Deborah A. Batts Scholars

2025 Batts Fellow
Brandon Adamson ‘28

Brandon Adamson is one of our 2026 Batts Research Fellows. He is an evening student at Fordham Law and works in banking during the day, where he works on projects at the intersection of consumer finance, regulatory accountability, and fairness. 

Brandon's work in consumer finance exposed him to how seemingly neutral policies can produce very different outcomes for different communities. His commitment to racial justice has also been shaped by community work, including teaching math and English to primary school students in Kenya and helping organize a multi-mile march and overnight sit-in at a local police station after the police killing of a young Black man near his college campus. 

As a Batts Fellow, Brandon is interested in how narratives about “crime” and “risk” shape legal and policy responses to Black communities. He hopes to build a career in private practice that uses a big-firm platform for rigorous advocacy, high-impact pro bono, and work that measurably improves outcomes for communities with the least margin for error.

2025 Batts Fellow
Briana Bowen ‘27

Briana is from Waldorf, Maryland. In 2023, she graduated from Clemson University with a B.A. in political science and a minor in legal studies. During her undergraduate years, Briana served as co-chair of the Clemson University NAACP Political Action Committee and spent three years as an intern with Clemson Votes, a nonpartisan voting coalition. These roles culminated in her presenting research on strategies to increase voter turnout among college students at the 2022 ACC Meeting of the Minds at the University of Virginia.

In recognition of her work with these and other organizations, she received the 2023 Clemson Martin Luther King Jr. Excellence in Service Award. In the summer of 2022, Briana interned at Brady United, a gun violence prevention nonprofit in Washington, D.C., where she worked as an organizer and helped plan community outreach in predominantly Black neighborhoods.

After graduating, she interned with America Votes, supporting more than 400 organizations in their efforts to protect the right to vote. Through all of this work, she gained a perspective on how to effect the progress she hopes to see for disenfranchised people. She believes it is integral that timely scholarship and truth be produced if change is to be achieved. Because of this belief, Briana is delighted to be a Batts Fellow.

2025 Batts Fellow
Diana Kennedy ‘27

Diana is one of our 2025 Batts Research Fellows. She grew up in Ossining, New York and attended Hunter College and was in the CUNY Macaulay Honors Program. She graduated from undergrad in 2022, and majored in Women and Gender Studies with a double-minor in Political Science and Music.

While at Hunter she was an avid student organizer, and co-founded CUNY for Abolition and Safety, a student group dedicated to supporting abolitionist organizing and interrogating the way CUNY and other public institutions prop up the prison industrial complex. After graduating from Hunter, Diana worked for two years as a legal analyst for a plaintiff-side class action and mass torts firm. She came to law school with an interest in pursuing public interest law, specifically workers’ rights and union-side representation.

At Fordham she is an e-board member for Advocates for the Incarcerated and the Labor and Employment Law society. She is excited to work closely with the Center for Race, Law and Justice and to support the work of the center’s esteemed faculty.  Her research interests include institutional and structural racism undergirding our legal system and prison abolition.

2023 Batts Fellow
Shanice Scantlebury '25

2023 Batts Fellow
Yannick Twumasi '25

2023 Batts Fellow
Cristian Vega '25