Northeastern University Welcomes Nine Inaugural Fellows to Law and Policy Fellowship Program
09.05.25 — Northeastern University's School of Law and School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs are proud to welcome nine distinguished legal and policy professionals as the inaugural cohort of the Northeastern University Law and Policy Fellows Program. This new fellowship program is specifically designed for experienced government service professionals navigating career transitions.
Trent Buatte, Nancy Johnson, Amy Romero, Samuel Roth, Zeinah Salahi, Christine Stoneman, Brian Trackman, Maria Van Buren ’98 and Elizabeth Wilcox bring diverse backgrounds in public service and will contribute their expertise to academic life at Northeastern through this one-year, virtual fellowship program. The non-funded, non-resident fellowships create opportunities for seasoned government professionals to engage with the university community while exploring their next career steps.
“We are thrilled to launch this program with such an accomplished group of fellows,” said Professor Sharmila L. Murthy, faculty co-director of Northeastern Law’s Center for Public Interest Advocacy and Collaboration. “Their collective experience in government service will enrich our academic community and provide invaluable insights for our students, faculty and staff. Their impact will surely be felt on campus and beyond.”
“This new partnership between the Law School and the Policy School reflects our commitment to connecting public service with academic excellence,” said Professor Maria Ivanova, director of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. “By bringing accomplished leaders with recent government experience into our community, we are creating a space where practice meets scholarship. The fellows will enhance our students and programs, while building bridges and advancing effective legal and policy education.”
TRENT BUATTE is a national security and foreign policy attorney with over a decade of experience responding to conflict and humanitarian crises worldwide. From 2023 to 2025 he served at the White House as deputy legal advisor for the National Security Council, where he covered all legal issues related to the war in Ukraine, Russia, NATO, sanctions and international economic policy, the United Nations, human rights, refugees, cyber policy and treaties. In this role, he helped draft and negotiate the U.S.-Ukraine Bilateral Security Agreement as well as multiple NATO and G7 agreements. He previously served as attorney-adviser in the Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser, leading on issues related to international humanitarian law, counterterrorism operations, and interpretation and negotiation of international agreements.
His other government experience includes being special advisor for International Humanitarian Policy in the Office of the Secretary Defense, attorney-adviser for united nations affairs at the Department of State and associate counsel for refugee and asylum law and an asylum officer within the Department of Homeland Security. Prior to government service, Buatte taught human rights law and was senior researcher for international economic law at Universität Halle-Wittenberg in Germany and clerked for the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. From 2018 to 2023 he taught human rights and international law courses at George Washington University Law School, where he was named 2023 Adjunct Faculty of the Year.
NANCY JOHNSON is an accomplished attorney and intellectual property law expert currently pivoting into academia to focus on teaching and research at the intersection of intellectual property and social justice. Johnson brings nearly two decades of experience as an attorney with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, where she has specialized in intellectual property law. Her diverse legal background spans fair housing, equal employment, Social Security disability, small business 8A certification, disaster relief and healthcare litigation support.
A Detroit native, Johnson attended Cass Technical High School, where she was recognized as a National Merit Scholar. She began college at age 16, ultimately graduating from Michigan State University in 1990 with a degree in multi-disciplinary social science pre-law. She earned her law degree from Howard University School of Law in 1993.
Johnson began her professional career as a crisis counselor, initially volunteering before transitioning to professional work in the field. This early experience established her commitment to public service and social justice advocacy that has continued throughout her career.
In addition to her legal practice, Johnson is actively engaged in community service and advocacy work. She volunteers in her church's children's ministry and serves as a mentor and advocate for youth, particularly those in foster care. She is also involved in antiracist initiatives through writing, systems design and coalition work.
Johnson plans to combine her extensive intellectual property expertise with her passion for social justice in her upcoming academic career, focusing on teaching and research that bridges these two areas of interest.
AMY ROMERO is a civil rights attorney, practicing in her home state of Rhode Island. She currently serves as Chief Litigation Counsel for the Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island (LCRI), a new organization designed to organize pro bono rapid response to federal government overreach impacting individuals and nonprofits located in Rhode Island. Prior to joining LCRI, Romero served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Rhode Island from 2016 until March 2025, focusing on civil rights litigation and community outreach. Prior to serving as an AUSA, Romero worked as a staff attorney at Rhode Island Legal Services and Community Legal Aid and served as a law clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Romero graduated from Swarthmore College in 2001 and University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2009.
SAMUEL ROTH served as associate general counsel at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), where he worked from 2023 to 2025. CEQ coordinates the Federal government’s efforts to improve, preserve and protect America’s public health and environment. At CEQ, Roth’s portfolios included federal sustainability, environmental justice, permitting reform, oversight and investigations, strategic communications and administrative law.
From 2021 to 2022, Roth was an attorney-advisor at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), a federal agency that promotes progress and scholarship in the humanities. At NEH, Roth advised federal agency leadership on complex general law matters, including grantmaking, appropriations law, intellectual property and equity policy.
Roth began his legal career as an associate attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell, where his practice focused on the firm’s nonprofit, family and individual clients. He assisted clients with the creation and administration of tax-exempt entities, philanthropic giving, tax planning, estate administration and other matters. He served pro bono as director of the New York–Presbyterian Hospital Wills Clinic.
Roth received his JD and BA degrees from Columbia University, where he was the 135th Editor in Chief of the Columbia Daily Spectator. He lives in Philadelphia.
ZEINAH SALAHI is a people-centered leader with over two decades of experience in strategy development and implementation, leading large and small teams, legal and policy analysis and managing organizational change. A former diplomat and attorney with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), she led or supported implementation of over a billion dollars in U.S. assistance and cross-functional teams across the US, Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Salahi is passionate about cultivating emerging leaders, creating meaningful opportunity for those that otherwise would not have access and strengthening institutions to better serve their constituents. She brings deep knowledge and experience in economic development, democracy, legal governance, humanitarian assistance and post-conflict initiatives.
Before leaving government service, Salahi most recently oversaw USAID’s work and programs for over 24 countries in Asia. She also served as a senior diplomat in Moldova, Kosovo, Bangladesh, Egypt and South Sudan. Salahi began her professional career as a corporate associate in New York, and later served as a negotiation advisor with a development assistance organization in the Middle East. She speaks Arabic, French, and Spanish with varying levels of proficiency, and holds a JD from Harvard Law School and a Bachelor’s degree in international relations from Boston University.
CHRISTINE STONEMAN is a collaborative and creative leader focused on civil rights and access to justice. She served as chief of the Civil Rights Division’s Federal Coordination and Compliance Section at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) until May of 2025. There, she led a government wide program designed to ensure consistent and effective compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and related statutes and executive orders. During her 25-year tenure at DOJ, Stoneman harnessed a range of enforcement and policy tools to advance equal protection, language access, environmental justice and non-discriminatory policing and healthcare.
Christine began her legal career in legal aid, including as a fellow/attorney at Legal Action of Wisconsin. She clerked for the Honorable John Reynolds of the US District Court of the Eastern District of Wisconsin. She earned her law degree at Georgetown Law, her undergraduate degree at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and studied at Monash University in Australia.
BRIAN TRACKMAN recently concluded a successful government career supporting strong financial markets in a variety of roles. Motivated by a strong commitment to public service, much of his work – beginning with research in Central America during law school to support digitalization and reform of land registries – has been at the intersection of law, policy and technology. Most recently, at the Securities and Exchange Commission, he was a senior legal advisor in the Division of Trading and Markets. Trackman advised on emerging technologies and IT system requirements to fulfill SEC objectives as well as contracting, internal compliance and business management matters. He also served as the division’s deputy data officer, participating in agency initiatives on data management, standards and governance.
Previously, at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Trackman served in the Office of International Affairs, Office of General Counsel and Chairman’s Office as interim speechwriter. He was a senior member of the CFTC’s FinTech Interdivisional Working Group and selected to help launch and build out a new innovation office, LabCFTC, tasked to shape the agency’s approach to AI, blockchain and other technology developments. In 2021, Trackman accepted a secondment to the Treasury Department, where he contributed to the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s Report on Climate-Related Financial Risk and gained insight about the ongoing energy transition. Before joining the government, Trackman worked in private practice, counseling electricity market participants on regulatory matters and assisting with complex litigation arising from the Year 2000 California energy crisis. He developed technical expertise of nascent electronic trading markets to distinguish legal activity from fraud. Trackman is a graduate of Amherst College and earned his law degree at Harvard Law School.
MARIA VAN BUREN served as a supervisory appellate, regulatory, and enforcement attorney at the U.S. Department of Labor for more than 25 years. As a counsel in the Fair Labor Standards Division of the Office of the Solicitor, she assisted her client agency to conceptualize, execute and defend nationwide enforcement programs, such as the Wage and Hour Division’s 2023-2024 Child Labor Enforcement Initiative, which employed groundbreaking enforcement and litigation techniques to combat a surge of unlawful child labor in meatpacking and chicken processing facilities across the United States. Her appellate cases before the U.S. Courts of Appeals addressed a variety of wage and hour issues, including the employee status of interns, employee misclassification, the proper payment of tipped employees and the enforcement of child labor laws. Her practice also included opinion and advice work, and representation of her client in audits and investigations conducted by Congress, the DOL Office of the Inspector General and the US Government Accountability Office.
Van Buren has extensive experience in traditional labor and employment law, with particular expertise in administrative law, and in the enforcement and administration of the Fair Labor Standards Act, Family and Medical Leave Act, and Occupational Safety and Health Act. In addition to her Courts of Appeals admissions, she is barred in the state of Maryland and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She is a graduate of Northeastern University School of Law and Boston College.
ELIZABETH WILCOX is a former civil servant with 20+ years of experience at the US Departments of State, Homeland Security and Treasury. In her last position, she provided advice on humanitarian assistance policy for the State Department’s Bureau of Foreign Assistance. Before that, she was the deputy director of the office advancing U.S. human rights and humanitarian assistance policy at the United Nations. She also served at the US Mission to the United Nations in New York, where her responsibilities included representing the United States in the Security Council’s 1540 Committee (nonproliferation) and the General Assembly’s Legal Committee. As an attorney-adviser in the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser, she worked on issues including nonproliferation and international law enforcement. She also was the editor of three annual editions of the Digest of United States Practice in International Law.
At the beginning of her career, Wilcox worked for the International Rescue Committee’s humanitarian programs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Pakistan. She received her BA from Yale University, MIA from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and JD from Harvard Law School.
About Northeastern University School of Law
The nation’s leader in experiential legal education since 1968, Northeastern University School of Law offers the longest-running, most extensive experience-based legal education program in the country. Northeastern guarantees its students unparalleled practical legal work experiences through its signature Cooperative Legal Education Program. More than 1,100 employers worldwide in a wide range of legal, government, nonprofit and business organizations participate in the program. With a focus on social justice and innovation, Northeastern University School of Law blends theory and practice, providing students with a unique set of skills and experiences to successfully practice law.
For more information, contact [email protected].