Amy Herrera (’12) is one of those amazing young people: she jogs, writes, and plays the cello in her spare time. That’s when she was not earning Baruch College credits in social justice and politics and amassing a GPA of 3.7. Or when she wasn’t volunteering for such organizations as the American Cancer Society, God’s Love We Deliver, or Rebuilding Together (in New Orleans).
At Baruch Herrera was a Provost Scholar, 2010 Max Berger Pre-Law Fellow, 2011 C.V. Starr Study Abroad Fellow, Young Latina Leadership Scholarship recipient, and Phi Eta Sigma National Honor Society member. As of May 2012, Herrera adds the Joel B. Zweibel Pre-Law Honors Award to her growing list of honors and accomplishments. She will be attending the University of Virginia School of Law in Fall 2012.
Herrera’s path to law school is a remarkable one. Growing up in Ecuador, she witnessed many injustices. “I saw children my age not walking to school but walking to work. I saw indigenous social movements block the roads to protest the systemic racism they faced. I saw images of the president of Ecuador escaping the country with garbage bags full of dollars,” she recalls. “I knew that I wanted to change this cycle of poverty and corruption, but I didn’t know how.”
The “how” started to come together in 1997, when Herrera and her family relocated to the U.S., seeking better treatment options for her brother, who had been diagnosed with autism. Going to school in the United States was transformative: “For example, I learned about how Thurgood Marshall used the system to enforce the right of all American children to an education. It was mind-blowing to think that the political framework of the U.S., as imperfect as it was, allowed for such monumental changes.”
In high school, she read Fauziya Kassindja’s Do They Hear You When You Cry?, a biography detailing the emotional and legal journey of a young woman seeking political asylum in the U.S. and the lawyer who took on her nearly impossible case. “After finishing this book, I knew that this is what I wanted to do—to change the world, not through protests and revolutions, but through the law.”
Her commitment to social justice was further strengthened during a “gap year” (between high school and college) volunteering-teaching in rural Zambia. “My experience there heightened my growing awareness of the lack of equality in the world,” she says, “and I became increasingly interested in using the legal system as a way to combat inequality and injustice worldwide.”
Helping Herrera get the legal education to advance her cause is Joel Zweibel (’55). Zweibel’s wife, Chrystine, established the prestigious annual Joel B. Zweibel Pre-Law Honors Award at Baruch College as a surprise present for her husband’s 70th birthday, eight years ago.
“I couldn’t be happier to have Amy Herrera chosen as the eighth recipient of the Joel B. Zweibel Pre-Law Scholarship,” says Zweibel, a retired senior partner of the law firm O’Melveny & Myers LLP and one of the original alumni who founded Baruch’s Executives On Campus (EOC) program. “Her academic record and public interest work have been extraordinary, and I am deeply impressed by her time abroad in rural Zambia helping educate the young women in that country. My wife, Chrys, and I, as well as the other members of our scholarship student family, welcome her with open arms. I know she will do great things as a pro bono lawyer working for social justice and equality in the world.”
—Diane Harrigan