As a staff attorney at the nonprofit Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), Ameya Gehi (BA ’18, JD ’21) works to “ensure that corporate polluters are complying with laws that protect public health and the environment.”
Among her cases are those involving violations of the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which governs the disposal of solid and hazardous waste.
“My day-to-day work varies, but it always centers around different stages of litigation,” says Gehi, who is based in CLF’s Boston office. “That can look like fact research, talking to witnesses and affected community members, drafting pleadings and briefs, and lots of legal research and writing. Overall, it's a fantastic work experience. I’m always learning or applying things I have learned in new situations.”
Gehi learned about environmental protection laws in high school, which sparked an interest in becoming a lawyer and advocating for the environment through the legal system.
A Double Wolverine, Gehi earned her undergraduate degree from the Program in the Environment (PitE) and her JD from Michigan Law School, completing both programs back to back because she was “impatient to get into the advocacy world.”
Gehi says her PitE education, with its strong environmental science foundation and emphasis on research, is something she draws upon every day. “Environmental law can get very technical very fast, so it’s helpful to have taken classes in the basics of environmental science and have translatable skills like knowing how to read a peer-reviewed article.”
Though recent environmental rollbacks have made her CLF work more challenging, Gehi says she is grateful to be in this space. “I love that I get to help polluted communities by making defendants invest in cleanup or mitigation,” she says, “while simultaneously using litigation to force compliance to prevent future harm.”
