Hofstra, Wilson awarded CFJI’s Fellowship for Transformative Advocacy
June 15, 2020 - Sal Guardiola II
UNM Law School alumnae Lily Hofstra and Denali Wilson were recently awarded the Corinne Wolfe Fellowship for Transformative Advocacy, through the UNM School of Law’s Child & Family Justice Initiative.
The two-year fellowship program, which began in 2017, is meant to increase the number of UNM Law graduates who work in community organizations pursuing justice and racial equity. The fellowship provides an opportunity for new lawyers to positively impact the social determinants of health and well-being of vulnerable children and families in New Mexico’s most underserved communities through legal advocacy and policy work.
Transformative Advocacy Fellows partner with a non-profit host organization in the state of New Mexico, and each fellowship must involve a new project that aims to eliminate racial disparities and improve the health or well-being of New Mexico’s most vulnerable children and families through legal advocacy and policy work/advocacy in tribal, state, or federal courts and governmental entities. The Corinne Wolfe Fellowships for Transformative Advocacy are funded by grants from the Robert T. Keeler Foundation and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.
Hofstra, who graduated from the UNM Law School in December 2019, will be working with Pegasus Legal Services for Children, where she worked as a law clerk while studying at UNM Law. In addition to presenting at several conferences on the topic of Challenging Behavior and Disenrollment in Early Childhood, Hofstra also worked on mental health monitoring at a youth treatment center through a partnership with Professor April Land and Disability Rights New Mexico during her time at the Law School.
Prior to law school, Hofstra attended the London School of Economics and Political Science where she
obtained a Master of Science, was a legal assistant at Coberly Law Office in Santa Fe, and interned for the Honorable Judge Michael E. Vigil in the First Judicial District Court of New Mexico.
Wilson, who graduated from the UNM School of Law this past May, will be working with Fathers Building Futures (FBF) through a partnership with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico (ACLU-NM). She is a recent recipient of the Raymond W. Schowers Prize for excellence in constitutional law writing, and in 2019, received the Equal Justice Works Regional Public Interest Award for the Southwest.
During her time at UNM Law, Wilson was a National Lawyers Guild Fellow providing direct legal services to immigrants detained in the Cibola County Correctional Center, was a seminar student in the New Mexico Innocence and Justice Project, and worked in Washington, D.C. for the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth. She also attended the Rebellious Lawyering Conference at Yale School of Law all three years attending the Law School.
