Rockville Centre native wins charity fellowship

Rockville Centre native Catherine Wauters won the first-ever BARBRI Public Interest Fellow competition, earning herself a one-year position as a legal fellow at the nonprofit Save the Children.

Wauters, 28, will start at Save the Children in the autumn. She will be doing a little bit of everything at the organization, getting a taste for what it takes to run a global non-profit organization.

“It’s incredible and it’s a real honor,” Wauters said. “It aligns well with my professional interests.”

Wauters said she decided she wanted to go into law after serving in the Peace Corps in Benin, West Africa, as a rural community health volunteer. There, she helped teach mothers to increase the nutrition their children were receiving by incorporating more locally available and high-nutrition foods into their diets.

“When I was serving in the Peace Corps, that’s what sparked my interest about going to law school and tackling those issues in the developing world through legal systems,” she said. “I thought the BARBRI opportunity would be a good start in that field. And I think the work that save the children does is wonderful.”

BARBRI is a company that is well known for helping students prepare to take the bar exam — the test necessary to practice law. This was the first time BARBRI offered a fellowship opportunity like this. It conceived the position, and is funding Wauters’ salary at the non-profit.

Save the Children is a global non-profit that focuses on helping children both in the United States and abroad. It assists in disaster relief services domestically, as well as health, education and humanitarian services around the world.

Many different contestants submitted resumes and short video clips about why they wanted the opportunity at Save the Children. A panel of BARBRI judges narrowed the field down to 10 semi-finalists. Then Akua Akyea, director of public interest at Yale Law School; David Lat, founder and managing editor of Above the Law; and Tanya Roth, editor and team lead for blogs and content at FindLaw.com, judged the semi-finalists on creativity, passion, video quality and content, resume and a writing sample. They narrowed the field further to three finalists, and Save the Children selected the winner.

“Catherine stood out from the field of competitors as a passionate advocate for children whose personal and professional goals seemed to align perfectly with the those of Save the Children,” said Mike Sims, an attorney and president of BARBRI, in a release. “We are confident she will serve children everywhere well through her new position and throughout what will undoubtedly be a successful career.”

Wauters, who currently lives in Arlington, Va., where she attends the George Mason University School of Law, is looking forward to starting her job at Save the Children. First, though, she has to pass the Bar in July (she also won a complementary bar review course from BARBRI).

“Save the Children is engaged in making living conditions better for children abroad,” said Wauters. “[I’m excited for] the opportunity to be in an organization that’s doing that type of work and seeing what it takes for that organization to thrive.”