Three Law Students Receive Peggy Browning Fellowships for Commitment to Workers' Rights

Excellent academic credentials and a demonstrated commitment to workers’ rights have won Rutgers School of Law-Newark’s Alana Miles ’16, Laura Schuman ’16, and Alvina Swati ’17 public interest labor law summer fellowships from the Peggy Browning Fund.

 

Alana Miles will work at the New York State United Teachers in New York City. “Interning at New York State United Teachers creates a perfect mesh for my interests,” says Miles. “I hope that this practical experience will expose me to issues that are at the forefront of labor and employment law.”

 

After receiving her B.A. cum laude from Syracuse University in sociology, psychology and African American studies, Miles enrolled at Columbia University Teachers College. She graduated with an M.A. in education policy and social analysis, which gave her the substantive basis for her legal aspirations. An internship after her 1L year with AFSCME  District Council 37 provided the opportunity to develop her research, writing and analytical skills and helped Miles realize her interest in labor and employment law. Miles is an associate editor of Rutgers Race and the Law Review, a parliamentarian for the Association of Black Law Students, and a member of the Labor and Employment Society.

 

Laura Schuman, a cum laude graduate of Connecticut College, will be the Peggy Browning Fellow at the Major League Baseball Players Association in New York City. Following  undergraduate studies in theater and music and jobs as director, stage manager and lighting designer,  she took an administrative assistant position with Actors’ Equity Association, the union representing actors and stage managers nationwide. It was there, she says, “that I first came to the realization of my love of labor and employment law through my work on arbitrations, contract negotiations, and the day-to-day plight of working professionals.”  

 

Inspired by the work, she decided to attend law school part-time, realizing that “I could continue zealously guarding workers’ rights during the day while simultaneously getting a legal education at night.” In addition to her Actors’ Equity position, Schuman also handles Equity members’ benefit clearance requests as national administrator for Theatre Authority, Inc. At the law school, she is associate editor for the Rutgers Law Journal.

 

Alvina Swati will be the Peggy Browning Fellow at the National Labor Relations Board, Region 4, in Philadelphia. Swati traces her interest in labor and employment law to participating as a Rutgers undergraduate in the Seton Hall Law School Summer Institute of Pre-Legal Studies. She presented moot court oral arguments on a case based on workplace sexual harassment and gained a new understanding of the vast disparities that exist in the workplace.

 

Swati received a B.A. in psychology and a minor in public health then earned an M.A. in labor and employment relations from the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations. As a master’s candidate, she assisted underrepresented and disadvantaged students as a program coordinator in the Rutgers Office for Diversity and Academic Success in the Sciences. Swati is co-chair of the law school’s Labor and Employment Society, junior coordinator for the STOP Violence Against Women Courtroom Advocacy Project, and an intern at Volunteer Lawyers for Justice Child Support Clinic.

 

More than 400 applicants from 150 law schools around the country applied for the nearly 80 10-week fellowships awarded by the Peggy Browning Fund. The Fund was established in memory of Margaret A. Browning, a prominent union-side attorney who was a member of the National Labor relations Board from 1994 – 1997.