Vivek Kembaiyan L’20

Vivek is passionate about civil rights and social change, especially in the areas of digital privacy and racial justice. Vivek’s interest in social change is informed by his work prior to law school in progressive politics, including as a press secretary on the 2016 Bernie Sanders Presidential Campaign and in the U.S. Senate. He graduated from Yale College in 2010. At Penn Law, he is involved in student activism as a member of the student council, Advocacy Chair for the Black Law Students Association, and a board member of the school’s National Lawyers Guild chapter. He is also the founder of the student group Penn Law for Privacy and an Associate Editor on the Journal of Law and Social Change.

During his 1L summer, he interned on the Privacy Tools Team at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. There, he contributed to work by lawyers and computer scientists on projects implementing differential privacy algorithms in new contexts and researching municipal ordinances to regulate police use of surveillance technology. His work was made possible by a Public Interest Fellowship from the Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition. In his free time, Vivek enjoys running and cooking vegan food.