Senior Marketing and Communications Intern for the Loeb Center Ava Zielinski ’25 chats with Alumni-in-Residence guest Jenna Collins ’08 to discuss her experiences as a student at Amherst College, her path to becoming a housing attorney and director of supervision and professional development at Community Legal Services, and what advice she has for students.
The transcription below has been edited for clarity.
Ava
Hello, everyone. I’m here on this lovely morning with Jenna Collins, class of 2008. Welcome, Jenna.
Jenna
Thank you.
Ava
We’re really excited to have you here at the Loeb Center visiting for Alumni-in-Residence.
Jenna
Excited to be here.
Ava
Awesome. So the first thing I like to do when speaking to alums is I like to get your elevator pitch. If some famous person walked into the elevator. Let’s say, like Zendaya walks in the elevator, like Chris Hemsworth walking into an elevator and you’re standing and there like, “Hi, So what do you do?” And you got to make it sound really cool. What would you say to that person about what you do, who you are?
Jenna
I would really want to impress Zendaya, so that’s a lot of pressure.
Ava
Exactly, exactly.
Jenna
So I am a housing attorney and nonprofit executive. I have been a housing attorney since 2011. I am really passionate about what’s called the housing first model. So it’s housing as a solution to some of society’s deepest problems. So I have represented thousands of tenants in eviction proceedings, risk of losing housing, habitability issues in their housing, and I have coupled that with housing advocacy work that is really centered on the intersection of housing, domestic violence, and racial justice. And then in my nonprofit management hat, which is the other half of my role, I’m really focused on equity work to support nonprofit staff and make great supervisors and provide great professional development. Because the best thing that we can do for our staff and the clients we serve in a nonprofit is to have great, happy staff.
Ava
Wow. That’s awesome. Okay, so they would be really impressed by you.
Jenna
I hope so. Fingers crossed.
Ava
That was great. That was perfect. So let’s rewind for a little bit.
Jenna
Yeah.
Ava
Coming to Amherst, is this what you expected to do? Did you have some sort of glimmer of what the future would look like while you were here? Or was this something that sort of molded itself and created its own story over time?
Jenna
Yeah. So I think when I was here prior to coming to college, I had thought I wanted to be a lawyer. And then I got to college and I was like, I don’t know.
Ava
Yeah, college tends to do that.
Jenna
And then what happened was I actually got called for jury duty in Northampton.
Ava
No way.
Jenna
And it was a case that was actually from Amherst campus.
Ava
Oh, wow.
Jenna
So I couldn’t serve as a juror, but I felt this charge being in the courtroom. It was two young female attorneys at the time. And I was like, oh, I do think I want to do this, but now it’s figuring out what do I want to do with a law degree.
Ava
Sure.
Jenna
I knew I wanted to be in the public interest. I knew I wanted to use a degree and the fancy education I got from Amherst and then my fancy law school education to help people. I didn’t know how I wanted to do that. I was really interested in domestic violence work when I was here. And I thought initially going to law school, that’s what I was going to do. I was going to do just. I was going to help get people who needed that and protection from abuse orders. That work is so important, but it is so heavy and it is so draining.
Ava
Yeah.
Jenna
And people burn out on that work really quickly. But since I graduated Amherst in ‘08 we had a financial crisis at the time.
Ava
Yeah, that’s not really the best environment to be leaving college.
Jenna
Yeah, but one of the things that came out of that, in addition to, like, am I ever going to find a job, was that people were really paying attention to the housing crisis that came along with it.
Ava
Sure.
Jenna
And then when I was in law school, I did some internships, I did some work in law school and kind of saw how housing was so connected to everything. And I could still do that domestic violence advocacy piece that I wanted and do this housing piece, which also then lended itself to all of these other issue areas like the racial justice piece, support for low-income communities, support for immigrants. It was like the world was my oyster.
Ava
It was the liberal arts of, you know, housing, justice, and public advocacy.
Jenna
Exactly.
Ava
That’s so cool. That’s amazing. Okay. So I’m sure that it was a little bit of a winding journey to get there. Could you give us a little bit of a snapshot of how you got to be in the position you are today?
Jenna
Yeah. So as I said, I graduated in ‘08, which was the Great Recession.
Ava
Oh, yes.
Jenna
So there were no jobs. And it was also actually really hard to get into grad school because everyone was like, There are no jobs. We’re going to go to grad school.
Ava
Exactly.
Jenna
I was lucky enough to get into law school, so I went to law school. At law school, I did something really, really valuable that I would really advise people who are interested in law school do. I did what’s called clinical work in law school, which is you actually get to practice as a student attorney on the ground.
Ava
Wow.
Jenna
Yeah. So I did a two-year law clinic that was the Legal Aid Bureau. So it was like low-income legal services work. And I did family law and housing law in that clinic. And it not only makes you more confident and gives you experience, but for me, I was then able to use my summers in law school to like, I’m going to work for the ACLU and try big impact litigation and to get a different flavor of things. And I came out of it being like, Oh, I want to do both big impact litigation and advocacy and represent clients individually. So I ended up getting a fellowship at an amazing organization in Philadelphia, Community Legal Services. And actually two of my roommates from college were in Philadelphia, which is why I even considered going there. I am not from Philly. I knew no one there, but I was like two of my best friends are there.
Ava
Might as well.
Jenna
Right. So I got a fellowship at this amazing organization that does both direct client representation and big policy advocacy. So I was there for a year, but you know, because of the aforementioned Great Recession, non-profits didn’t have funding at the time. So normally when you get a law school fellowship, you get hired on after the fellowship, but nobody had money to hire anybody. But I made good relationships in the year that I was doing the fellowship. So my supervisor knew of an opening and an organization called the AIDS Law Project for a housing attorney, and she helped me get that job, which [shows] how important it is to build relationships in your work. So I worked at the AIDS Law Project as their only housing attorney for five years. Then I went back to Community Legal Services, did housing work for a couple of years. Then I had a baby and I was like, What do I want? I’m on leave. What am I going to do now? And I had been really interested in supporting our, we had a lot of really talented what in the business they called diverse staff. But it’s staff of color, staff with disabilities, staff with nonconforming gender identities. And I had really loved serving as a supervisor and support for staff who weren’t seeing themselves reflected traditionally in the longer-term lawyers. So when I came back from parental leave in early COVID–
Ava
Oh, this is a great time to go back to work.
Jenna
Right. They had created a new role at my organization that was the director of supervision and professional development, and I was like, Well, can I do that and still be a housing attorney? Because that’s my first passion. And they said, Absolutely. So now I have a role that is a double role of my housing attorney role and one that is like so based in staff support. And that’s kind of how I ended up there, is I loved doing the like mentorship support piece and it was like, Oh, well, what if I did it for all 200 staff members instead of like the ten people I collected?
Ava
Yeah. Yeah, That’s so cool. Wow. Okay. So it is very interesting to hear kind of your art as a lawyer, someone doing something that you’ve been so passionate about for so long. But I’m really curious to hear how you’ve been able to step into that leadership role and what that process has been like of learning to become a mentor in learning to be someone who is taking care of all these other people who are looking up to you.
Jenna
Yeah, I think the leadership role is really complicated.
Ava
Yeah.
Jenna
Comes with ups and downs. So I think the first thing stepping into it was that it was really amazing to be able to take another thing that I really love, which is supporting the people around me. I love to be a member of a team. It’s like my favorite thing. And all of these skills that I had developed and had to develop over the early part of my career when there weren’t a ton of lawyers that looked like me that I was working with and be able to support staff that way. What gets complicated is thinking about going from those ten people that you’ve collected to be able to create a system that’s supporting 200 staff members that are not just lawyers and paralegals, they’re also H.R. and I.T. and other managers. So thinking about a larger scale was one of the issues. And then the other piece of this is like, I just am not a boss. I don’t want to be a boss. I don’t want to be anyone’s supervisor or whatever. I don’t want to be the person who’s making decisions about whether or not we’re going to continue with hybrid work. I want to support staff. I don’t want to think about the budget.
Ava
Yeah, because you know everyone loves to think about the budget, right?
Jenna
Right.
Ava
Super great. Sexy topic right there.
Jenna
Exactly. But stepping into this and stepping into that piece of it was really hard. It was a real struggle for me. And that first year that I was promoted into this role, every time I finished a management meeting because we were in COVID, I was home sharing an office with my husband, and I’d look at him and go, I’m quitting. And he was like, You can’t quit. We need that money, dear.
Ava
You’re like, Yeah, I hate that you’re right. Great.
Jenna
But then you start to realize that having a different perspective in those leadership rooms actually really matters, especially when you’re like me and you’re so interested in staff support. And the millennial, Gen Z staff had a very different view of what they wanted work to look like and to be able to be that voice in the room and to hear from the people that I built relationships with about what was valuable to them. And so like hybrid work, I love hybrid work. I want hybrid work for everyone all the time, forever where it’s possible, right?
Ava
Yeah.
Jenna
But to have somebody in the room who is really representing that voice as opposed to what might have been the more traditional model up until that point really mattered. So it was hard, but it felt important. And now I’ve been doing it for four years.
Ava
Amazing. Well, congratulations. I’m glad you’ve gotten to settle into the roles and more.
Jenna
Thank you.
Ava
I’m also curious to hear from that balance of continuing to be a housing attorney, getting to work with individual clients, and then also being able to look at the big picture, managing a lot of people. What exactly does your day-to-day look like? Is it all over the place? Is there a very specific routine and structure that you’ve sort of fallen into over the past couple of years?
Jenna
Yeah, I think. So this is going to be complicated now. So I am still I’m on parental leave for my second child. I’m about to go back to work in April. But what that means is the landscape for low-income people has totally changed in the last two months.
Ava
Yeah.
Jenna
So it’s hard to know when I get back to the office what my day-to-day is going to look like for the housing attorney piece. I do know already, and I talked about this a little bit last night, that some of the cuts and rollbacks that we’re seeing with the Trump administration are requiring a real policy advocacy focus. And so even while I’m on leave, I’m starting to do advocacy work around pulling back rules that were meant to fight segregation in cities. So next week, even though I’m on leave, I’m going to be talking to reporters. I’m going to be drafting comments to send to the federal government to say, Don’t do this. This is bad.
Ava
Yeah.
Jenna
So I know that some of it will be focused on the way that the systems are [that] my clients depend on is crumbling around them. But before I was on leave, my days they varied a little bit. I mean, sometimes my day was just full of boring, like staff management, like back office stuff. And I don’t mean the meeting with staff and supporting them. That piece I love. I mean, the, Oh, we’ve got to talk about the budget and the fundraisers and whatever. But a lot of my day is balanced between providing individual staff support. So staff will come meet with me when they’re like, We don’t know what to do next in our career, or we want to build this skill out to help clients. And then I will help them think through how we’re going to do that and what resources our organization has to support them in doing that. Or people who are supervisors, want to be supervisors, or have not a great supervisor will come to me for support, and I love that piece of my job. My husband didn’t like overhearing these conversations during COVID and was like, You sound like a staff therapist. And I was like, Yes, and I love it.
Ava
I’m in my niche. In my vibe.
Jenna
Right. And then was balanced with the pieces of advocacy that I was doing, which before I went out on leave was a little more local-facing because we had a lot of support from the federal government. And then I am representing fewer clients now than I once was, although I am still representing clients. So then balancing that with like meeting with clients on intake who are coming in for the first time, providing support for new staff who are representing clients around intake, and then having my small pool of my own clients that are mostly now cases that are really, really complicated cases that involve domestic violence, for example, because that’s an area of focus for me.
Ava
Sure, sure, sure. Wow. So you have a lot on your plate, to say the least. And as you mentioned, as people shift into this a little bit more, considering the new administration, the federal budget rollbacks, the DEI rollbacks, a lot of rollbacks across the board, how do you foresee potentially your position or the position of the group that you work for, their strategy changing?
Jenna
Yeah. So I think the strategy is changing in two huge ways. One is that on the federal level, we’re suddenly on defense mode, which is like we have to be responding to some of these things are things we anticipated and some of them are things we couldn’t have imagined in a million years. Like we couldn’t have imagined in a million years that Elon Musk is going to be setting housing priorities for the country.
Ava
I don’t think anyone could have imagined that.
Jenna
Right. So there is the defensive piece of that, especially because a lot of the people that are in the administration now don’t actually know anything about the programs or departments they’re leading. And so they’re making these decisions that are like not based in any information. And so we have to go in and be like, Hey, hey, wait a minute. At least you may still make a decision we don’t like, but at least understand what you’re doing. So on the federal level, we’re on this like a defense mode, but it gives us a unique opportunity to really shift our focus more to the local level and be a little more grassroots in our work. So beyond the offense at the local level, which is like you’re going to roll back civil rights protections at the federal level. Now, we get to go back to the state of Pennsylvania and hammer them and be like, you can no longer see that the federal government has it handled. You guys need to put protections in place so that this can’t happen again. And so it’s kind of that like dual strategy at the same time I work for a nonprofit, we depend on federal funding and we depend on federal support. And so it’s also going to mean doing more with less, which is the worst.
Ava
Yeah, that part’s not very fun. And honestly, I wish you the best of luck through it as this continues to happen. And I hope that it all really works out. And finally, as we’re we’re kind of finishing up our conversation, there’s a lot of students here who are LJST majors or are interested in law, a lot of students that I know who are interested in going to law school. And then there’s a lot of students who are also interested in the public sector, and they’re feeling a little anxious right now.
Jenna
Yeah.
Ava
There’s plenty of students that just don’t know if a program they’re interested in will be cut next week. And it’s a little bit similar in a slightly different way to kind of what you and your graduating class were going through with that uncertainty of what jobs will be around and what won’t. So based on your experience there and based on your knowledge of what’s been going on as of late, what sort of advice can you offer to students right now who might be feeling a little bit of that, that squeeze?
Jenna
Yeah. So I will say that for people who are interested in the public sector, state and local government has been really, really short-staffed over the last decade, especially since COVID. So if you’re interested in the public sector, if you’re interested in government work, like maybe pause on federal government work for a few years, but build up that experience at state and local government, which is a great place to do it. But if you’re interested in doing the public-facing work, public sector work, that is a little more like public interest, nonprofit based, we’re going to be depending on looking for unique sources of funding. So it’s going to be and I don’t like this either. And I actually had a mentor in law school once tell me like I needed to go network. And I was like, But I hate networking, Professor Grossman. And he was like, I know that you do Jenna, but you have to do it. But some of it is about networking and is about building up relationships because some of those relationships sometimes will be somebody who will be like, I would love to fund a project where I can place you at an organization and fund you for two or three years, maybe until some of this like uncertainty on the federal level settles down. So I think that’s a big part of it. I also think don’t lose hope is part of the advice that I would give. Having graduated at a time of incredible economic uncertainty, there were no jobs for anybody, which is so different than how it’s been since COVID. Like we haven’t been able to hire because there’s been so many jobs. It’s a very different world than when I graduated and maybe a very different world for you all when you’re graduating. Don’t lose hope. You will find something. You are all in an incredibly privileged position coming from Amherst College that it may take a little bit longer, but it’s there and you’re going to figure something out. And even if it means for like a year or six months, you have to take the totally less desirable, less sexy position to just be able to pay the rent for six months. There is nothing wrong with just needing to pay the rent for six months and at some point that needing to pay the rent for six months job is going to pay off into something better.
Ava
Absolutely. That’s wonderful advice. Amherst students listen up. Got a lot of good things to say. Okay, awesome. Well, thank you so much for this conversation.
Jenna
Yes.
Ava
It’s been wonderfully enlightening. And yeah, we’re good to go.
Jenna
Great.
Ava
Cool.
