I met Yael Zakai at a nonprofit event a few months ago, and knew I had to profile her on my blog. I felt it was especially timely to share with you as we’ve been talking about living single in the nonprofit sector, and Yael actually met her husband while volunteering at a nonprofit! And he works for a nonprofit as well, so they are truly a do gooder couple. Beyond that, Yael is simply someone you should know: a beautiful spirit gracing the nonprofit sector in Washington, DC. She could be making mega benjamins as a hotshot lawyer, but instead she is working for social change. Yael Zakai is a Senior Attorney at The Children’s Law Center, an organization which provides legal services to children and families in the District of Columbia to ensure that every child has a safe home, a meaningful education and a healthy mind and body.
How She Met Her Hubby
Curtis and I, as high school sweethearts, spent the summer between high school and college as AmeriCorps members volunteering together at DC Central Kitchen, delivering food to children who were dependent on free lunch for their daily nourishment, but wouldn’t have had access to that lunch during the summer time when school was out, if not for DC Central Kitchen’s summer foods program. Curtis and I got to see firsthand the conditions that kids in the most impoverished corners of DC were living in, and we have both committed our careers since then to work that benefits those communities and the families that live there.
Race Matters
Ethnically, I identify as Jewish, with an Israeli background- actually, my father was a Kurdish Jew born in Iraq and fled to Israel with his family as an infant, due to the danger faced by Kurdish Jews in Iraq. My husband Curtis is African American.
How She is Doing Her Part to Change the World
At The Children’s Law Center, Yael represents low-income families through the Health Access Project- a medical-legal collaborative aimed at achieving better health outcomes for the District’s low-income children. To that end, she advocates in a variety of legal areas for her client families, including access to education and special education services, housing, family law, public benefits, and access to health and mental health care advocacy. Yael also serves as a Policy Attorney at The Children’s Law Center, advocating for an improved mental health system for children in D.C. Additionally, Yael is a Lecturer with the African American Studies Department at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she teaches an undergraduate seminar entitled Gender, Sexuality and the Black Family.
Her Educational Background
Yael graduated from Stanford Law School in May 2005, as a Graduate With Distinction and a recipient of the Rhode Public Interest Award. While in law school, Yael represented children in a variety of education proceedings at the Stanford Youth and Education Law Clinic, and clerked for the DC Public Defender Service’s Juvenile Services Program and Juvenile Trial Division, the San Francisco Juvenile Public Defender, and the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. Throughout law school, Yael taught students in juvenile hall and in probation schools about the law and their legal rights through Stanford Streetlaw and Fresh Lifelines for Youth. In 2002, Yael graduated summa cum laude from the University of Maryland with a BA in History and a BA in African-American Studies. She is a 2005 recipient of the Frederick B. Abramson Public Interest Fellowship.
Yael is certainly a role model for how we can all use our unique talents to do our part to change the world. What about you? What’s the smartest thing YOU can do?
Cozality on 
bsaunders on 
