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Photo courtesy of
Lincoln Harris.
In early 2008, the Foundation awarded $5,000 to the Peter M. Cicchino Awards for Outstanding Advocacy in the Public Interest at American University's Washington College of Law (WCL). The Awards themselves were conferred in a ceremony on April 8, 2008 at WCL.
This year’s keynotes were delivered by Professors Darren Hutchenson and Professor Nancy Polikoff of American University Washington College of Law.
This year’s awards program focused on the members of legal community
who work to combat injustice in our society and attempt, as Peter
himself did, to inspire all of us to look beyond ourselves and work for the
benefit of others.
Awards were conferred on the following individuals:
Lindsay Jenkins (Current Washington College of Law Student):
Prior to law school, Ms. Jenkins was a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras and a development associate for Bay Area Legal Aid. At WCL, she has been an active leader in the Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and as a student attorney with the Immigrants’ Rights section of WCL’s International Human Rights Law Clinic, Ms. Jenkins has represented clients on issues of immigrant labor exploitation, trafficking and diplomatic immunity, both in domestic U.S. courts and the Inter-American Human Rights system. Ms. Jenkins also traveled to Geneva to participate in the 39th Session of the UN Committee Against Torture and to New Orleans as part of WCL’s alternative winter break.
Michael Kirkpatrick (Alumna or Alumnus Whose Work is Primarily In the United States):
Since 2004, Mr. Kirkpatrick has served as an attorney at the Public Citizen Litigation Group in Washington, DC, in which capacity he achieved a due process victory at the U.S. Supreme Court and a jury verdict for a plaintiff in a civil rights challenge to racial profiling by an airline in federal court in Massachusetts. Prior to his current position, Mr. Kirkpatrick served as a senior trial attorney with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and as a staff member of the Farm Worker Division of Texas Rural Legal Aid, where he litigated employment and civil rights cases on behalf of migrant workers.
Chin Kongnyuy Geraldine (Alumna or Alumnus Whose Work is Primarily
Outside the United States):
Ms. Chin is the founder and Executive Director of the Women Empowerment Institute Cameroon, a non-profit organization that promotes human rights and democracy in the northwest province of Cameroon. In 2005-06, Ms. Chin earned an LLM at WCL as a Fulbright Scholar. Prior to that, she worked at the Diocesan Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Church in Kumbo-Cameroon, designing and implementing human rights and peace-building initiatives, including election observation. She has also advocated successfully for debt relief for Cameroon. Additionally, Ms. Chin chaired the first Women’s Cooperative and Micro Finance Institute in Kumbo, which has over 11,000 members.
