Cynthia Morales '92 to Speak at IMSA Convocation in August

For Immediate Release, July 2003
For comment, contact Brenda Buschbacher at (630) 907-5033

Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy® (IMSA) alumna Cynthia Morales '92 will be the featured Convocation speaker this year. The IMSA Convocation ceremony marks the beginning of the IMSA academic year.

Cynthia is a Law Clerk to the Hon. Cecilia M. Altonaga, United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Before this, she was an Associate in the Miami office of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, L.L.P. She received the firm's 2003 Pro Bono Award for her involvement with the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center representing unaccompanied minors in INS custody.

Cynthia earned a B.S. in Plant Biology from the University of Illinois in 1996 and a J.D., cum laude, from Tulane Law School in 2001. In a previous interview with IMSA Librarian Marti Guarin, Cynthia said she chose Tulane for its Environmental Law program, which enabled her to combine her science background with law in a way that can help people.

While in law school, she was Senior Managing Editor of the Environmental Law Journal and a student attorney in the Environmental Law Clinic. As a student attorney, she had her own clients and cases, representing people below the poverty line from the area on the Mississippi River called 'Cancer Alley'. This area received its dubious distinction because of pollution. As a student attorney, she also argued an appeal in the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana.

While an undergraduate, Cynthia studied abroad at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Cumbaya, Ecuador. She also participated as a 1993 National Museum of Natural History Research Training Program Intern and returned to the museum in the summer of 1994 as a recipient of a Pew Fellowship in Systematics.

Today, Cynthia serves as a 2002-2004 Director on the Dade County Bar Association Young Lawyers Section and as a 2003-2005 member of the Florida Bar Young Lawyers Division Board of Governors.

Cynthia has great fondness and appreciation for her time as an IMSA student. As she told Guarin, I wouldn't be where I am or the person I am without IMSA. I feel because of the environment I was in, I succeeded.