Harvard University

I stood over the dead loggerhead, blood crusting my surgical gloves and dark green streaks of bile from its punctured gallbladder drying on my khaki shorts. It was the fifth day of a five-week summer scholarship at the University of Chicago’s Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), and as I shuffled downwind of the massive creature, the pungent scent of its decomposition wafted toward me in the hot summer breeze. Aggressive flies buzzed around my head, occasionally pausing to land on the wad of plastic we had extracted from the loggerhead’s stomach. The plastic had likely caused a blockage somewhere, and the sea turtle had died of malnutrition. When the necropsy was finished, we discarded the remains in a shallow hole under a thicket of trees, and with the last shovel of sand over its permanent resting place, its death became just another data point among myriad others. Would it make a difference in the long, arduous battle against environmental pollution? Probably not. But that dead loggerhead was something of a personal tipping point for me.I have always loved the clean, carefully objective nature of scientific research, but when I returned to the US from my native XXXX to study biology, I began to understand that because of this objectivity, scientific data rarely produces an emotional effect. It is difficult to initiate change based on such a passive approach. My ecology professor used to lament that it was not science that would determine the fate of the environment, but politics. The deeper I delved into research, the more I agreed with her. Almost every day, I came across pieces of published research that were incorrectly cited as evidence for exaggerated conclusions and used, for example, as a rebuttal against climate change. Reality meant nothing when pitted against a provocative narrative. It was rather disillusioning at first, but I was never one to favor passivity. In an effort to better understand the issues, I began to look into the policy side of biological conservation. The opportunity at the MBL came at this juncture in my academic journey, and it was there that I received my final push to the path of law.After weeks of sea turtle biology and policy debates at the MBL, we held a mock symposium on fishing and bycatch regulations. Participants were exclusively STEM majors, so before the debate even began, everyone in the room was already heavily in favor of reducing commercial fishing. I was assigned the role of the Chair of the New Bedford Division of Marine Fisheries, and my objective was clear: to represent the wishes of my constituents, and my constituents wanted more time out on the sea. However, that meant an increase in accidental bycatch, which could hurt endangered marine populations and fill up the bycatch quota for commercial fishermen before the season ended.There were hundreds of pages of research data on novel technological innovations for bycatch reduction that I had to wade through, but with the help of my group, I was able to piece together a net replacement plan that just barely satisfied my constituents, the scientists, and the industry reps. Although the issue of widespread net replacement incentives for the commercial fishermen remained, there was no doubt that I enjoyed the mental stimulus of tackling this hypothetical challenge. I was able to use my science background to aid in brokering a compromise that would reduce the amount of damage done to the environment without endangering the livelihood of the people involved in the industry.By the end of the symposium, I knew that I wanted to bridge the gap between presenting scientific data correctly and effecting change in the policy world. Although there are many ways for me to advocate for change, I believe that only legal and legislative enforcements will have a widespread and lasting effect on the heavy polluters of the world. I want to combine my legal education and a solid foundation in the biological sciences to tackle the ever-growing slew of environmental challenges facing us in the twenty-first century.The night the symposium ended, we patrolled the beach for nesting females. As I walked beneath the stars, I thought of that sea turtle and of the repeating migration of my own life, from my birthplace in XXXX to my childhood in the US, back to XXXX and now the US again. With the guidance of the Earth’s magnetic fields, sea turtles are able to accurately return to their birthplace no matter how far they deviate, but I like to imagine that they, like me, do need to occasionally chart another course to get there. Standing on a beach in Woods Hole, thousands of miles from home, I knew that I was on the right path and ready to embark on a career in law.

On the morning of the 2004 presidential election, my sixth-grade teacher told me to watch out for John Kerry voters in the hallways because our school was a polling station. I nodded and went to the water fountain, thinking to myself that my parents were voting for John Kerry, and that as far as I could tell, they posed no risk to students. It was a familiar juxtaposition—the ideas at my dinner table in conflict with the dogmas I encountered elsewhere in my conservative Missourian community. This dissonance fostered my curiosity about issues of policy and politics. I wanted to figure out why the adults in my life couldn’t seem to agree.Earlier in 2004, Barack Obama’s now famous DNC keynote had inspired me to turn my interests into actions. Even at age twelve, I was moved by his ideas and motivated to work in public service. When Obama ran for president four years later, I heeded his call to get involved. I gave money I had made mowing lawns to my parents to donate to his campaign and taped Obama-Biden yard signs to my old Corolla, which earned it an egging and a run-in with silly string in my high school parking lot.While I knew in high school that I wanted to involve myself in public service, I wasn’t sure what shape that involvement would take until signs of the financial crisis—deserted strip malls and foreclosed homes—cropped up in my hometown. I was amazed by the disaster and shaken by the toll it took on my community. As I saw it, the crisis wasn’t about Wall Street, but about people losing their jobs, homes, and savings. I didn’t understand what Lehman Brothers had to do with the fact that my neighbor’s appliance store had to lay off most of its employees.Intent on understanding what had happened, I started reading up, inhaling books about financial crises and articles on mortgage-backed securities and rating agencies. Along the way, I also developed an affinity for the policymakers fighting the crisis. I admired how time and again these unknown bureaucrats struggled to choose the best among bad options, served as Congressional piñatas on Capitol Hill, and went back across the street to face the next disaster. I decided that I too wanted to work in financial regulation. I thought then and believe today that if I can help protect consumers and mitigate the downturns that force people from their jobs and homes, I will have done something worthwhile.Strange though it may seem, this decision led me to join Barclays as an investment banking analyst after college. While in a sense I was “joining the arsonists to become a fireman,” as one skeptical friend put it, banking gave me immediate experience working with the firms and people who had played key roles in the response to the financial crisis years before. I was initially worried that I would discover financial rules and regulations to be impotent platitudes, without the power to change the financial system, but my experience taught me the opposite. New regulations catalyzed many of the transactions on which I worked, from bank capital raises to divestitures aimed at de-risking. Ironically, becoming a banker made me even more of an idealist about the power of policy.I envisioned spending years in the industry before moving to a government role, and I left banking for private equity investing with that track in mind. When I began making get-out-the-vote calls on behalf of the Clinton presidential campaign, however, I realized that I needed to change my plans. I cared more about contacting voters, about the result of the election, and about its policy implications than anything I did at work. Although I’m grateful for what I’ve learned in the private sector, I don’t want to spend more time on the sidelines of the policy debates and decisions that matter to me.That’s why I am pursuing a J.D. I want to help shape the policies that will make the financial system more resilient and equitable, and to do so effectively, I need to understand the foundation upon which the financial system is built: the law. The post-crisis regulatory landscape is already in need of recalibration; large banks still pose systemic risks, and regulation lags even further behind in the non-bank world. Advances in financial technology, from online lending platforms to blockchain technology, are raising new questions about everything from capital and liquidity to smart contracts and financial privacy. Policymakers need to confront these issues proactively and pursue legal and regulatory frameworks that foster public trust while encouraging innovation. A J.D. will give me the training I need to be involved in this process. I don’t claim to have a revolutionary theory of financial crisis, but I do hope to be a part of preventing the next one.

Growing up, I felt that I existed in two different worlds. At home, I was influenced by my large, conservative Arizonan family, who shaped my values and understanding of the world. During middle school, my family moved, and I enrolled in a small, left-leaning school with an intense focus on globalism and diversity. I enjoyed being surrounded by people who challenged my beliefs, and I prided myself on my ability to dwell comfortably in both spaces.In 2015, American political reality disrupted the happy balance between my two worlds. The Republican presidential primary, in a gust of populism, was proposing ideas that I didn’t recognize and wouldn’t condone, like a hardline immigration stance, opposition to free trade, and a tolerance for harassment. I resented this populist wave for hijacking the party, and the voters who created it. I didn’t understand them, and I didn’t think I could.Despite my skepticism, I decided to make an attempt. As the founder of the Bowdoin College Political Union, a program that promotes substantive, inclusive conversations about policy and politics among students, I brought speakers with diverse ideologies to campus and hosted small group discussions with members of the College Democrats, the College Republicans, and students somewhere in between. In the winter of my senior year, I helped organize a summit that brought together students with a broad spectrum of views from dozens of universities throughout the eastern United States.As a resident assistant during the 2016 presidential election, I held open-door discussions for individuals from across the political spectrum and around the globe. Facilitating these discussions felt like a natural extension of my role on campus, and I learned not only that having space for open dialogue can ease tensions, but also that the absence of that space does not erase political difference. Instead, it creates feelings of isolation and fosters ignorance.But it was the death of a family member in early 2016 that helped me understand another perspective, namely the populist views beginning to overwhelm the Republican Party. After the death of my mother’s cousin from cancer, I called my second cousins, all three of whom are around my age, to offer my condolences. I was surprised to learn that none of them had finished high school. Instead, they had worked to help pay for their mother’s treatment. While I had been worrying about which summer internships to apply for, they were worried about maintaining their family home. In the past, I’d thought that their views on economic policy and immigration came from a place of ignorance or spite. I realized over the course of our conversation that I had no idea what it was like to not have a high school degree and compete for employment in a rural area where wages are low. For the first time, I was engaging with people in the demographic that was generating the populist wave that was sweeping the country. This conversation led me to expand my studies in politics and to think beyond the left-right spectrum to consider class and urban-rural divides within my own party. Ultimately, reconnecting with my extended family informed my decision to write my senior thesis on populist movements and why economics drives them. It also changed the way I thought about politics and its effect on people like my second cousins.After my college graduation, I took a job with a political and opposition research firm called XYZ in Washington, because I felt that my understanding of 2016’s populism was still lacking. XYZ gave me the opportunity to work with people from different parts of the Republican Party: both establishment operatives and grassroots operations. This enabled me to work within the framework of Republican politics that resembles my own, while being exposed to the perspectives of people working to represent people like my second cousins. My time at XYZ helped me see the power of the populist movement, but also understand the limitations of its proposed solutions, like a resurgence of manufacturing. Now that I have interacted with populist groups, I see that ultimately, the valid frustrations of many working-class Americans need to be addressed by empathetic leadership and challenging but necessary evaluations of policy in the areas of economics, education, and culture.I want to apply my passion for political discourse in law school and in my career as a lawyer. My passion for engaging with others will serve me well in the classroom and in a career at the intersection of law and politics. I hope to continue to make connections between people of diverse backgrounds and viewpoints and to engage in meaningful, bipartisan discourse.

One summer, when I was eight years old, I signed up to play Pop Warner Football for my hometown. After the calisthenics, scrimmages, and the rest of practice concluded in the midst of the sweltering early August sun, I would sprint thirty yards up a hill steep enough to go sledding down. I had to lose nine pounds in order to make weight for my junior pee-wee football team. I wanted nothing more than to be on the team, so it didn’t faze me that I was the only one running up and down the hill. A dirt path marked the grassy knoll from my countless trips up and down. I usually managed to hold back the tears just long enough until I got home. As an eight-year-old, this was the most difficult challenge I had ever been tasked with. But the next day, I would get down in a three-point stance and sprint up the hill under the red sky of the setting sun.When I finally made the team, I was elated; I had achieved a goal I often felt impossible in those moments of sweat and tears. The excitement was, nonetheless, short-lived. The other kids still called me “Corey the Cupcake,” a nickname I thought I’d left behind with the extra pounds. In every game of the season, my first playing football, I received my eight minimum plays and rode the bench the rest of the game. It was an unusually wet September, and I caught a cold a few times from standing there for two and a half hours in the nippy morning rain. I hated it, but I kept playing.I continued to play every fall through high school. My freshman year, during a varsity practice, I broke both the radius and ulna bones in my left arm and simultaneously dislocated my wrist, which required a plate and four screws to repair. To this day, I can’t help but flash back to that frigid November afternoon when I look at the five-inch scar on my left arm or when the breaking point is hit precisely. Sophomore year, I was introduced to a coach who frequently criticized me for “not being black enough,” or sometimes, contradictorily, for acting “too black.” I was even benched for my entire junior year for being unable to attend football camp over the summer.Why did I play football for eleven years? It might have been for the Friday nights in front of the school, as there was nothing more thrilling than making a crucial catch and hearing the whole town cheer. It might have been because I wanted to fit in with my athletic classmates. It might have been because I felt that I was improving after each catch, each hit, and each drill. But I believe, above all else, it was because I just don’t like to give up.My first job as a project assistant at a large law firm was somewhat similar to my experiences as a young football player; both required grit and determination to push through difficult circumstances. Late one evening, two days before Thanksgiving, my supervisor asked me to complete and organize the service of eighteen subpoenas for the following day. The partners and associates were so busy with internal politics—one of the head partners was leaving the firm—that no one was available to walk me through the process. I felt ridiculous when I Googled “How to fill out and serve a subpoena,” but it was important to me that I complete the project properly.I am appreciative of the challenges that I faced as a project assistant. If it weren’t for those experiences, it is unlikely that I would have been fortunate enough to be hired by the Delaware Office of the Attorney General, where I work today. My job here has confirmed that law is exactly what I want to do. I realized this through several opportunities to draft written discovery. I loved fashioning objections to each individual request in a given set. Developing legitimate grounds for disputing discovery on its merits and intent was inspiring to me. I can’t wait to do this more and on a larger scale as an attorney.The steadfastness that I obtained as a young athlete defines who I am. I couldn’t see it at the time, but every day on which I gave something my best effort, whether it was on the practice field or in my tiny office on the twenty-seventh floor, I became a little bit stronger, a little bit wiser. I am confident that my perseverance and dedication will facilitate my future success, both in law school and afterwards.

When I was very young, I was diagnosed with a severe phonological disorder that hindered my ability to verbalize the most basic sounds that make up words. It didn’t take my parents long to notice that as other children my age began speaking and communicating with each other, I remained quiet. When I did speak, my words were mostly incomprehensible and seemed to lack any repetition. I was taken to numerous speech therapists, many of whom believed that I would never be able to communicate effectively with others.From the age of three until I was in seventh grade, I went to speech therapy twice a week. I also regularly practiced my speech outside of therapy, eventually improving to such an extent that I thought I was done with therapy forever. This, however, was short-lived. By tenth grade, I realized my impediment was back and was once again severely limiting my ability to articulate words. That was also the year my family moved from Vancouver, Canada to Little Rock, Arkansas, which complicated matters for me.I knew that my speech was preventing me from making new friends and participating in classroom discussions, but I resisted going back into therapy. I thought that a renewal of speech therapy would be like accepting defeat. It was a part of my life that had long passed. With college approaching, though, I was desperate not to continue stuttering words and slurring sentences. I knew that I would have to become more confident about my speech to make friends and to be the student I wanted to be. During the summer before my freshman year, I reluctantly decided to reenter speech therapy.I see now that this decision was anything but an acceptance of defeat. In fact, refusing to reenter therapy would have been a defeat. With my new therapist, I made significant strides and the quality of my speech improved greatly. Using the confidence that I built in therapy that summer, I pushed myself to meet new people and join extracurricular organizations when I entered college. In particular, I applied to and was accepted into a competitive freshman service leadership organization called Forward.The other members of Forward were incredibly outgoing, and many of them had been highly involved in their high school communities—two things I was not. I made a concerted effort to learn from those who were different from me. I was an active participant in discussions during meetings, utilizing my unique background to provide a different perspective. My peers not only understood me, but also cared about what I had to say. I even began taking on leadership roles in the program, such as directing a community service project to help the elderly. My time in Forward made it clear to me that my speech disorder wouldn’t be what held me back in college; as long as I made the effort, I could succeed. The confidence I gained led me to continue to push past the boundaries I had set for myself in high school, and has guided the bold approach I have taken to new challenges in college.When I first finished therapy in seventh grade, I pretended that I had never had a speech disorder in the first place. Having recently finished therapy again, I can accept that my speech disorder has shaped the person I am today. In many ways, it has had a positive effect on me. My struggle to communicate, for example, has made me a better listener. My inability to ask questions has forced me to engage with problems on a deeper level, which has led me to develop a methodical approach to reasoning. I believe these skills will help me succeed in law school, and they are part of what motivates me to apply in the first place. Having struggled for so long to speak up for myself, I look forward to the day when I can speak up for others.

“Ting hua!” I heard it when I scalded my fingers reaching above the kitchen counter to grab at a steaming slice of pork belly before it was served; I heard it when I hid little Twix bars underneath the bags of Chinese broccoli in the grocery store shopping cart; I heard it when I brought sticks back home to swing perilously close to the ceiling fan. Literally translated, “ting hua” means “hear my words.” Its true meaning, though, is closer to “listen to what I mean.” Although the phrase was nearly ubiquitous in my childhood, that distinction—between hearing and listening—did not become clear for me until much later in life.That childhood began in Shanghai, where I was born, and continued in Southern California, where we moved shortly after I turned four. Some things stayed the same in the US. We still ate my mom’s chive dumplings at the dinner table. On New Year’s, I could still look forward to a red envelope with a few dollars’ worth of pocket money. But other things changed. I stopped learning Chinese, and my parents never became proficient in English. Slowly, so slowly I almost didn’t realize, it became harder and harder for me to communicate with them.Because I didn’t feel like I could talk to them, I could never resist opening my mouth with others. I talked to good friends about Yu-Gi-Oh, to not-so-good friends about Pokemon, and to absolute strangers about PB&J, the Simpsons, and why golden retriever puppies were the best dogs ever. Even alone, I talked to my pet turtle Snorkel and tried out different war cries—you know, in case I woke up one morning as a mouse in Brian Jacques’s Redwall.The way I communicated with my parents didn’t change until I came back for Thanksgiving my freshman year of college. I was writing for the school newspaper—a weekly column on politics. I had written an article in support of gay marriage. My parents had asked me about it, and in the way I was wont to do, I answered briefly before moving on to talk about my friends and my floor and my classes.While I was brushing my teeth that night, my dad came into the restroom. He stood in the doorway and said, “Hey. I read the article you wrote about gay marriage… you should be careful saying things like that.”His words—you should be careful saying things like that—sounded to me like homophobia. I knew that in China, same-sex relationships were illegal, stigmatized, banned, so I thought I understood where my dad was coming from, even though I also thought it was bigotry. I was about to brush him off, to accept that we had different views, but when I looked up, I didn’t see the judgment I was expecting. In the way he stood slightly hunched in the doorway, in the way he touched his chin, in the way his eyebrows drew together, I saw love. So I swallowed down “don’t worry about it” and asked what he meant. He told me about a cousin of his, someone I would have called Uncle, who was expelled from his school and sent to the countryside for his political comments. In that moment, I realized that my dad wasn’t concerned about my politics—he was concerned about me. Had I not stopped to listen, rather than just to hear, I would not have understood that. I would not have known why he told me to be careful.Although I still enjoy talking to other people about PB&J sandwiches, I have learned to listen, to actively engage with my parents when we communicate. More importantly, whether I’m interviewing witnesses on the stand in mock trial, resolving disagreements between friends, or sitting in a chair while teachers and professors give me advice, I’ve made an effort to remember those words my mom has spoken since I was a toddler: “ting hua.”

Each Thursday, I volunteer at the Oklahoma County CARE Center as a play assistant. I greet children who experienced abuse and play with them before their forensic interview. I comfort guardians while the interview is taking place and welcome kids back to the playroom when they are done. Before leaving, I give each child a “Brave Pack” filled with stuffed animals, coloring books, and fidget spinners. Playing with children at the CARE Center is the first step to providing healing resources to survivors of abuse.My first emergency case involved three housing-insecure children. Law enforcement agents brought them to the CARE Center after abuse was discovered. I introduced myself and we began playing with Barbies. After several hours of playing, the oldest child, a teenager, asked if I could read. She explained that she couldn’t, having never attended school. She requested that I read Where the Wild Things Are out loud. She was thrilled to hear a story, and I was happy to provide temporary comfort. This small moment established trust, empowering her to recount her experience during the forensic interview.Children involved in the prosecution of abuse are often frightened and overwhelmed, but the resources provided at the CARE Center are designed to be comforting. Working with children at this stage of their legal journey has solidified my desire to defend the rights of vulnerable populations. After graduating from law school, I intend to serve as legal counsel for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. As an attorney, I hope to provide adequate representation to clients while prioritizing their mental well-being and safety for the duration of the trial.Many children who come to the CARE Center are food insecure, lack stable housing, or are in the foster care system. Abusers often are not held accountable, as attorneys are expensive and inaccessible to many. Representing children, undocumented individuals, and low income clients in the nonprofit sector, I hope to improve attorney access for survivors of abuse. It is my goal to contribute to the broad advancement of gender justice. As my career progresses, I intend to represent clients whose civil rights and civil liberties have been violated on the basis of their gender or sexual orientation. By advocating for clients whose rights have been violated, I will challenge discriminatory policies in court. I hope to protect access to reproductive healthcare, expand state and federal civil rights laws, and address gender discrimination in the workplace.Volunteering at the CARE Center, I have gained important skills for working with survivors of domestic violence. Establishing trust requires empathy, compassion, and attentive listening. Throughout my legal career, I plan to use these skills to be an effective lawyer in service of others.

I moved to Graz, Austria as a foreign exchange student in January 2022. Two weeks after my arrival, I sat in a train compartment with a Ukrainian family fleeing the Russian invasion. The family’s travel itinerary was written in German, a language foreign to them.Familiar with the overwhelming nature of Austrian transportation, I offered to help. I translated the German instructions into English, explained the route, and wrote down important German words to know when traveling.After we clarified the itinerary, the family showed me photos of their home in Ukraine, and I told them about my life in Oklahoma. They informed me of their plans to relocate, and we compared the reception of refugees in Austria to that of the United States. We established an immediate connection as we all navigated a new country quite different from home. I was a student at the University of Graz, where I enrolled in courses within the Department of Law. In International Law, I analyzed the global response to the Russian invasion and studied the available legal remedies for human rights abuses. For my semester project, I presented on the role of international institutions in promoting human rights during times of conflict. Studying the relief provided by legal institutions solidified my choice to pursue a career in law.After returning home, I worked at an immigration law firm in Oklahoma City. I maintained the firm’s physical and digital files, assisted the staff attorneys, and wrote asylum, citizenship, and legal residency briefs. The first time I filed an asylum application, I had just started my position at the firm. My boss called while I was driving home to explain that a family of five was seeking asylum. They entered the country fifty-one weeks before contacting the firm, and to apply for asylum without proving extraordinary or changed circumstances, we needed to file the application in one week.With two of our staff attorneys on leave to study for the bar exam, I was responsible for the case. I met the family, recorded their story, and explained what the process entailed. I asked them to write affidavits, and we contacted their family members for letters of support. Over the next week, I completed the asylum application. USCIS will return a petition for any discrepancy, so I rigorously checked that the information was correct. I researched country conditions, communicated with a translator, and sifted through affidavits to write the brief detailing their credible fear of persecution. After giving it to my boss for review, the application was successfully filed before the one-year deadline. While at the firm, I managed several petitions under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). I filed the VAWA application for a client seeking legal residency in the United States independent of her husband. The client reported physical violence and emotional abuse, which was confirmed by medical records and a psychological evaluation. The client also disclosed her survival of an attempted kidnapping in her country of birth.Returning to the country was not an option, and neither was remaining with her abusive partner in the U.S. I asked her to provide evidence of abuse, and in the following weeks, I analyzed text messages, phone bills, and medical records to write the VAWA brief. I filed the petition, and I am hopeful that it will be approved within the year. The cases I handled at the firm were sensitive, but assisting clients as they found safety in the United States was rewarding. I developed an understanding of the law as an instrument for justice and protection of human rights. I seek a formal legal education so that I may better serve survivors of gender-based violence.

See with a critical eye. Question everything. Never accept anything simply because “that’s just the way things are.” These are the lessons of my past, my present, and my future.By the early 1980s, life for freethinkers in Iran was untenable. Ayatollah Khomeini, fearful of Westernized Iranians who questioned the authority of his newly formed theocracy, ruled with an iron fist. Dissenters were jailed, disappeared, or, like my father’s oldest brother, killed. As the Islamic Republic became increasingly powerful, government coercion forced the majority of Iranians to accept the new social and political order imposed by the ruthless regime. My parents, however, were defiant and unwilling to accept a life of fear and oppression. Given that my mother is Jewish and my father Muslim, they understood that Khomeini’s new regime would not recognize their marriage. Thus, they chose to leave their life in Iran behind and escape to a new world where they would have the opportunity to live free.My parents knew that starting over in the United States would not be easy. In Iran, they were well-educated people with postgraduate degrees. When they arrived in California in 1983, they encountered freedom, but it came at a substantial cost. They did not speak English and had no money. They also had two small infant children. To make ends meet my parents found work in whatever field they could; an architect became a gas station attendant and a university professor became a librarian. Having witnessed their sacrifice, I remember asking my father one day if he regretted leaving Iran. He chuckled and said, “No. Not at all. I would rather be a liberated gas station attendant than an oppressed architect.” My parents were willing to give up everything they had for a chance at freedom. At a young age, therefore, I too, became aware of the importance of standing up for your principles, no matter the cost.Through the lens of my parents’ experiences, I learned that standing up for what you believe does not guarantee justice. Rather, it often results in great suffering. It is not easy to right a wrong. In 2000, shortly after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, my mother was fired from her job as a librarian. It wasn’t that she couldn’t perform her job; she just didn’t fit in anymore. Her termination was clearly a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. But at the time, my family did not have the money to hire an attorney. In the end, she was unable to right this wrong. In 2001, I encountered a similar predicament when I was arrested and falsely accused of a crime I did not commit. With little financial resources, I was unable to spend the money needed to defend myself properly. Instead of clearing my name, I found myself accepting a plea bargain. These two experiences evoked a feeling of helplessness that I never wanted to feel again. It was just a short while later when I encountered yet another wrong. This time, however, I had the chance to do something about it.Growing up as an Iranian-American, I have always had a deep respect for tradition and it was UCLA’s tradition of excellence that drew me to Westwood. For decades, under the leadership of Coach John Wooden, UCLA’s men’s basketball program, symbolized this tradition. During my first two years at UCLA, however, the program had rapidly deteriorated under the leadership of head coach Steve Lavin.Game after game, coach Lavin justified losing with what became his favorite byline: “Our opponent played at a magical level.” To me, Lavin’s words translated to “that’s just the way things are.” Rather than taking responsibility for the team’s failure, Lavin blamed defeat on a paranormal performance by the opponent. Lavin’s reasoning implied nothing could be done differently to change the outcome. I disagreed. Progress comes through change, and if UCLA basketball was to improve, a change in leadership was needed.I was determined to restore the tradition of excellence to UCLA’s basketball program. To do so, I started a grassroots campaign to “Lose Lavin.” In the spring of 2002, I designed a “Lose Lavin” T-shirt and created a website called LoseLavin.com. The website allowed fans to express their outrage with Lavin by signing an online petition, posting comments, and most important, purchasing my “Lose Lavin” T-shirt, which served as a walking advertisement for the website. It was not long before my “Lose Lavin” T-shirts flooded Pauley Pavilion, and LoseLavin.com became the talk of almost every major sports radio show in Southern California. As the resistance mounted, the athletic department had little choice but to quell the uproar. On March 17, 2003, less than a year after the launch of LoseLavin.com, Steve Lavin was fired.When compared to the injustices the world faces today, my “Lose Lavin” campaign undoubtedly dealt with a trivial issue. Nevertheless, I learned an important lesson: One person can make a difference. I was just a lowly sophomore in a student body of 36,000, but I rallied the troops and I made a difference. I saw what I believed was an injustice at UCLA and I did something about it. My efforts were not in vain. In fact, just three years after Lavin’s dismissal, the UCLA men’s basketball team made it to the national championship game. Today, UCLA is the #1 ranked men’s college basketball team in the country. UCLA’s tradition of excellence has been restored.This triumph fueled my drive to be a reformer. Upon graduation, my mind turned back to Iran and problems more pressing than college basketball. Although I was only six months old when my parents fled the country, Iran has nevertheless had a profound impact on my life. Stories from relatives back in Iran constantly remind me of the harsh reality facing the Iranian people. These sad stories inspire me to want to make a difference, to bring about change. Today, Iran is experiencing vast levels of unemployment and underemployment - particularly among the youth. In my honors thesis, I learned that these devastating conditions are the result of the Islamic government’s oppressive economic policies. Researching my honors thesis taught me that jurisdiction in the wrong hands can serve as instruments for not only social and political oppression, but also economic oppression.During recent work on my newest venture, iAmerica Capital, I have seen a similar phenomenon here in the United States. Relaxed lending laws and an unprecedented period of low interest rates have driven an increase in personal consumption, even though personal income growth is the lowest it has been in decades. The high debt burden coupled with rising interest rates will likely result in a large number of loan defaults in the coming years. This trend combined with recently enacted tougher bankruptcy laws could spell real trouble for a large number of low-income American families. These new bankruptcy laws, by rebuffing individuals seeking debt relief, will make it far more difficult for underprivileged people to escape the cycle of poverty. With this and other injustices, like those seen in Iran, I am not one to accept the status quo or the hopeless pessimism of “that’s just the way things are.”My life experiences have taught me that the rule of law in the wrong hands can be a powerful tool of oppression. Oppression can only be overcome when people stand up, fight back and do something about it. I want to do something about it. Laws should protect and empower the less fortunate, rather than oppress them further. Today, I look at Iran and see history repeating itself. After eight years of empty promises by reformist President Mohammad Khatami, Iran has returned to the hard-line mentality of the Islamic Revolution. The current climate in Iran is a stark reminder of my parents’ experiences and all they endured to escape oppression. The difference now is I have the opportunity to do something about it. To this end, I seek to attain a legal education, which will provide me with the tools and legal training necessary to go forward and make a difference in this world. After all, jurisprudence is a field of study that is critical in nature, and that which is critical, by constantly challenging the status quo, always has the potential to be better.

At the time, I wasn’t sure of my answer: “I think a good manager knows he or she doesn’t have all the answers, but does know where to look for them.” I was twenty-three and applying for a position many people didn’t think I was ready for. I felt small. The question was, “What do you think makes a good manager?” Almost seven years later, I have learned from experience that leadership is all about finding answers to difficult questions. I have worked hard to develop this ability, and now I am seeking to use it at a higher level. I see law school as the chance to make that happen.I have been gainfully employed since I was fourteen and spent over ten years in leadership positions. Six of those years were spent managing a branch of a major national bookstore that had fifty employees and annual sales of $8 million. But those statistics don’t really tell you what I did. I answered questions. Questions such as: “Where can we find another fifteen thousand dollars in sales by tomorrow?” “Can I hire two new employees for the café?” “How can we get this employee to do his job better?” Some of my most fulfilling moments were walking through the store with a line of employees forming behind me, discussing each person’s questions and finding answers together. We’ve all had managers we listened to because we were required to, and ones we listened to because we were inspired to. When people responded to me as they did at the bookstore, it gave me hope that, at least occasionally, I was in the latter category. I look at the store now and find gratification at seeing employees I hired serving as effective leaders, and policies and procedures I established continuing to serve a new management team.During this time I also had the great pleasure of being a stepfather. For ten years, I helped raise a little girl from the age of seven. She was an incredibly accepting stepdaughter, but let me just say, if there are lessons in patience you do not learn as a manager, you will learn them as a parent. At the bookstore my contribution was important, but it was mainly limited to that store, or at most, that company. As a parent, I helped shape how another person experienced the world. Here, I didn’t just help her make decisions. I tried to teach her how to find the answers on her own. You raise this child and attempt to give her all the tools to prepare her for a life you cannot predict. Hopefully, if you did enough things right and not too many things wrong, her life will be limited only by her own desires and not her parents’ vision.Since that time, aided by several personal and professional changes, I decided to seek out a career in which I could apply my growing leadership skills toward a larger goal. That is what led me to give up my management position and return to school. The time I had spent in management led to a seven-year hiatus between starting and finishing my undergraduate degree. While that break may make me older and less fun than my peers, it has also given me a maturity that has served me well in my return to the university. Unlike many undergraduates, I know why I’m in school and I want to be here. I returned to school to find a forum in which I could use the leadership skills I have been developing toward a greater purpose, but I consciously did not limit my perception of what that forum might look like. I studied communication as a potential tool to effect change, and political science to be exposed to social issues that may need changing.It was in a law and religion class that I found greater focus. This class examined first amendment cases involving such issues as school prayer, state voucher use for private religious schools, and religious practice rights. In reading these cases, I identified with the legal process behind the decisions. It may be idealistic, but I began to see the law as a means of seeking social justice using analysis and reason rather than strategy and emotion, and this felt familiar to me. I saw a parallel between the legal reasoning process and what I had done as a manager for so many years. I have heard it described that constitutional law is the reverse of regulatory law. While regulatory law is written by the government to dictate what the people can and cannot do, constitutional law is written by the people to regulate what the government can and cannot do. I want to play a role in the formation of decisions regarding social justice issues. Working in constitutional law would allow me to apply the skills I developed as a leader toward this goal. Just as when I was a manager, my role would be to understand the legal questions and relevant policies, and work with others to find the best answers.At this early stage, I am drawn to the more intellectual pursuits of the law. I see myself potentially working as an appellate attorney or perhaps someday as a professor. However, as with my undergraduate schooling, I do not enter this with a specific idea of what I will do, for too specific a goal could narrow my latitude of exposure. I want to attend law school for the education, not the degree. As I study and work in the law I hope to find myself back in a familiar place—where I don’t know all the answers, but I do know where to look.

Tantalized by the sight of the finish line, my legs kicked into high gear as I reached the end of my first Sprint Triathlon to the cheers of onlookers on a hot August morning. Almost a year of training had finally culminated in two exhausting hours of swimming, biking, and running. Even though I competitively ran cross country for seven years, my nerves about this day somehow handily surpassed the nerves about any race I had run during those years. For all the months leading up to the event, I was consumed by a nauseating anxiety that I would fail to complete one of the legs of the race and have to forfeit. Yet I was no longer competing for my school’s team; it did not objectively matter how I fared in the race to anyone but myself. However, the growth I underwent to stand confidently on the morning of the race and accomplish this milestone has a far greater worth than any medal or trophy.Nine months prior to the race, I could barely swim one length of a pool, capable only of a survival-mode tread. As a child I churned through every swim instructor at my local pool, none of whom ended up succeeding in teaching me a proper freestyle stroke. When I returned home to Naperville after my graduation in December 2022, I was driven back to finish the work of those instructors. Wanting to apply myself to a genuine challenge, I committed to train for a triathlon given my lifelong aversion to swimming. My mom, an avid swimmer since childhood, patiently worked with me through the roadblocks of how to breathe properly and build up stamina for longer swims. The initial physical frustrations eventually gave way to aggressive jitters about the race itself— the fear that my heart would beat too fast and that my breath would escape me consumed my thoughts. In the face of every hurdle, she helped me dispel any doubt that I would not reach the triathlon swim distance of 375 meters. After about six months of incremental improvement, I went from struggling with 25 meters to regularly swimming a full mile.My training ramped up when I returned to Baltimore to begin my new job at the Office of the Public Defender (OPD) in the Felony Division. Although I highly enjoyed my summer internship and was enthusiastic to continue working there, the gravity of the job seemed out of my depth. In my volunteer work at various shelters throughout college, my and the clients’ worlds intersected only for a few hours per week. I subsequently developed an ambition to contribute more wholly to advancing justice and equity in the city. Working at the OPD has further illuminated the dimensions of advocacy that require an even deeper level of trust and understanding necessary to pursue this work as a livelihood. This was never more apparent to me than when I sat alongside an attorney who, when she left the courtroom following her client’s guilty plea, consoled her client’s grieving family and discussed his sentencing hearing that would follow, where he later received the maximum sentence allowed by the plea.The flexibility, tact, and empathy the attorney exhibited in her representation both inside and outside of the courtroom floored and inspired me. Sitting in the courtroom and hearing his sentence, my breath escaped me like it once had in the pool. It was clear that neither academic knowledge of the law nor a volunteer background would suffice in enduring repeated devastation and still needing to maintain my composure like she had. But just as in my triathlon training, I feel empowered to forgo what is comfortable and familiar in entering the legal practice through affirmation from my network of support. Through emotionally difficult cases and through technical considerations of how to employ the right case law or elicit the most beneficial testimony, the OPD’s attorneys have given me many opportunities for contemplating my own sensibilities as a future lawyer. In combination with the lessons learned in my years of volunteering and community engagement, I am piecing together the principles that will best contribute to my ultimate goal of being in service to others.I am now ready to embrace the new challenge of law school, this time with more resilience and an even stronger desire to excel. Having transformed moments of discomfort and defeat into fruitful strides, I am prepared to walk alongside clients in pursuit of their proper treatment and outcomes despite any obstacles. As a lawyer, I aim to bring the holistic perspective that has informed my volunteer work and employment to any clientele I serve. To become the most effective and tenacious advocate possible, I seek an environment where I can engage with people, places and ideas that will push me to think critically and contribute meaningfully. I eagerly await the chance to add a new node of fellow devoted students to my support network, hoping that we can be vulnerable about our lived struggles and assist one another in realizing our potential. At Harvard Law School, I know I will find the tools to continue my lifelong work in progress, steered by my determination and buttressed by those who surround me.