Elizabeth Ehret ’15 of Rutgers–Newark Law Named Point Scholar

The Point Foundation, the nation’s largest LGBT scholarship organization, has selected Elizabeth Ehret, a member of the Class of 2015 at Rutgers School of Law–Newark, as a 2014 Took Trust Point Scholar. Ehret is one of 23 undergraduate and graduate students from across the country to be named a 2014 Point Scholar on the basis of strong academic performance, proven track record of leadership, and desire to serve and empower the LGBT community.   

 

As a Point Scholar, Ehret will receive leadership training, work with a mentor in her field who will guide her in her professional decisions, and complete a community service project designed to positively impact the LGBTQ community. Said Ehret: “I am excited and honored to have been selected as a scholar amongst so many talented applicants. I look forward to having the support and guidance that the Point Foundation provides as I continue to work towards increasing my ability to be an effective advocate for the LGBTQ community.”

 

Ehret began advocating for the rights of LGBTQ people as a freshman at The College of New Jersey when she joined the campus’s LGBTQ organization. Later as president and executive board member, she emphasized advocacy and activism initiatives, significantly increased membership and programming, and worked with campus administrators to achieve transgender-inclusive policies and practices. After graduation, she worked as a grant writer for two social justice organizations and as a volunteer for five LGBTQ non-discrimination and same-sex marriage campaigns. 

 

Ehret’s commitment to LGBTQ and other social justice issues has been evident throughout her time at Rutgers–Newark Law School. In her first year, she was fundraising chair of the LGBTQ Caucus, a representative to the National Lawyers Guild, the Women’s Law Forum, and the Public Interest Law Foundation, and a volunteer for the Courtroom Advocates Program. 

 

As a Patton Boggs Public Policy Fellow during the summer of 2013, Ehret was a Policy Clerk at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, a position that both affirmed her goal to work as an advocate for LGBTQ rights after law school and expanded her understanding of and interest in public policy work. 

 

As a 2L Ehret was co-chair of the LGBTQ Law Caucus, co-founder and chair of the Mental Illness and Disability Law Society, and events chair of the Rutgers Public Interest Law Foundation. In the Fall semester of her 2L year, she worked as a legal intern at Lambda Legal’s Transgender Rights Project. For her interest in public interest law, she was named one of the school’s Marsha Wenk Fellows and, as part of her fellowship, interned during the spring semester of her 2L year at the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.

 

This summer Ehret is working as a 2014 Holley Law Fellow in the Washington, D.C. office of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

 

She has been elected New Jersey Developments Editor of the Rutgers Law Review for the 2014-2015 academic year and her note, “Legal Loophole: How LGBTQ Nondiscrimination Laws Overlook the Partners of Transgender People,” has been accepted for publication in Volume 67:2 of the Rutgers Law Review. Ehret has been named a 2015 Eagleton Institute for Politics Governor’s Executive Fellow and a member of the Rutgers Public Interest Law Foundation’s board of directors. Outside of Rutgers, she is a member of the board of directors of the Rising Minds Foundation, a nonprofit that engages in social justice activism through the arts.