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Alumna Abby Rosovsky ‘16 visited Newton Country Day Middle School students as the first speaker for the Middle School Alumnae Goal III Guest Speaker Series. Rosovsky spoke to the students about the intersection of social justice, Goal III (a social awareness which impels to action), and her work as a lawyer. She is currently a Juris Doctor (JD) candidate at Boston College Law School, expecting to graduate in 2025. Rosovsky serves as a student attorney for the Compassionate Parole Clinic, is a senior editor for the Boston College Law Review, and works as a research assistant to Dean Katharine Young. Rosovsky previously worked as a summer associate at Proskauer Rose LLP and as a legal intern at Greater Boston Legal Services. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Government and Hispanic Studies from Hamilton College in 2020. During her time at Hamilton, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and served as a senior fellow for the college’s Community Outreach and Opportunity Programs. 

While addressing the students, Rosovsky reflected on her time at Newton Country Day and her participation in community service projects and opportunities. “Some of the most meaningful groups that I was involved with as a student revolved around service and Goal III…it allowed me to volunteer with organizations that covered a variety of social justice issues that I care about.” Rosovsky explained how, even after leaving Newton Country Day, she continued to seek out ways to continue living out Goal III. 

It wasn’t until her junior year in college, while working as an administrative intern at the Women’s Prison Association in New York City, that she was inspired to apply to law school. “So many of the women that I worked with faced challenging circumstances including poverty, lack of access to healthcare and education, homelessness, and discrimination in the court system. I quickly realized that it is incredibly difficult for anyone who has a criminal record to find a decent job or a decent place to live.” She recognized that the people who had the most power to help these women were lawyers. “For me to help the people that I wanted to help, in the way that I wanted to help them, I realized that I had to go to law school.” She noted how some aspects of practicing law align to Goal III. “A lawyer can practice Goal III by making sure that no matter what your client has done, they are being fairly represented in a court of law.”

Recently Rosovsky had the opportunity to represent prisoners serving life sentences at compassionate release parole hearings. “What drew me to this volunteer position was that representing people for compassionate parole combines so many social justice issues that I care about–access to justice, helping lift people out of poverty, access to education and healthcare,” she explained. The law professor who provided this volunteer opportunity was Father Frank Herrmann, S.J., a longtime friend of former Newton Country Day Headmistress Sister Barbara Rogers, RSCJ. He assigned Rosovsky a client that had been particularly difficult to work with and would be challenging to represent. When she asked why he chose her for this case, he explained, “Because I knew that a student from Newton Country Day could handle it.”

In her closing remarks, Rosovsky said: “The service that I do now looks a little bit different from the service I did at Newton Country Day, but the underlying sentiment remains the same, because Goal III helped me discover the ways that I love helping people.” She added: “It encourages me to think critically about the injustices in our world and gives me the opportunity to think how I would change them. And perhaps most importantly, it instills in me a passion for continuing to promote justice in all the work that I do.”