At the end of August, we said goodbye to Melissa Torres-Montoya, our Law Students for Reproductive Justice (LSRJ) fellow, who has been with us for a year as a core member of the NWHN team and our Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need campaign.

Just days later, we welcomed Lillian Hewko, a new LSRJ fellow who moved to Washington, DC from Washington State to join our staff. Lillian earned a B.A. from the University of California at San Diego in 2003 and a J.D. from the University of Washington School of Law in 2011, where she received the prestigious Gates Public Service Scholarship.

Growing up half Mexican in a working-class family led Lillian to an interest in reproductive justice and a desire to use the law as a tool to create social change. She began her career in social justice in the Peace Corps as an Urban Youth Development Director in Paraguay. During law school, Lillian focused on human rights issues affecting women and girls, including child rape, sex trafficking, access to abortion care in Latin America, access to health care in Washington State, and lawful status for immigrant survivors of domestic violence in the United States.

Early in her law school career, Lillian co-founded the Incarcerated Mother’s Advocacy Project.  For the two years, she has been an Equal Justice Works fellow at Legal Voice in Seattle. There, she developed a project to address and protect the rights of incarcerated families by providing legal education to incarcerated mothers, and implementing legislative strategies to reduce the chances of family separation in Washington State.