Bob Fels welcomed Katherine back to Rotary Melbourne and described how she had successfully completed a Master of Law from Duke University, North Carolina (a top 10 US University).  Katherine had already graduated from Monash University with First Class Honours in Law and a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in philosophy and politics.

She was the youngest Vice President of Liberty Victoria - a leading civil rights organisation - which is testimony to her social conscience.  Rather than being a financially well rewarded barrister, Katherine has secured a job with the Policy and Specialised Legal Division of the Office of Public Prosecutions.

In her presentation,  Katherine said:  "A little over a year ago I was standing in the same place talking about my background (as Vice President of Liberty Victoria) and my goals for the year at Duke - I said I wanted to study and live in the US in particular to learn from organisations and academics working on social justice issues.

At Duke, I had the opportunity to do that and much more. For those who don't know, Duke is an historic University in a town called Durham, North Carolina.

Being in the South, Duke is very much at the centre of law, activism and human rights in the US. I then provided three highlights of my time at Duke, which included:

• Working for the Duke Innocence project - working in a group of students supervised by a professor on a claim of innocence;
• A subject called Criminal Justice Policy Lab, where we had different speakers each week - we heard from them about their research/ work and shared our research with them. Speakers included judges, academics, psychiatrists and the Durham County District Attorney;
• A subject called Advanced Constitutional Law: A History of the Civil Rights Movement - where we learned about the history for civil rights activism and how those activists influenced the Courts and Congress."

We wish Katherine the very best in her chosen field and look forward to hearing from her in the future.

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