Fellowships

Jenai Alford is a 2023 graduate of Southwestern Law School where she participated in Black Law Students Association, Women’s Law Association, the Community Lawyering Clinic, and Overarching Reproductive Law Project to help protect attorney’s who work in reproductive rights. Through her work in law school, Jenai developed a need to change and protect others less fortunate. Jenai also has a cat, Murder Mittens.

Isa joined Inner City Law Center as a Housing Justice Fellow in 2023. In law school, she represented tenants facing eviction and brought affirmative cases against landlords as a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. She supported local tenant organizing by leading Project No One Leaves, a cross-university student group that canvasses buildings to inform tenants of their rights and connect them to local organizers. She also represented clients in criminal hearings with the Harvard Defenders and was a member of the Harvard Black Law Students Association.

During her law school summers, Isa was a Movement Law Intern at the Detroit Justice Center and a law clerk at the Legal Aid Society of Hawai’i. Prior to going to law school, Isa worked in California’s family court system assisting self-represented litigants, and before that focused on environmental justice work. She holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.S. and M.S. in Earth Systems from Stanford University.

Jimi (he/him) joined Inner City Law Center (ICLC) as a Housing Justice Fellow in September 2024. At law school, Jimi represented clients in a hearing against the United States in front of the Inter American Commission on Human Rights, worked with unionized laborers in a variety of industries across Los Angeles as a clinical student for UNITE-HERE Local 11, worked on several unionization campaigns as a legal intern at Bush Gottlieb, and was a founding member and chair for the UCLA chapter of the People’s Parity Project. Jimi was also a legal intern at ICLC during his first summer at law school. Jimi is passionate about client-centered, grassroots lawyering that empowers the working class, and views housing rights as fundamental to the fight for worker power. Jimi holds a J.D. from UCLA School of Law and a B.S. from West Point. Jimi and his wife Ida have a cat, Bobby McGee, and a dwarf lionhead rabbit, Iggy Hop.

Arnold J. Esqueda (he/him) is a recent J.D. graduate from Golden Gate University School of Law, where he earned a Litigation Certification and was an active member of the Moot Court Board. Arnold has a strong commitment to social justice, developed through his work at Centro Legal de la Raza and internships with the San Francisco District Attorney and Public Defender’s offices. His passion for housing justice and tenant advocacy led him to join Inner City Law Center as a Housing Justice Fellow. Arnold is dedicated to using his legal skills to protect the rights of vulnerable communities and combat housing instability in Los Angeles.

Metta Girma is a Housing Justice Fellow at Inner City Law Center. While in law school, Metta tackled juvenile justice issues by participating in the Race & Justice Clinic and handled housing and family law cases through the Moderate Means Program. She interned at Columbia Legal Services’s Ending Mass Incarceration unit during her second summer. Metta has also interned at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and Legal Services NYC, assisting with asylum cases and later volunteering at the Texan border to work with unaccompanied minors. She completed a judicial externship during her third year for the Central District of California. In her free time, Metta likes to play tennis, dance and spend time at the beach. Metta holds a B.A. in Law, Societies, and Justice from the University of Washington. She also received her J.D. from the University of Washington and was a recipient of the Gates Public Service Law Scholarship.

Jenna Karvunidis is a 2023 graduate of Southwestern Law School where she was President of the Environmental Law Society and Co-President of the Women’s Law Association. She is a founding board member of the Overarching Reproductive Law Project that has had success in changing the State Bar of California’s rules of professional conduct to protect attorneys who work in reproductive rights. Her law review note was selected for publication in Volume 53 of the Southwestern Law Review. She and her husband Niko have three daughters and a naughty dog named Fritz.

Joseph (he/him) joined Inner City Law Center as a Community Partnership and Housing Justice Fellow in September 2023. Passionate about grassroots and community-based lawyering, Joseph spent his summers in law school working with attorneys and community organizers, first with Public Counsel’s Community Development Project, and then with the Los Angeles Center for Community Law and Action (LACCLA). Joseph holds a B.A. from Duke University and a J.D. from UCLA School of Law, with concentrations in Public Interest Law/Policy and Critical Race Studies.

Sevitha joined Inner City Law in 2023 as a legal fellow in the Tenant Defense Project. She received her B.A. from the University of Southern California in 2018 and her J.D. from Boston University School of Law in 2023. During law school, Sevitha worked with the BU Criminal Law Clinic as a 3:03 Student Attorney and represented clients going through the criminal legal system. She also served as an editor on the International Law Journal and as president of the Public Interest Law Society. She spent her 1L summer as a judicial intern in the Eastern District of New York and her 2L summer as an intern at an immigration non-profit in Boston.

Herbert Martinez joined Inner City Law Center as a Fellow in September 2023. Hebert received his B.S. in Biology and a minor in Environmental Science from the College of William and Mary in 2016 and a J.D. from Southwestern Law School in 2023. While in law school, he participated in Southwestern’s Community Lawyering Clinic where he helped CSUN students navigate legal issues ranging from housing to immigration. He also externed at various public interest entities such as the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and Housing Rights Center. He is committed to a career in public service and representing those who would not have access to legal services.

Roxana Martinez Lopez was raised in a low-income Indigenous Oaxacan community in Koreatown, Los Angeles, where her experiences shaped her commitment to advocating for marginalized communities and her understanding of the challenges related to access to opportunity and legal resources. Roxana attended Southwestern Law School’s Part-Time Evening Program while managing a full-time job throughout her four years there. Before law school, she earned a B.A. in Political Science and Chicana/o Studies and a Minor in Labor and Workplace Studies from UCLA. Roxana’s professional journey includes labor union community organizing, immigration law, workers’ rights, and education. At Southwestern Law School, she remained committed to supporting low-income communities through various opportunities. Her work in Southwestern’s Eviction Defense Clinic sparked her desire to learn more about housing rights.

Derrick is a 2023 graduate of UC Law San Francisco(formerly UC Hastings) and joined ICLC’s Tenant Defense Project as a Housing Justice Fellow. During law school, Derrick externed at the Legal Assistance to the Elderly in the bay area assisting individuals and families going through the eviction process. He spent his 1L summer at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles assisting individuals gain access to SSI and SSDI benefits. In his 2L summer, Derrick worked at the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office assisting in indigent criminal defense. Derrick holds a BA in Philosophy from UC Berkeley and a JD from UCLaw San Francisco.

Meena Morar joined Inner City Law Center as a Housing Justice Fellow in September 2024 after graduating with their J.D. from UC Davis School of Law. While in law school, Meena served as a co-director for both the Lambda Law Students Association and Gender and Name Change Project with a passion to build queer community and promote radical trans joy. Meena has also interned at Legal Services of Northern California, East Bay Community Law Center, and Alameda County Public Defender’s Office in the Sacramento/Bay Area. At their core, Meena believes that community organizing and holistic care are the only ways to be a good advocate. Prior to law school, Meena received their B.A. in American Studies with a minor in Journalism from Georgetown University in 2021. In their free time, Meena loves to watch the sunset and get over invested in tv characters’ lives.

María joined Inner City Law Center in September 2024 as a Housing Justice fellow. María was inspired to assist underserved communities by pursuing a career in the legal field because her family experienced housing insecurity, immigration services fraud, and navigated the process of obtaining a U-Visa. They obtained a J.D. from Loyola Law School in 2023, and as a Public Interest Fellow formed part of the Genocide Justice Clinic, the Shriver Landlord/Tenant Clinic, and were a founding member of the Homeless Rights Law Society. As a 3L, María was featured in The Seventies: A Breakthrough Decade for LGBT Rights (Thomas F. Coleman ed., 2022), where they wrote a chapter titled “The Emergence of Nonbinary, Transgender, and Students of Color as LGBT Activists.” María also received the G. Clayton Fatheree IV Disability Rights Scholarship in Spring 2023 for their publication in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review titled “Overprotected but Unrepresented: An Argument for Mandatory Appointment of Counsel and Against Automatic General Conservatorships in California.” Prior to law school, María graduated from Cal Poly Pomona in 2016 with a B.A. in Gender, Ethnic, and Multicultural Studies.

Adriana Perera (she/her) joined Inner City Law as a Housing Justice Fellow. She graduated from UCI Law in 2024 as a public service scholar and received her B.A. in Psychology from UCI. During law school, Adriana focused on serving vulnerable populations through the Workers, Law, and Organizing Clinic, as well as various pro bono projects in housing, employment, reentry, and immigration. Adriana spent her 1L summer as a special education legal advocate and her 2L summer as a law clerk for Public Law Center’s Community Organizations Project.

Emma Quinn joined Inner City Law Center as a Housing Justice Fellow in September 2024. While in law school, Emma deepened her commitment to housing justice and civil rights advocacy through clerkships at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, the Law Office of Carol A. Sobel, and Schonbrun Seplow Harris Hoffman & Zeldes, LLP. She also participated in Loyola Law School’s Civil Rights Litigation Practicum and Homeless Rights Advocacy Practicum. Through the latter, she had the opportunity to collaborate with the ACLU of Southern California’s Dignity for All Project, contributing to a white paper advocating for a constitutional amendment to establish housing as a fundamental human right in California. Additionally, Emma was a production editor on the Entertainment Law Review, and an active member of the Public Interest Law Foundation. Emma earned her J.D. from Loyola Law School, and her B.A. from Framingham State University in Massachusetts.

Emerging from a grass-root student activist praxis, Michala pursued law school as a Public Interest Scholar to organize for the legal empowerment of our most vulnerable communities. Throughout her law school tenure, Michala worked abroad in Japan as in-house counsel for a female-owned startup building infrastructure for Japanese female entrepreneurs and served on California’s Reparation Task Force conducting legal research in collaboration with the California Department of Justice. Michala also participated in her law school’s Youth Justice Education Clinic (YJEC) representing system-involved youth pursuant to the federal IDEA and California Education Code. Michala worked as a constitutional law research assistant critically analyzing the recent affirmative action case law and served as the inaugural Principal Articles Editor for the Loyola Interdisciplinary Journal of Public Interest Law (LIJPIL). Clerking in the housing department at the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office kindled Michala’s interest in continuing to work on housing policy post-graduation. Michala obtained her BA with a concentration in Black Studies at Soka University of America and her J.D. at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. Michala joined Inner City Law Center in September 2024 as a Housing Justice Fellow.

Pavan received his BA from San Francisco State University in 2019 and graduated from the University of Oregon School of Law in 2024. Being born and raised in Los Angeles, he went to law school with the mindset to obtain the skills needed to fight for underserved communities that he had seen growing up. During law school, he assisted in the creation of a law school journal called Advancing Discourses on Inequity and Society (A-DIS) which aims at enhancing minority voices in legal discourse. He also served as Vice President of the Student Bar Association, Co-Director of the Asian Pacific American Law Student Association, and Co-Director of the National Lawyers Guild. He also spent his summers interning with the Inner City Law Center and the Oregon Law Center which had approaches that focused on combating the problems that homelessness faced within those communities.

Ishvaku joins Inner City Law Center as an Equal Justice Works Fellow. Through his fellowship project, Ishvaku will work to advance economic justice in Los Angeles by advocating for unhoused individuals who lack identification through an in-person clinic, direct representation, policy advocacy, and impact litigation. Having grown up in Los Angeles County as the child of immigrants, Ishvaku’s commitment to economic justice stems from his family’s experience with economic insecurity. Ishvaku’s prior legal experience involves working for the ACLU of Southern California’s Economic Justice Team, Berkeley Law’s Policy Advocacy Clinic, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. While at the ACLU SoCal, Ishvaku worked on litigation involving how the rights to due process and equal protection under the California Constitution protect indigent persons against the imposition offines and fees. Ishvaku studied Political Science with a focus on international relations and political theory at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating with distinction. He later earned his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, receiving a certificate of specialization in Public Interest and Social Justice.

Annie joined Inner City Law Center as a housing Justice fellow in September 2024. After working in environmental justice law, local campaigns and legislative offices in San Francisco during law school, she realized that stable housing is a crucial prerequisite to achieving justice in other spaces. At the legal aid of Sonoma county, Annie worked on a variety of eviction litigation cases that dealt with illegal lockouts, invalid notices, and warranty of habitability breaches. As an undergraduate, she studied sustainable food systems before moving to Basque Country to teach English full time. In her free time, you can find Annie doing her friends’ nails as an uncertified nail technician, or at her local flea market.

Nathan (he/him) joined ICLC as a Housing Justice Fellow in 2024 after graduating from the University of California, Irvine School of Law. While in law school, he worked on environmental justice issues at the California Attorney General’s Office, Earthjustice, and the UCI Environmental Law Clinic. Nathan also worked pro bono, helping refugees with their humanitarian parole applications and working with communities in the fight for cleaner air. In his free time, he enjoys fishing and running with his dog, Zoe.

Zita Zeng joined Inner City Law Center as a Fellow in September 2024. Zita received her B.S. in Applied Math and a B.A. in Audio Music Engineering from University of Rochester, where she graduated in 2019. During her academic pursuits at Suffolk University Law School, she served as a judicial intern for the Honorable Judith G. Dein at the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts in 2022. Additionally, Zita contributed to the Suffolk University Health Law Clinic from 2023 – 2024, where she assisted parents in navigating the complexities of guardianship for their incapacitated adult children.