A Mission of Public Service

The Gates Public Service Law Program has awarded five 1L students full support for their education at UW Law in exchange for their commitment to public service.

The Gates Public Service Law Program awarded full tuition and cost of attendance scholarships to five first-year students entering the J.D. program at UW Law: Valentina Aznar, Yoko Morishita Fedorenko, Robyn Githui, Jocelyn Granados Mejia and Katie Ziglin.

Scholarship recipients are required to work in public service for five years following graduation.

Created in November 2005 and named after the late William H. Gates, Sr., J.D. ‘50, a prominent public servant and attorney in Washington state, the Gates Public Service Law Program supports UW Law’s vision of making public service a reality for students. Gates Scholars have gone on to impact change on local, national and international levels at a variety of organizations.

Valentina Aznar

Valentina Aznar’s lived experiences inform her passion for public service and shape her commitment to advocacy. In 2022, Aznar received a B.A in Law, Societies, and Justice from the University of Washington and interned at the Seattle Clemency Project aiding with post-conviction relief. Thereafter, Aznar joined the staff of the YWCA in Yakima, determined to expand resources for those affected by domestic violence (DV). She reinstated a free legal clinic, hosted educational courses and directly supported DV survivors.

“I’m grateful to be a Gates Scholar because it will afford me the opportunity to integrate creative and empathetic solutions,” says Aznar. She remains committed to practicing in central Washington, widely considered a legal desert, saying, “Culturally competent legal aid is imperative for my community. I want to be a resource they can rely on.” Aznar will leverage insights gained as a Gates Scholar to address the economic and linguistic barriers that exacerbate the gap in access to legal aid.

Yoko Morishita Fedorenko

Yoko Morishita Fedorenko received her B.A. degree from the University of Washington where she majored in Law, Societies, and Justice and founded Nikkei Student Union, an RSO for Japanese American students. After graduating, she worked as a legal assistant at a Seattle-area labor union representing healthcare workers. Fedorenko’s experiences organizing both on-campus and off have taught her that her community is her ultimate source of grounding in pursuit of the expertise and determination to make this world better.

“As a descendant of the WWII Japanese American incarceration, I know the human costs of systemic legal injustice. Like many others in my community, I feel a deep responsibility to counteract the constant repetition of our history, especially regarding today’s inhumane immigrant detention practices,” says Fedorenko. “I hope to use my experience as a Gates Scholar to do my part to improve the intertwined fates of all oppressed people, whether that be through immigration law, low-barrier legal services, or worker advocacy.”

Robyn Githui

Robyn Githui’s commitment to public service stems from a desire to eliminate the barriers her mother faced as an undocumented single parent. In her time as an undergraduate at Notre Dame of Maryland University, Githui studied Political Science with a focus on law and civic engagement. After graduating, Githui spent the next several years providing legal aid to people who could not afford attorneys, first as an AmeriCorps member in rural Montana and most recently in her hometown of Baltimore. Despite her reservations about working in the system, she ultimately decided to pursue law school after seeing how impactful representation can be for people navigating the legal system.

Githui plans to use her legal education to provide free representation to DV survivors in her community. Her experience watching survivors be ignored by the legal system fuels her belief that legal professionals have a duty to amplify survivors’ voices. Githui’s domestic violence training taught her that punitive responses to intimate partner violence fuel the cycle of abuse, so she’s interested in exploring how civil legal assistance can help survivors regain a sense of control in their lives.

Jocelyn Granados Mejia

Jocelyn Granados Mejia is the proud immigrant daughter of Maricela and Arnulfo who committed the greatest act of love by migrating to this country in search of a better life. Although she and more than 11.4 million undocumented immigrants continue to be systematically silenced, Mejiais committed to continue advocating by amplifying undocumented voices. Mejia’s lived experience navigating various legal systems equips her with the knowledge to work alongside her community to fight for everyone’s liberation.

Throughout her undergraduate career, Mejia was heavily involved in coalition building because she recognized the importance of intersectional organizing. That is why she aspires to be a community and movement lawyer with a holistic approach by prioritizing human dignity and treating everyone with the respect they deserve. As a Gates Scholar, she plans to continue being part of many activism efforts within and outside of the law school community, because as Luis Cortes said, “Activism leads and the law follows.”

Katie Ziglin

Katie Ziglin worked as a paralegal in the Sentence Review Unit for the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, where she helped to implement recent state legislation that empowers prosecutors to petition the court to resentence an individual convicted of a felony offense in the interest of justice. By adapting to a new definition of justice, she helped the unit achieve a remarkably low rate of recidivism on behalf of the responsible parties and increased access to resources for victims.

Ziglin will use her experience as a Gates Scholar to help shift the paradigm that causes the criminal legal system to repeat cycles of violence towards those it should help. Shaping a new dimension of justice to include healing and rehabilitation is a top priority for her. As she pursues a career in public service law, she will advance the interests of people with diverse experiences and ideologies.