Jennie Pasquarella ’96

“I display my courage in the kinds of cases I’m willing to take, the arguments I’m willing to make, and that I fight for things that people often turn away from because it seems too hard or impossible,” said human rights attorney Jennie Pasquarella ’96.

As a student who attended The Bush School from Fifth to Twelfth Grade, Jennie became deeply involved in several service projects, where her desire for advocacy took root. After completing her senior project with an international humanitarian organization called CARE in Peru, she decided to dive deeper into human rights work.

“It was a really powerful experience for me,” Jennie shared. “As a junior, I went to Indonesia on a Bush foreign travel trip and then spent the summer in Peru with one of my classmates, who was from Peru. The combination of those two experiences cemented my interest in international issues.”

For her Senior Project, Jennie delivered large quantities of school supplies to remote schools in the Andes of northern Peru and worked on art projects with children at the schools. Through this unforgettable experience, vibrant murals were created by both Lower School Bush students and children from the Andean villages.

“I think that this experience gave me more confidence and direction,” Jennie said. “Getting to travel is a huge gift that I think most kids do not get in elementary, middle, or high school.”

Jennie began attending Bard College and then transferred to Barnard College. By then, she was deeply interested in Latin America and sought to learn more about how to take action to support foreign affairs and address international challenges. After graduation, she lived in Mexico for six months, where she dove headfirst into her work, supporting indigenous rights movements and observing human rights abuses by the Mexican military.

“It wasn’t until I started doing work in Chiapas, Mexico, that I became exposed to human rights violations, learning how to report on them and how that can change conditions on the ground for people,” Jennie said. “That’s what then led me into a career in law, which was the last thing I thought I’d ever do.”

Before attending law school at Georgetown University and being accepted into the Public Interest Law Scholars Program, Jennie maintained strong connections to Bush by leading an Upper School group to Chile with former faculty John Marshall. Through this experience, she reflected fondly on her time as a student and how her education ignited her desire to nurture an open mind and speak up for others.

“I feel very grateful for the teachers and staff at Bush who stepped up and allowed me to curate my own education, which I think is what’s so special about Bush,” said Jennie. “It encourages kids to take ownership of the learning experience, which is important in getting kids passionate, invested in their community, and discovering what makes them tick.”

Jennie harnessed that passion and went on to serve as the director of immigrants’ rights and a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California, where she worked for nearly sixteen years. Now the executive director of the Seattle Clemency Project, Jennie has dedicated her career to defending the rights of the most vulnerable in our society, especially immigrants. The Seattle Clemency Project is a small nonprofit that was created to address the crisis of mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the state’s criminal justice system. 

“In Washington state, we have the unfortunate reality of not having parole,” Jennie said. “If a person is sentenced to prison, they are required to serve the entirety of their sentence without the ability to be released early, even when they demonstrate full rehabilitation or are serving sentences that are today understood to be excessive. The Seattle Clemency Project was designed to help forge pathways to get people out of prison who don’t deserve to be there any longer.”

Jennie sheds light on the fact that people often serve longer prison sentences for crimes they’ve already been duly punished for and supports the power of rehabilitation, highlighting what it truly means for individuals to mature, grow, and change through their time served.

A main feature of Jennie’s work at the Seattle Clemency Project is in providing legal services to immigrants facing deportation for decades-old criminal convictions, showcasing the unjust and punitive nature of our immigration system. Thousands of longtime residents in Washington state, who often arrived as young children, now are facing deportation for the first time based on decades-old criminal convictions from when they were teenagers or young adults. In 2025, Jennie and her team launched a rapid-response effort to free longtime community members from immigration detention and stop their deportations by mobilizing teams of lawyers and fighting their deportations in court. In the past year, their work has kept dozens of families together and prevented community members from being deported to countries with which they have no connection.

Jennie has tackled many hurdles throughout her career, and fighting for those who have otherwise been neglected or forgotten by the legal system is not easy.

“There are many challenges in this field of work, but one main challenge is financial,” Jennie shared. “I’ve worked for nonprofits my whole life that pay very little and demand a lot out of you—a lot of your time and emotional capacity. Being in the law isn’t always easy because of institutional challenges—there’s the frustration that the law doesn’t always serve justice.”

After working in law for twenty years, Jennie understands the challenges of her role and is currently fighting to prevent immigrant clients from being deported. Even though it’s a difficult and emotional task, Jennie credits Bush for fostering her ability to invite perspectives from around the world. 

“I loved every moment I spent at Bush, and I felt like it was the greatest gift that I could have been given as a young person,” said Jennie. “I felt seen and was given an opportunity to pursue the things I was passionate about. I was encouraged, supported, and exposed to obscure literature, comparative religion, and the kinds of classes you would expect in college. I started getting more interested in public service and international issues after my Senior Project in Peru. Had I not been able to do that, I would not be the person that I am today, because those experiences were so formative.”