Lani Guinier, AWA ’07

Today’s Academy of Women Achievers alumna Lani Guinier AWA ’07 is a lawyer, civil rights activist, and the first woman of color appointed to a tenured professorship at Harvard University Law School. Prior to her appointment at Harvard, she was a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She also headed the Voting Rights Project for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the 1980s and has worked in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department.

Since being inducted into AWA, Lani continues to be one of the nation’s top scholars in civil rights law, race-conscious public policy, and higher education access. Her latest book, The Tyranny of the Meritocracy: How Wealth Became Merit, Class Became Race and Higher Education Became a Gift from the Poor to the Rich, is set for release later this year.