Risha Foulkes 08 Awarded Prestigious Skadden Fellowship to Improve Workplace Protection for Low-Income Immigrant Women

Newark, NJ, January 9, 2008 Risha Foulkes, a third-year student at Rutgers School of LawNewark, has been named a 2008 Skadden Fellow by the Skadden Fellowship Foundation. Foulkes is one of only 35 law students from across the country selected as a Class of 2008 Fellow and the only one from a New Jersey law school. Her winning project is to work with the ACLU Womens Rights Project in New York to improve workplace health and safety protections for low-income immigrant women.

We are incredibly proud of Risha and thrilled that her profound dedication to public interest law and outstanding academic performance have been recognized by one of the countrys most competitive public interest fellowship programs, said Dean Stuart L. Deutsch. As we begin our Centennial, we are especially pleased by this affirmation of the commitment to educational excellence and public service that law students experience at Rutgers-Newark.

The Skadden Fellowship Foundation, which has been described as a legal Peace Corps by the Los Angeles Times, provides employment for two years at the graduating law students sponsoring organization. At the ACLU Womens Rights Project, Foulkes will engage in administrative advocacy, litigation, education, and training to protect the health and safety of immigrant women working in agricultural and nail salon jobs in New York and New Jersey.

Foulkes received her B.A. with honors from the University of Chicago and her masters degree with honors from the University of Cambridge, England. She has focused her employment and volunteer experiences on meeting the needs of immigrant women. At Rutgers, she is the recipient of a Deans Merit Scholarship, an Eagleton Fellowship in Politics and Government, and a Peggy Browning Fund Fellowship. She has been an editor of the Rutgers Race and the Law Review, president of Law Students for Choice, and is co-founder of the Human Rights Forum.