Hometown: Ridge View Heights, Tacarigua, Trinidad and Tobago
Undergrad Institution: Swarthmore College ’03, B.A. Economics
Activities On Campus: Harvard Law Review, Harvard Black Law Students Association (BLSA), HLS Advocates for Human Rights, Africa Group (Co-Chair)

I originally started off being interested in international development, particularly in the areas of conflict resolution, transitional justice and post-conflict reconstruction, but by the time I left undergrad I wasn’t sure of what was the most effective route to take to get into this field.
In the meantime, after undergrad I worked in education policy research at the Urban Institute in D.C. and spent a lot of that time doing investigations--seeking advice from professors, co-workers, relatives, reading bios of people doing the type of work I was interested in to see what their qualifications were, having lunch with the various people to whom I was referred by the foregoing persons—to decide what to do next. My research led me to decide that a J.D. was the most practical and versatile degree to have, given my interests.
Choosing a law school was actually really difficult for me. I really wanted to be in New York and thought it was a better place for my international interests. But when I visited Harvard and met the unforgettable personalities in HBLSA, I felt so comfortable here. I loved the people I met, the environment felt familiar, it just clicked. My parents did not have a pro-Harvard preference at all. They just wanted me to make the right choice. My mother said, “at the end of the day, wherever you go, you have to feel at home.” So I chose what felt most like “home” to me and it was Harvard.

I think it’s been a great choice! Last year I worked at the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and plan to continue to work in Transitional Justice and move towards judicial reform in post-conflict societies and comparative law. I’m still not sure how it will all come together and exactly where I’ll end up working, but I’m pretty sure it will be good.