10/6/09--Continuing a tradition of grooming tomorrow's leaders of the bar and the community, the Boston Bar Association today named Kathleen Celio, a 2005 BC Law graduate, and Seth Orkand, a 2007 graduate, as two of fifteen lawyers to the 2009-2010 BBA Public Interest Leadership Program.

The Public Interest Leadership Program, entering its seventh year, is a 12 month leadership development program for lawyers in their first ten years of practice.  The program is built around the goal of identifying and developing attorneys to serve as civic, bar, and professional leaders of the future.

This 2009-2010 Public Interest Class includes lawyers in a variety of practice settings. They come from small, medium, and large law firms, legal services organizations, government agencies, and corporate legal departments.

Celio is an Assistant District Attorney in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in the Appellate Unit.  As an Assistant District Attorney, she researches, writes and argues appellate briefs on behalf of the Commonwealth in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the Massachusetts Appeals Court.  Prior to attending law school, Celio spent a year as a full-time volunteer through the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.

Orkand is an Associate in the Litigation/Controversy Department at WilmerHale.  He serves as the coordinator of WilmerHale's partnership with the Lawyers Clearinghouse.  He also represents pro bono clients in housing and Social Security Disability Insurance cases.  While in law school, he interned with the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Prior to law school, he worked in software design and consulting in Massachusetts and Texas.