Page 26 - FDCC Flyer Winter 2023

FDCC Pillars
FDCC Foundation Awards Diversity Scholarship
Stacy A. Broman
The FDCC Foundation is pleased to award the 2023 Barb Currie Diversity Scholarship to Marianna Nava. Ms. Nava is a student at
by Stacy A. Broman
Scholarship Winner, Marianna Nava
the time. She became her parents’ translator during the immigration interviews and finger printing appointments. She described the sacrifices her family made in order to meet the financial demands associated with hiring of their attorney.
She has participated in her school immigration clinic representing clients with pending immigration cases. She currently represents seven individuals who are seeking legal permanent residency in
the United States. Through this experience she has gained insight into broader systemic issues,
such as implicit bias, racism, socioeconomic disparities, and mental health issues. She described how the Barb Currie Diversity Scholarship will bring her one
step closer to achieving her goal of becoming an attorney and serving
her community. She described
the Barb Currie Scholarship
and scholarships like these as helping remove socioeconomic and systemic barriers to higher education and enable students like her to become one step closer to achieving their dreams.
FDCC President Howard Merten and FDCC members, Ned & Sue Currie, John Kelleher, David & Karen Zizik, Ned & Sue Currie, Nicole Benjamin, and Paul Kessimian along with Greg Bowman, Dean of the Roger Williams School of Law, formally presented the scholarship to Ms. Rava in May.
Details regarding the 2024 Barb Currie Diversity Scholarship Award are already available on the FDCC website on the FDCC Foundation page. Please help spread the word about the scholarship!
The FDCC Foundation is grateful for your donations, which
help support the Foundation’s endeavors including the Barb Currie Scholarship. The Foundation is particularly thankful to those brave souls that participated in the dunk tank at the annual meeting
to raise money for the Barb Currie Scholarship.
Please continue to support your Foundation and its worthwhile endeavors.
Stacy A. Broman is a partner in Meagher & Geer PLLP’s Minneapolis office. She can be reached at sbroman@meagher.com.
the Roger Williams School of Law
in Bristol, Rhode Island, where
she participated in the Roger Williams School of Law Moot Court Competition. Ms. Nava was selected from a pool of over 70 applicants from over 32 law schools.
Upon graduation, Ms. Nava intends to become an immigration attorney to work with foreign nationals providing legal representation during the legalization process.
Ms. Nava is an aspiring attorney and wants “to ensure that people from diverse backgrounds and socioeconomic groups enjoy the benefits and protections of the law and be the ‘voice’ of persons who often feel voiceless, vulnerable, and misunderstood by the people that represent them.”
Ms. Nava is an immigrant from Brazil as her family immigrated to the United States when she was only 12 years old. She described going through the naturalization process at such a young age as difficult, scary, and intimidating as her family did not speak English at
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