Evelyn Cedeño Naik

Evelyn Cedeño-Naik joined Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project as a Staff Attorney in January 2015. She is now the Program Manager for the Immigration Court Help-Desk (ICH). Mrs. Cedeño-Naik is from Guayaquil, Ecuador and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of three. Issues relating to race and immigration are what drove her undergraduate studies and motivated her to attend law school. She earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School, and her Bachelors of Arts in Political Science and Sociology from the University of California, Irvine. During law school, she interned with the United States Attorney’s Office and the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office; and acted as Race and Curriculum Chair for Michigan’s Journal of Race & Law and Secretary-Treasurer for Michigan’s Legal Advocates for Children and Youth. One of her formative experiences during law school was working as a student attorney at Michigan’s Child Advocacy Law Clinic. In that capacity, she took on the role of parent representative, county prosecutor and guardian ad litem in child welfare and neglect cases. Working with children created a passion in child advocacy and when the opportunity to work with children in immigration arose, she did not think twice before taking it.