– Advocates for more diversity in legal profession

GUYANESE student Ryan Duff is currently advocating on behalf of Howard University in Washington DC for more diversity within the legal profession, having been selected as the first legal reform fellow with the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform.

This is a new programme and the 26-year-old said he felt honoured to be selected as the first fellow when the Chamber chose to partner with his university. Currently a second-year law student at Howard University School of Law, he has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and one in Political Science.

“It was such an amazing experience for me to be the first legal fellow because the Chamber was very open to my ideas and plans in terms of how I think they can help develop diversity. In the US, there are only about five percent of black lawyers, so I think it was a really big step on their part to raise the number,” Ryan told the Pepperpot Magazine during an interview.

Back in 2014, Ryan left Guyana, having attended the prestigious Queen’s College, to attend Howard University, a historically black college. He went to do an undergraduate programme so that he could’ve eventually gotten into law school there.

Ever since he began attending the university, Ryan copiously paid attention to his studies and engrossed himself in all other campus activities, eventually being awarded the Capstone Scholar and invited as a member of the College of Arts and Sciences Honours programme.

Ryan recalls that even though pursuing a career in the legal profession was not a plan that he always entertained, there’s nothing that he’d rather be doing now. “One day, it just kind of hit me that this was what I wanted to do, and I told myself I would be a good lawyer. So I think I randomly woke up one day and decided to do it, which was very funny because it was a couple of months before writing CXC and I decided to start doing history.”

Having graduated from the ‘under grad’ programme in 2018, he began attending Howard University School of Law and will complete his studies there in 2023.

Commenting on his opportunity to represent the university in this fellowship programme, Ryan said: “I felt a huge responsibility to be advocating for Howard University for more diversity in the legal profession. It’s really important to have diverse minds in the legal profession and diversity improves the quality of work that different organisations produce, so I was really happy to be the first legal fellow to showcase those important principles.”

One of his biggest goals is to build the skills that he can bring home to Guyana. “I am primarily interested in building avenues for there to be more Guyanese legal professionals on the international scale,” he shared, adding, “One of my biggest interests is international law, primarily international arbitration, and I think we have such a huge skillset there in Guyana…to handle global issues,” he explained.

Ryan observed that such knowledge and skills are now ever more important since the world is becoming more globalised, borders are being corssed each day, and international organisations are showing more and more interest in Guyana.

“It’s very important that we have persons in Guyana who are aware of the international law, and the way in which to operate with these organisations,” he noted.

Meanwhile, Ryan was also handed the opportunity to conduct service-oriented outreaches to South Africa following his selection as a fellow with the Young African Leadership Initiative, and is currently doing research on the displacement of African Americans in Washington DC.

He remains grateful to his professors at Queen’s College whom he said pushed him to work hard at an early age.