Yazmine Nichols

A woman wearing glasses and a dark blazer.

Adjunct Professor of Law

Yazmine Nichols is an Adjunct Professor at the Fordham University School of Law, where she teaches a course, titled, American Law and the Influence of Religion and was awarded the Adjunct Professor of the Year Award in 2025. She is also the Associate Director of the Wilf Impact Center for Public Interest Law at New York Law School.

Prior to joining the Wilf Impact Center in 2024, Yazmine served as Legislative Counsel at the New York City Council, where she conducted legal research, drafted local laws, and advised City Council Members and their staff regarding the legality of proposed legislation. Prior to her position at the New York City Council, Yazmine worked as a Justice Catalyst Fellow at the National ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project, where she challenged unjust pretrial conditions of release such as exorbitant fees, electronic monitors, and mandatory drug testing that keep pretrial persons in a cycle of debt and incarceration.

Yazmine earned her Juris Doctorate from Fordham University School of Law in 2020, receiving the Public Interest Valedictorian Award and the Dean’s Special Achievement Award for making a singular and distinctive contribution to the school community. A year later, she received the Fordham Law Black Law Student Association’s  (BLSA) Trailblazer Award in 2021. Before attending law school, Yazmine earned a Master of Arts from Union Theological Seminary in 2017, completing an interdisciplinary concentration in Christian Social Ethics and Systematic Theology. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Williams College in 2015, double majoring in English and Religion.