WESTFIELD and PASSAIC, NEW JERSEY – July 15, 2025

Melissa Reyes, a former Program Resource Fellow (2024-2025) in More Than Bootstraps (MTB) and recent graduate of Dartmouth College, has been selected for the Sonia and Celina Sotomayor Judicial Internship Program. She will serve as an intern at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

The Sotomayor Program’s College Division includes (1) an LSAT boot camp to focus the college students on the best law school to which they can gain entry, (2) rigorous academic, professional, and personal programming from legal research and writing to professional branding, wellness coaching, and soft skills trainings, and (3) a judicial internship experience to provide practical experience and mentorship opportunities. The goal of the program is to support diverse and underrepresented college students who are committed to bringing their unique voice to the legal field and provide students with the skills and resources necessary to successfully apply to law school and become a practicing attorney.

Melissa, a 2021 graduate of Passaic Preparatory Academy, is a QuestBridge, Gates, and Beinecke scholar at Dartmouth, where she graduated in June 2025 as a salutatorian with a major in Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies and a minor in geography. She studied Latino communities and immigrant labor organizing in the United States. In 2022, Melissa served as a New Jersey Governor’s Hispanic Fellow and interned at Immigration and American Citizen Organization (IACO). 

At Dartmouth, she served as a co-director for the FUERZA Farmworkers’ Fund, an organization working with migrant farmworkers in New Hampshire. Within MTB, she has invested her time and energy in supporting her peers and her mentees, helping others find their way to and through higher education. After completing the Sotomayor Judicial Internship Program, Melissa will launch a post-graduate public service project with Mi Casa es Puebla, supported by a $30,000 Richard D. Lombard ’53 Public Service Fellowship from Dartmouth. She will create legal education resources, conduct oral history interviews, and help build community programming for Mexican immigrants from Puebla.

“I’m excited for the opportunities to keep learning how to advocate for immigrant and working-class communities like the one I come from. As the daughter of Poblano immigrants and someone who grew up in Passaic, these experiences mean a lot. I’m especially grateful to More Than Bootstraps for always encouraging me to put myself out there.”

“Melissa is incredibly talented and hard-working, and her success reflects the potential of many first-generation college students to excel in higher education,” said Audrey Fisch, president of More Than Bootstraps. “We are thrilled that Melissa is able to participate in the Sotomayor Judicial Internship Program so that she has all the resources she needs to continue on her professional and academic journey.”

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Grants and donations to More Than Bootstraps fund the monthly stipends that allow the high school and college students in the program some time and space to devote to their professional development and college-going activities while still meeting their financial responsibilities. Interested donors are invited to visit the MTB website: www.morethanbootstraps.org/donate.

More Than Bootstraps is a nonprofit created by educators seeking to level the playing field and remove some of the substantial barriers that first-generation college students encounter in accessing and succeeding in higher education. More Than Bootstraps employs a near-peer mentoring model to create a community of success. College students from the community return to guide their younger peers in the community through the college search, application, and assimilation process. These leaders, working as a mentoring cohort, in turn strengthen their own college-going identities and improve their own chances of success in higher education.

Students are selected based on their desire to attend college and their commitment to the program rather than grade point average or test scores. All students in the MTB program receive stipends, laptop computers, and access to emergency resources to help them with the many non-tuition expenses of higher education. 

About the Sonia and Celina Sotomayor Judicial Internship Program

The Sotomayor Program has helped over 400 high school, college, and law school students gain experience with the legal system and develop their professional skills. For more information, visit https://www.scsjip.org/. 

More Than Bootstraps is a 501(c)3 organization, Tax ID 83-2245008.

Media Contact:

Audrey Fisch, Ph.D.

President, More Than Bootstraps

(908) 397-0893

audrey@morethanbootstraps.org