Welcoming 2025 Fellows from Columbia

On behalf of the Board of Directors, we are proud to warmly welcome three new Tony Patiño Fellows from Columbia Law School class of 2025: Skylar Gleason, Nathan Porceng, and Brandon Reid. While navigating a period of upheaval at Columbia, these new Fellows looked to one another and to the Fellowship community for support and connection.

Skylar now lives in Juneau and serves as a Judicial Law Clerk for Alaska Supreme Court Justice Jude Pate. Nathan is a Skadden Fellow in Washington State, working on environmental law issues with Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services and helping to bring solar power to parts of Appalachia. Brandon is an associate in Quinn Emanuel’s Washington, D.C. office and also continues to lead the nonprofit organization that he founded, Brandon’s Coalition for Success.

In Their Own Words: Acceptance Speech Excerpts

During my three years at Columbia, I found myself in places that I could not have imagined. I helped with cases at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, I interned at law firms in New York and Washington, and I completed a semester program through which I interned in the White House’s Domestic Policy Office. I also participated in the Parole Advocacy Project at Columbia, which is a group that helps incarcerated individuals prepare for their parole hearings in New York.

My Columbia and Patiño experiences have prepared me to return home and work against the problems I see there. Since graduating, I have returned to Annapolis, where I continue to lead my non-profit, which meets weekly with young people who are considered at risk of following the pipeline to prison.

– Brandon Reid

It meant the world to me for the Patiño Fellowship to show that they believed in me and my aspirations, and that they were willing to bet on them. That belief changed my outlook on law school and renewed my confidence and drive to dive headfirst into my legal education and make it my own. As a student dedicated to human rights, I spent most of my time immersed in these challenges, especially as Columbia transformed into a stage upon which the debates and struggles over today’s most pressing issues played out amid the hostility and gravity of the campus atmosphere. The other Fellows-Elect kept me grounded and encouraged. Not only are they brilliant and driven leaders, but they’re down-to-earth, good human beings who, as chaos has unfolded, have simply leaned into the work to make our community, country, and world a more just and welcoming place.

– Skylar Gleason

Being a part of the Tony Patiño community was one of the great joys of my time in Law School. Columbia was, to put it extremely mildly, an interesting place to be the past couple of years. The lunches and dinners the Fellowship hosted for us were real bright spots. It was always a relief to get together with the other Fellows and Fellows-Elect, maybe vent a bit, and talk about happier things.

– Nathan Porceng