, depending on when you're reading this. And don't forget to smile! :-)
Hani Elias	My name is Hani Elias and I'm very much looking forward to helping you with the decision and application process for law school. I graduated in 2005 from the College with a degree in social studies. While at Harvard, I served on Eliot's House Committee and played a few IM sports here and there. I also co-founded CollegeCorps, a non-profit that supports undergraduate international work. I'm currently a joint JD/MPH student at Harvard Law School and Harvard School of Public Health. If you have any questions about law school, public health programs, joint-degree programs, or non-profit work, please don't hesitate to get in touch.
Joseph Fishman	If I look familiar, it's because it wasn't that long ago that I was still at Harvard (and Leverett), having graduated in 2005. If I do not look familiar, I would hope that that's at least in part due to the fact that my picture is still on file from my freshman year and I look a bit different now. I grew up in Newton and went to high school in Brookline, after which I deferred college and spent one year in Israel living in the Galilee. At Harvard I spent most of my time either on stage doing theater or in the a cappella scene. After graduating college, I spent a year in the University of Cambridge pursuing a master's in musicology and a diploma in Russian. Now I'm a 1L at HLS. I'm always happy to talk about how and why I decided to move from musicology to law--and why for me it wasn't as big a jump as you might think! I'm also particularly happy to speak with any of you about taking a year abroad after graduation, and about the particular ups and downs of applying to law school from outside the US. But feel free to pull up a chair in the dining hall and talk with me about anything from the latest Sox trade to where to find the best falafel outside the Middle East...
Mattias Geise	I graduated from Harvard College (and Leverett House) in 1999, with a degree in Government, and from Harvard Law School in 2005. (You can check out my facebook photo from freshmen year--1995--above. Hopefully, I look a bit older now.) I spent the year after graduation (1999-2000) on a Fulbright Fellowship in Sweden, studying public trust at the Stockholm Center for Organizational Research. In 2000, gainful employment drew me back to the U.S., where I worked as a management consultant for Bain & Company in its New York office for two years, before starting law school in 2002. I am now back at Bain and living in New York and would be very happy to talk law, business, fellowships or anything else you might be considering post Harvard.
Andy Knopp	I am a third-year student at the law school from Manhattan, Kansas (the Little Apple). I graduated from the University of Kansas in 2004 (that's KU, not UK) then went straight through. I worked at a firm in Kansas City after my first summer and a firm in Los Angeles after my second. You can often find me at the gym playing pick-up or intramural basketball, or in the Leverett Cafeteria taking full advantage of my weekly meal allowance. Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions about law school, the application process, law firms, or if you just want to sit down sometime over chicken tenders and tater tots and talk about life after college.
Sam Miller	Hello, everyone! I was a Leverite as an undergrad and am very excited to be back as a non-resident tutor in law. I graduated in 2002 with a degree in economics, and have spent the last two years getting a master's degree in economics at Oxford. I'm currently a first-year student at HLS, and am always happy to talk about law school, living abroad, the Sox, the Pats, or anything else!
Mike Pykosz	Mike is a new non-resident tutor.
Joel Schellhammer	After growing up down the road on Martha's Vineyard, I went to Hillsdale College in Michigan where I majored in East Asian Studies and History. I then spent a year trying to convince Japanese school children that English is useful, another writing a book on how conservative foundations have influenced the American conservative movement, and a third getting an M.Phil in Oriental Studies from Cambridge University. Now at HLS, I'm involved with the FederalistSociety, HLS GOP, a Senior Editor and Articles Board member for the JLPPubciting for JLPP, and a TA for Alan Dershowitz. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about law school or life in general.
Octavian Timaru	Hi everyone, I graduated from Harvard (Quincy House) in 2003 with an AB/SM in Computer Science and have been working in the software industry ever since. This year I made a (slight!) shift and am now a 1L at HLS. In case you're wondering about my “august” name, I'm originally from Romania , though I've now spent more than half of my life in Canada and the US . I'd be glad to talk to you about law, economics, technology, my experiences in the software industry, applying to law school or any other topics. Stop by when you see me in the dining hall or send me e-mail any time! Also, I'm a huge fan of soccer and would love to play on the house team, though unfortunately I can't guarantee much in the way of skills. But on the bright side, I promise to score at least as many goals for Leverett as I scored for Quincy in my college days.

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