Update from March 2026 Fellowship Board Meeting

Dear Fellows,

I hope you are well. Earlier this month, our Board of Directors met in Tony Patino’s hometown of Los Angeles, and I’d like to provide a brief update.

The Board meets four times each year—twice in person (spring and fall) and twice by Zoom (summer and winter). The fall meeting coincides with Selection Day in Chicago, New York, or San Francisco, while the spring meeting is typically held in a city with a concentration of Fellows, most often Los Angeles or Washington, DC.

Over the past year, the Board has taken several steps to increase transparency, expand opportunities for Fellow engagement, and strengthen the Fellowship’s impact. These include launching a new nominations process for Board and committee roles, forming a committee focused on Fellow engagement, and hiring our first Director of Programs. I will aim to keep Fellows apprised of key Board actions on an ongoing basis, as I am doing with this update.

At our recent meeting, we discussed both the Fellowship’s ongoing operations and our long-term direction. We will provide a more detailed update later this year, but I want to outline our overarching objective and the four pillars guiding our work.

Our aim is to make the Tony Patino Fellowship the preeminent organization for law and leadership in the United States, an organization with visibility and influence within our field like the Rhodes, Fulbright, and Truman scholarships have in their fields. We view this as a long-term effort, unfolding over the next 10+ years.

To that end, we are focusing on four strategic priorities:

1. Strategic Expansion: Partnering with additional law schools to broaden our reach and grow our community.

2. Leadership Incubator: Expanding support for the leadership development of our Fellows-Elect and Fellows.

3. Network Connectivity: Strengthening engagement across our community to foster a lifelong professional network and platform for impact.

4. Institutional Excellence: Continuing to professionalize our operations and grow our endowment to support long-term success.

We will be in touch with more detail in the coming months, including ways for Fellows to engage with and contribute to these efforts.

In conjunction with the Board meeting, we also gathered with Los Angeles–based Fellows for a community dinner and to recognize Janice Warren on her retirement. It was a meaningful opportunity to reflect on her extraordinary impact on the Fellowship over the past 19 years. We are deeply grateful for Janice’s many contributions and for those who joined us to mark the occasion.

As always, I welcome your thoughts, questions, and ideas.

Best,
Nathan Christensen, Board Chair-Elect

(Chicago ’08)