“My goal is to help people to transcend barriers ... so that we can all move forward together.
Carmelyn Malalis ’01
Employment discrimination. Sexual harassment. Bigotry. These are the types of offenses that Carmelyn Malalis has fought throughout her career, mostly recently as chair and commissioner of the New York City Commission on Human Rights for seven years and now as head of impact at the production company and financier Level Forward.
“At the New York City Commission on Human Rights, my challenge was not just enforcing the city’s Human Rights Law, but also educating the public about why the protections of the law are so important. We talked about fair housing and recovering from the trauma of violence. For a lot of people, their jobs inform their most basic sense of identity,” says Carmelyn, who previously practiced with Outten & Golden and Sullivan & Cromwell.
At Level Forward, Carmelyn oversees all aspects of the company’s impact work, including impact partnerships, activations, programming and learning workshops, impact measurement and the Level Forward Impact Advisory Group.
“In everything I do, my goal is to help people to transcend those barriers, to help them imagine walking in someone else’s shoes so that we can all move forward together.”
US District Court for the Southern District of New York, New York, New York
On her first co-op, Carmelyn worked under the supervision of Judge Ronald Ellis.
Kaplan, Friedman & Associates, Boston, Massachusetts
For her second co-op, Carmelyn worked for one of Boston’s most respected immigration law firms.
Sullivan & Cromwell, New York, New York
Carmelyn decided to explore the large firm setting, so she headed to Sullivan & Cromwell, a leading international law firm which was founded more than 130 years ago. This co-op resulted in a post-graduate job offer for Carmelyn.
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, Asia-Pacific, Manila, The Philippines
Carmelyn headed to the The Philippines for her final co-op, where she focused on social justice issues.