Krishna Ammisetty and Jorge Salles Diaz, both members of the Class of 2024, received support from the Peggy Browning Fund to gain experience as workplace justice lawyers.
Ammisetty and Salles Diaz joined a class of 109 Peggy Browning Fellows who received funding for 10-week summer fellowships at labor-related firms, unions, and legal advocacy organizations throughout the nation.
Ammisetty worked this summer at the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union in Washington, D.C. A native of Pikeville, Kentucky, he saw the importance of organizing labor to protect the interests of workers in his hometown, where many locals work in coal mining. As an undergraduate student at Vanderbilt, Ammisetty became involved in the efforts of his campus’ food workers and adjunct faculty to unionize and learned about the history of the labor movement and its potential to effect social change. Before coming to law school, he worked at the Legal Aid Society of Tennessee, working closely with marginalized communities and witnessing the ability of the labor movement to create better lasting conditions for those communities. At VLS, Ammisetty has served on the board of his school’s Labor and Employment law society and clerked at the National Labor Relations Board office. He plans to work as a labor lawyer after graduation.
Salles Diaz’s work in the labor movement started with his work supporting immigrant workers at poultry packing plants in Mississippi. As a student at VLS, he has served on the board of his local workers center, Workers’ Dignity. In summer 2022, he was a clerk on the farmworker team at the Virginia Legal Aid Justice Center, where he worked on an alienage discrimination claim at a poultry packing plant. Salles Diaz has also externed at Global Labor Justice, where he worked on a data brief about wage theft in the fast-fashion industry. He spent his summer as a Peggy Browning Fellow working as a law clerk at the Satter Ruhlen Law Firm in Syracuse, New York. He also plans to work as a labor lawyer after graduation.
The Peggy Browning Fund is a nonprofit organization established in memory of Margaret A. Browning, a prominent labor attorney and member of the National Labor Relations Board. The fund’s mission is to educate and inspire the next generation of advocates for workplace justice through fellowships, workers’ rights conferences, networking and other programs.
