Pathways: Tasmin Din ’10 (JD/MPH)

"At Northeastern, I found an environment where I was challenged but also nurtured and where my human rights background and my broad interests in international health were valued." — Tasmin Din ’10 (JD/MPH)

After five years engaged with advocacy and outreach in the human rights field, I found that many of the most effective and inspiring advocates I encountered were lawyers. Northeastern, with its exciting blend of experiential learning, public interest commitment and engaging faculty, seemed to be a perfect fit for me.

On my first co-op — working for a judge at the Massachusetts Superior Court in Boston — I worked on matters before the civil, criminal and business litigation sessions. It was a wonderful way to cement what I had learned as a first-year student. I then spent an academic year at Tufts University School of Medicine completing the coursework for a master’s in public health. I learned an entirely different set of research skills focused mainly on data analysis and interpretation. To apply these new skills to practice and integrate my legal training, I focused my master’s thesis on an assessment of refugee and immigrant health services in the commonwealth and helped craft policy recommendations for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to improve its services for the dynamic refugee and immigrant community in the state.

Over the next quarters, I immersed myself in studying the nexus between human rights policy and the ever-growing field of international business. I had my first taste of transactional law practice as a summer associate at Bingham McCutchen in Boston. I spent my next co-op as a fellow with the law school's Program on Human Rights and Global Economy, learning more about the field of transnational business and human rights. Applying my public health training and legal knowledge, I helped to design and implement a study to measure a transnational corporation's "poverty footprint" in two countries. 

For my last co-op, I spent a summer in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, working as a United Nations legal intern at the Victims Unit of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. This was one of the highlights of my time at Northeastern.

I am now serving as a fellow with the law school's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, where I research and investigate racially-motivated homicides relating to the 1960s US civil rights movement. I will be starting as an associate at Bingham McCutchen in January 2011.

Tasmin’s Pathway