Meet Our Recent Award Winners

2023 Barbara E. Whiting-Wright Bar Assistance Award Recipient

Keniece Gray

Keniece Gray is a champion for progress and a first-generation law student aspiring to build a cross-sector career using the law to address systemic issues and remediating inequity in academia and the workforce. She is Business Law Scholar, William J. Curtin Endowed Scholar, and member of the 2023 law class at Georgetown University Law Center, where she currently serves as a Black Law Students Association (BLSA) Vice President, member of the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, Public Interest Fellow, and a RISE Mentor. Her primary legal interests include regulatory and compliance issues related to labor and employment, education, government relations, corporate governance, intellectual property law, and financial markets. Her favorite pass-times include helping underrepresented students pursue post-secondary education, advancing DEI, traveling, and dining! 
 
Prior to law school, Keniece worked as an auditor for the City of Cleveland and Deloitte while also serving as a board member for non-profit organizations including Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., the Boys & Girls Clubs of Cleveland, and the Fair Housing Center for Rights & Research. She is a 2017 graduate of Case Western Reserve University's Master of Accountancy Program and 2020 graduate of Cleveland State University's Master of Public Administration programs.  Keniece is a 2019 Crain's Cleveland Business Twenty in Their 20s honoree, CBCF Scholar, MCCA LMJ Scholar, and a Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones Scholarship recipient, amongst other honors. 

Fall 2023 Book Scholarship Recipient

Simone Edwards

 

Simone Edwards is a Fritz Fellow at the Center on Privacy & Technology, while pursuing her law degree at Georgetown Law. In 2019, she obtained a degree in Political Science, and the honor of being the first to receive a Fulbright award at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in more than fifty years. Her Fulbright ETA position was in Guatemala, early 2020, and she made the move to Washington, DC in June 2020 to be a City Year AmeriCorps Member. She is now the Senior Communications & Technology Editor for the Georgetown Law Journal and Managing Editor for the Georgetown Technology Law Review. If you can’t find her in a journal office, she might be reviewing a book for her bookstagram.

Fall 2022 Book Scholarship Recipient

Stephanie Jean-Louis

Stephanie Jean-Louis is a second-year law student at American University. She is also pursing her  Masters of Public Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health. Before enrolling in law school, Stephanie worked at several healthcare non-profits aimed to transform healthcare to meet the needs of the most complex and disenfranchised patients. Stephanie is dedicating her career to creating, implementing, and evaluating public policy that will reduce health disparities and promote health equity.

2022 BEWW Scholar

2021 Barbara E. Whiting-Wright Bar Assistance Award Recipient

Daraja Carroll,

Daraja Carroll is a 2021 graduate of American University Washington College of Law (“WCL”). During her time at WCL, Daraja served the campus community as President of the Black Law Students Association and Senator of the Student Bar Association. She also served as a Sub-Regional Director for the Mid-Atlantic Black Law Students Association. Daraja taught a yearlong Constitutional law and oral advocacy course at School Without Walls in Washington, D.C., as a Teaching Fellow with the nationally-recognized Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project. During her last year at WCL, Daraja interned with the National Center for Youth Law and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights’ Stop Hate Project.

Daraja aspires to be a civil rights attorney and will begin a 1-year legal fellowship in DC in the fall. In her free time this summer while, preparing for the California bar exam, Daraja will be rooting for the Golden State Warriors and living out her foodie dreams.


 

Past Scholarship Recipients

Joy Applewhite, 2019 GWAC Foundation, Inc. Book Scholarship

Lourdes S. Eliacin Mars, 2019 GWAC Foundation, Inc. Book Scholarship

Dionne Dillard, Fall 2020 GWAC Foundation, Inc. Book Scholarship

Megan Moffett, 2020 GWAC Foundation, Inc. COVID-19 Impacted Employment Grant

Bilqis Watts Wilkerson, Spring 2020 GWAC Foundation, Inc. Barbara E. Whiting-Wright Bar Assistance Award

Janae Staicer, Spring 2020 GWAC Foundation, Inc. Barbara E. Whiting-Wright Bar Assistance Award