Columbia University 2022 Selection Day

Fellows and friends from Columbia University Law School celebrated new Fellows Tanner Lockhead and Zeinab Khalil and welcomed three new Fellows-Elect, members of the class of 2025.

Tanner Lockhead and Zeinab Khalil are the newest Tony Patiño Fellows from Columbia University. Together with family, friends, other Fellows, and the newly named Fellows-Elect, Columbia’s Selection Day Dinner, held in September, was a joyful and memorable event.

Tanner, who is working as a lawyer at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, spoke at the Selection Day dinner.  Here’s an excerpt of his remarks:

“The Patiño Fellowship is not just an honor that recognizes achievement. It’s also a responsibility that’s placed in your trust. I think it’s similar in a lot of ways to the trust placed in you as an officer of the court. I’m quickly figuring out that being a lawyer also requires being a leader, even if you don’t want to lead or if you don’t think you deserve to lead. This university, this Fellowship, and certainly this profession, confer an immense amount of power that requires leadership of us all. Being a lawyer forces you to choose in a literal and concrete sense on whose behalf you use that power.”

Click here to watch Tanner’s full acceptance speech.

Zeinab delivered her acceptance remarks via video; here is an excerpt:

“Before law school, the legal fields felt completely mystifying to me. My idea of a lawyer was very narrow. But seeing the people in the Fellowship in their personal and professional capacities taught me quickly what I know sounds incredibly cliche, but I think is incredibly true, and that’s the power that comes with being yourself. To the new Fellows-Elect I invite you in the same way that I was invited to show up as you’re compassionate, kind and curious selves.”

Click here to see Zeinab’s full acceptance speech.

At the 2022 Selection Day Dinner, the Tony Patiño Fellowship also welcomed three new Fellows-Elect, Skylar Gleason, Nathan Porceng, and Brandon Reid, first-year law students at Columbia.

Photos from Columbia’s 2022 Selection Day Dinner are below. Click here to view the full gallery.