Luisa Graden

Luisa Graden is a Harvard Law student and abolitionist. A native of the Idaho panhandle, she was raised in a vibrant small town that taught her to fight against the profit-driven extraction that threatens rural social fabric. Prior to law school, she found a calling in work that asks us to love people as they are—as a high school teacher, public defense investigator, and immigration organizer. She came to law school to gain tools for dismantling the legal system and rebuilding it through radical solidarity. At HLS, she’s found camaraderie in Harvard Defenders, the National Lawyer’s Guild, progressive legal scholarship, and student loan organizing. She spent her 1L summer working in anti-carceral survivor organizing in New Orleans and will soon be joining the Brooklyn Defenders family defense unit. She hopes to work as a public defender and organizer.