JD #Changemaker Stories

Brook Ashley ’08 has dedicated her professional life to ending violence against women. This February, she launched a new program designed to expand access to legal services for domestic violence victims who can’t afford lawyers. It’s called Partners Overcoming Domestic Violence.

Alyssa Boss ’97 graduated with RWU Law’s second law school class and she hasn’t stopped learning since. As Senior Vice President and General Counsel for the Care New England Health System (CNE), Boss finds challenges every day on the job in keeping up with changes in health law. “It’s just rapidly evolving,” she says. “Regulations are changing all the time.”

Liz Tylawsky has now officially risen to the top in two very different, very demanding fields: she’s a successful taxation and business valuation expert with Meyers, Harrison & Pia, LLC, in New Haven, Conn., specializing in “high-net-worth marital dissolution cases” – and she has been crowned World Champion at the Grand National and World Championship Morgan Horse Show.

As a career paralegal, Stephanie Diorio arrived at RWU Law armed with a solid grasp of the law.

Three years ago, Curtis T. Haynes was attending class, much as he does now – but in a very different setting, wearing a lab coat at the renowned Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University.

East Greenwich native Matt Plain ’05 graduated from RWU Law fifth in his class and passed the bar exam for Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

It’s never easy taking a sexual assault case to court, but for a young woman or man in the Marines, it’s harder still. “It’s a terrible, awful experience to have to go through,” said Adrienne Serbaroli ’07, a captain and judge advocate in the Marine Corps. “It’s traumatic."

Ask Stephen Lapatin about himself and he’ll instinctively shrug that he’s just a normal guy. A native of Cranston, R.I., the son of a veteran Providence cop, a graduate of the University of Rhode Island, Steve is content to maintain an unassuming persona for all those who ask.

Xaykham (Xay) Khamsyvoravong decided to pursue his J.D. at RWU Law because, along with a quality legal education, it enables him to maintain a dual commitment to his career and his community, sacrificing neither.