When Reda Taleb (McLean Class, 2015) talks about “giving back,” she isn’t just reciting a slogan — she’s living by example. The daughter of immigrants from Bint Jbeil, Lebanon, Taleb’s parents, along with her six older siblings, laid roots in Dearborn’s south end, an area known for its pollution-emitting factory smoke stacks and community of Arab Americans seeking the “American Dream.”
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Ahmad Saifi grew up in his traditional family knowing that his family expected him to go into medicine. That pressure was compounded when one brother decided he was going to be a doctor, and the other brother made the decision to go to dentail school. Unfortunately for his family, Saifi wasn't interested in following any profession in the medical field.
Neena Sterling (Gray Class, 2022) knew she wanted to be a lawyer since she was a young girl. When she graduated from college she was on track, but ended up hitting some bumps and taking time off to work for a year. In 2016, she had a daughter, and her dream of law school was put on the back burner.
Growing up, the only thing Cooley Law School graduate Connor Porzig cared about was basketball. “I like to think of it as my first love. Whether I was watching it on TV or playing outside, it was something that I understood and had a passion for from the beginning,” says Porzig.
Dalton Dennis remembers early on that his father never made things easy. Whatever they did, his father wouldn't give him an answer. He wanted him to come up with that himself. It was frustrating, even infuriating for Dennis as a young boy and teenager. What he realized later was that was the best thing his father ever taught him - how to think on his feet and to answer his own questions. It's those exact lessons and skills that have put him at an advantage in life, including success in law school.
Nina Yakubov is one of those people who always had a good idea what she wanted to do, even at an early age. Growing up in Russia, being around very educated people, Yakubov was especially amazed by how lawyers could think in a way nobody else could. She thought of attorneys as "Super Heroes."
Life for Shari Wilson started off like it did for many kids – hanging out with the family, going to school, playing with friends. For just about nine years, the Wilson family led the quintessential American life. Mom taught at a nearby school. Shari rode her bike and played outside until the streetlights came on.
Joeie Skelly knew that she wanted to be a lawyer since she was 8 years old. “While other kids were playing house,” she recalled, “I pretended to play lawyer.”
Even while Cooley student Hala Alkattan was working on her undergraduate degree, she knew she wanted to help people. At the time she wanted to do something for the Syrian refugees that were coming into Tampa. Little things to make life better for them. From that spark of an idea, the small non-profit, "turned into something huge," as Alkattan says.
Amanda Burch always knew she wanted to be a lawyer. Raised on a steady diet of the Matlock TV attorney series, she planned her undergraduate degree to dovetail neatly into her J.D., and she was on her way. She chose Cooley because the weekend classes and part-time schedule meshed well with the reality that she needed to continue working while in school.
