Ashlyn Phelps

Ashlyn Phelps is a 2023 summer legal fellow at the Human Trafficking Legal Center. She is a rising 3L at Fordham University School of Law.

Phelps is a member of the Fordham Law Review and was a regional quarterfinalist on Fordham’s Jessup International Law Moot Court Team as well as a Crowley Scholar in international human rights, where she worked on a project focused on migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong SAR. As the 2022–23 chapter director of International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) Fordham, Phelps connected over 30 students with more than 15 events and projects to support refugees and asylum seekers and to learn about issues in refugee and asylum law. This coming fall, she will be pursuing a masters of law (LLM) in European law at the Panthéon-Assas University in Paris, France.

After graduation, Phelps plans to work in public interest law with an international focus as an advocate for human trafficking victims and survivors. She was largely inspired by her fellowship experience with International Justice Mission’s (IJM) Anti-forced Labor Slavery Programs in Southeast Asia, where she developed policy and advocacy materials and contributed to a situational analysis of the Thai fishing and seafood industry. Since then, she has worked as a legal intern with Landesa on tenure rights and environmental protections in Cambodia and as a judicial extern for the Honorable Kiyo A. Matsumoto of the Eastern District of New York.

A native of Maryland, Phelps received her bachelor’s degree in bioengineering from the University of Maryland, College Park. She previously worked in healthcare software and church communications.