(Source: The Peggy Browning Fund)
The Peggy Browning Fund has awarded a 10-week summer fellowship to Cinthya Larios, a second-year student at The John Marshall Law School. She will spend the fellowship working at CASA de Maryland in Hyattsville, Md. The application process is highly competitive, and the award is a tribute to her outstanding qualifications.
In 2015, the Peggy Browning Fund will support nearly 80 public interest labor law fellowships nationwide. With more than 400 applicants from 150 participating law schools, securing a Peggy Browning Fellowship is not an easy task. Peggy Browning Fellows are distinguished students who have not only excelled in law school but who have also demonstrated their commitment to workers’ rights through their previous educational, work, volunteer and personal experiences. Cinthya Larios certainly fits this description.
Larios was born in Mexico and brought to the United States when she was 2 years old. As illegal immigrants, Larios and her family lived in fear of being deported but chose to take advantage of all the wonderful opportunities provided by this country for as long as they could by studying and working hard every day to better their situation.
Larios studied at Virginia Tech, where she received her B.S. with a concentration in Psychology, and used that degree while working at her first job out of college at the Hispanic Committee of Virginia. It was there that she made the decision to go to law school after witnessing countless day laborers being taken advantage of. While in law school, Larios’s focus originally was in immigration law, because she felt strongly that by helping the legal status of the day laborers she could help improve their daily lives. But after taking a human trafficking course and realizing the extent of labor trafficking that still exists in our country today, especially among marginalized populations like illegal immigrants, she felt the two were inextricable and so she chose to focus on both labor rights and immigration law issues.
The Peggy Browning Fund is a not-for-profit organization established in memory of Margaret A. Browning, a prominent union-side attorney who was a member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from 1994 until 1997. Peggy Browning Fellowships provide law students with unique, diverse and challenging work experiences fighting for social and economic justice. These experiences encourage and inspire students to pursue careers in public interest labor law.
To learn more about the Peggy Browning Fund, contact Mary Anne Moffa, Executive Director, by phone at 267-273-2992 or by email at mmoffa@peggybrowningfund.org, or visit www.peggybrowningfund.org.
