Meet the OPIA Team | Harvard Law School

Advisors

Catherine Pattanayak ’04, Assistant Dean for Public Service
Judy Murciano, Associate Director and Director of Fellowships
Jillian Tuck, Assistant Director for J.D. and LL.M. Advising
Elizabeth Shirey, Assistant Director for J.D. Advising
Joan Ruttenberg ’82, Assistant Director for Government Advising and Director, Heyman Fellowship Program
Rachel Pemstein, Assistant Director for Alumni Advising
Tina Fitanides, Attorney Advisor
Virginia (Ginny) Greiman, Attorney Advisor

Administration

Linda Braden, Assistant Director, Communications and Systems Management
Micah Nemiroff, Assistant Director for Programs and Recruitment


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Catherine Pattanayak ’04, Esq.
Assistant Dean for Public Service
617-496-6106
[email protected]
Catherine’s Zoom meeting room

Catherine joined OPIA in the spring of 2009 after practicing law in both the public and private sectors. Before joining OPIA, Catherine worked as a senior attorney with the NIH Branch of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the General Counsel. During her three year tenure at HHS, Catherine served as the lead Branch attorney for grants policy, compliance and enforcement issues and international legal issues, and received, among other performance awards, three NIH Director’s Awards, the highest award given by the NIH. Prior to her government service, Catherine worked as a health care associate in the Boston office of Ropes & Gray LLP. Catherine is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School (’04), where she served on the Board of Student Advisers, and a magna cum laude graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service (’99). Between college and law school, Catherine worked as a Research Analyst with the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute in Washington, D.C. Catherine was a 2014 recipient of the Dean’s Award for Excellence, received the Suzanne L. Richardson Staff Recognition Award from the Class of 2015, and received the 2018 HLS Student Government Teaching & Advising Award.

Areas of Expertise

  • Civil rights and civil liberties
  • Criminal justice reform
  • Criminal prosecution and defense
  • Department of Justice
  • Federal government
  • Environmental law
  • Health law
  • Nonprofits
  • State and local government
  • Women’s issues

Types of Advising 

  • J.D. General Advising – Domestic
  • Post-Clerkship

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Judith Murciano
Associate Director and Director of Fellowships
617-496-8375
[email protected]
Judy’s Zoom meeting room

Judy holds a faculty appointment and has advised students on fellowships, supervised dozens of public interest programs, including the Ford Public Interest Program, served as resident dean for thousands of Harvard University students, and wrote and edited public interest law publications over two decades. She has taught (Constitutional Law, writing, entrepreneurship, etc.) at Harvard and Princeton University and her Ph.D. dissertation on censorship was supported by fellowships at Cambridge and Oxford Universities. She has won numerous teaching awards and Faculty Innovation grants. Judith served as Legislative Director (testified on more than 2,000 pieces of civil liberties legislation) and Acting Executive Director of the NJ-ACLU, chaired the NJ Bar’s Juvenile Justice Comm., supervised the ACLU Farmworkers Project, and clerked for a NY Supreme Court Justice & worked in the Bronx criminal courts. She has written political essays for The New Yorker and The New York Times, as well as human rights articles for the International Herald Tribune and Radio Free Europe, while working for Amnesty International in Paris. A recipient of Dean’s Award for Excellence (2008) and Suzanne L. Richardson Staff Award (class of 2010) at HLS, Judith is a certified grant-writer, negotiator and mediator, as a well as a principal associate in an international consulting firm focused on the Middle East and Asia. Most recently, she is working on issues involving cyber-trafficking and systemic justice.

Areas of Expertise

  • Fellowships
  • Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
  • International Human Rights
  • Non-profits
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Legal Services
  • Academic Research/Scholarships

Types of Advising:

  • Fellowships
  • Post-Clerkship

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Jillian Tuck, Esq.
Assistant Director for J.D. and LL.M. Advising
617-494-5232
[email protected]
Jillian’s Zoom meeting room

Jillian joined OPIA in 2019. She is an organizer turned human rights lawyer turned strategy consultant/facilitator/executive coach. She is passionate about transforming nonprofit and philanthropic sectors to better align with social justice values and supporting visionary public interest leaders around the world. Prior to joining OPIA, Jillian was based in Bangkok where she worked to bring laws into compliance with international human rights standards and build the organizational capacity of civil society in Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia. Before that, Jillian was the Senior Program Officer for Rights at Risk at the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee where she developed human rights funding strategies and managed a large portfolio of grants to grassroots organizations in Myanmar, Nepal, Central America, Mexico, and the United States. She has also provided legal services to refugees, taught immigration law and refugee and asylum law, and directed the Asylum Program at Physicians for Human Rights. Since 2005, Jillian’s home for political education and organizing has been the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala, where she currently serves on its Board of Directors. She is fluent in Spanish. Jillian has a J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law, a B.A. from University of Pennsylvania and is a certified Executive Coach from UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.

Areas of Expertise

  • International human rights
  • Public international law
  • Nonprofits
  • Immigration, refugee, and asylum law

Types of Advising:

  • J.D. General Advising – Domestic
  • J.D. General Advising – International
  • LL.M./International J.D. General Advising

""Elizabeth Shirey, Esq.
Assistant Director for J.D. Advising
617-496-6103
[email protected]
Elizabeth’s Zoom meeting room

Elizabeth joined OPIA in 2020 after four years on active duty as a Captain in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps. She previously served as a legal fellow in UCLA’s Office of Legal Affairs, where she handled a variety of issues from Title IX compliance to written agreements. Throughout law school, Elizabeth was committed to providing direct legal services to homeless veterans and working to expand clinical opportunities for law students to work with this population. She also completed a post-graduate fellowship with Inner City Law Center’s Homeless Veterans Project on Skid Row in Los Angeles.  Prior to law school, she worked as a Grassroots/Policy Advocate for the non-profit Servicemembers Legal Defense Network in Washington, D.C., helping advocate for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 2010. She is a magna cum laude graduate of Wellesley College and a graduate of UCLA School of Law.

Elizabeth is available for general advising for J.D. students, including in areas such as military law, federal government, non-profits, and legal services.

Types of Advising

  • J.D. General Advising – Domestic

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Joan Ruttenberg ’82, Esq.
Assistant Director for Government Advising and Director of the Heyman Fellowship
617-496-7304
[email protected]
Joan’s Zoom meeting room

Joan joined OPIA in the fall of 2004. Joan’s professional experience spans both academia and government law practice. For many years, Joan taught health law, political science, health economics and legal research and writing in a variety of academic settings: Boston University School of Law, the University of Chicago Law School, Northeastern University Law School, Brandeis University, Wellesley College, and the Graduate Program for Health Care Administration at Simmons College. Prior to teaching, she served as an Assistant Attorney General in Massachusetts, with responsibility for administrative litigation, rulemaking and legislative activities concerning health care and insurance. Before beginning law practice, Joan clerked for Judge Francis D. Murnaghan on the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Baltimore and was a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Joan is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Illinois (’78) and a cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School (’82).

Areas of Expertise

  • Criminal prosecution
  • Cyberlaw
  • Department of Justice
  • Election law
  • Federal government
  • Health law
  • State and local government
  • U.S. Attorney careers

Types of Advising

  • J.D. General Advising – Domestic
  • Government
  • Post-Clerkship

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Rachel Pemstein, Esq.
Assistant Director for Alumni Advising
617-495-5354
[email protected]
Rachel’s Zoom meeting room

Rachel returned to Harvard Law School in 2017 after having been the Director of Bet Tzedek Legal Services of Jewish Family & Children’s.  A cum laude graduate of Barnard College (’90) and The University of Chicago Law School (’94), Rachel has worked in a variety of legal settings and has always participated in a variety of public interest efforts. In law school, Rachel served the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic and the Illinois Clemency Project for Battered Women. Upon graduation, Rachel launched her career at the Boston law firm of Choate, Hall & Stewart where she practiced healthcare law. After, she worked with in-house counsel at the Massachusetts Medical Society. She then became a J.D. Advisor with the Harvard Law School Office of Career Services where she worked with students embarking on their own legal careers. Most recently, during her 11 years at JF & CS Bet Tzedek, Rachel directed the integration of legal services into the agency’s health and human services delivery model and oversaw growth of the program to serve the needs of its most vulnerable clients. Rachel is passionate about the legal rights of the underserved, especially domestic abuse and hunger issues among the low-income community.

Areas of Expertise 

  • Legal services
  • Nonprofits

Types of Advising


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Tina Fitanides, Esq.
Attorney Advisor
[email protected]
Tina’s Zoom meeting room

Tina is currently a Policy Analyst with Massachusetts Advocates for Children (MAC) where she focuses on all stages of legislative and administrative advocacy campaigns related to autism and special education issues to help ensure children with disabilities have access to necessary services and supports. Prior to her time at MAC, Tina practiced as a Staff Attorney at Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts (now called Community Legal Aid) in Worcester, MA where she litigated family law and domestic violence cases. While there, she also participated the legislative committees of both the Family Law Task Force and the Governor’s Commission on Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence. Tina also practiced at the National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse in Alexandria, VA where she provided case and research assistance to Prosecutors and law makers nationwide on issues related to child abuse and neglect and domestic violence. Tina held several policy related positions while in law school at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. and prior to law school served as a Legislative Aid at the Massachusetts State House.

Areas of Expertise

  • Children’s issues
  • Education issues
  • Legal services
  • Nonprofits
  • State and local government

Types of Advising

  • J.D. General Advising – Domestic

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Virginia (Ginny) Greiman, Esq.
Attorney Advisor
[email protected]
Ginny’s Zoom meeting room

Ginny has more than 20 years of experience in federal and state government public policy positions as an appointee to the U.S. Department of Justice, and as international counsel and head of delegations to the U.S. Department of State and USAID on rule of law and transitional justice missions in Eastern and Central Europe, Asia and Africa. She has served as an Administrative Law Judge and General Counsel to several State agencies including the Executive Offices of Education and Economic Development and as Deputy General Counsel to the Central Artery/Tunnel Project in Boston. She has held executive and advisory positions with several of the world’s largest megaprojects in the United States, Europe, and Southeast Asia and presently assists on World Bank Projects in a consultative role. In recent years she has participated in humanitarian missions for the Tibet Justice Center in India, the U.S. Department of State in Liberia and South Africa, and community development projects in China for the Academy of Social Sciences. Ginny has extensive teaching experience as an assistant professor and visiting professor of International Law and Development and Cyberlaw at Georgetown University Law Center, Boston University School of Law, and as a faculty fellow to Oxford University in Comparative International Law. She also served as a teaching assistant to the Trial Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School and as an Associate Faculty to the Kennedy School of Government, Carr Center on Human Trafficking.

Ginny serves on many boards including the FBI Citizen’s Academy and London’s Centre for Strategic Cyperspace and International Studies, and she is a member of the Federalist Society National Security and Faculty Divisions. Ginny holds a B.S. Degree from Pennsylvania State University, M.Ed. from Boston University, J.D. from Suffolk University Law School, LL.M. from Boston University School of Law and was a graduate fellow at MIT Sloan School and the Harvard Kennedy School.

Areas of Expertise

  • Department of Justice
  • Domestic and international economic development
  • Federal government
  • State and local government
  • International government

Types of Advising

  • J.D. General Advising – International
  • LL.M./International J.D. General Advising
  • Conservative/Libertarian
  • Government

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Linda Braden
Assistant Director, Communications and Data Systems Management
617-496-4664
[email protected]

Linda joined OPIA as Program Coordinator and now directs the breadth and depth of communications and data management advancements for the office. She has also served as the President of Harvard Neighbors and has served on the HLS Emerging Leaders Advisory Board. Prior to OPIA, she worked at the University of Montana’s Office of International Programs, where she served as Media Information Specialist and before that, Study Abroad Coordinator. Linda graduated cum laude from Xavier University with a B.A. in International Affairs and graduated magna cum laude from Ohio University with an M.A. in International Studies and Latin American Studies, where she also worked as a Graduate Assistant in the Latin American Studies Program. She enjoys practicing yoga, gardening, traveling, cooking, biking, and hiking.


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Micah Nemiroff
Assistant Director for Programs and Recruitment
617-496-8235
[email protected]

Micah joined OPIA from Harvard Medical School where he worked in a curriculum support office. Prior to Harvard Medical School, Micah worked on campaigns in Southeastern Pennsylvania and as a government relations intern with the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago. He received his B.A. in history and political science from Syracuse University in Upstate New York. Micah is an avid hiker who enjoys getting out to the White Mountains at every opportunity. He also enjoys music, and has played drums for over 20 years. Micah was also a 2014 recipient of the Harvard Heroes award.