Profile
Jackelyn Mariano is a Filipina American activist, lawyer, and educator proudly born, raised, and based in Queens, New York. In 2011, she earned a BA from the CUNY Baccalaureate Program for Unique Interdisciplinary Studies. She designed an area of concentration in "Immigrant Community Organizing" with a diverse course load in Sociology, Political Science, Geography, Women and Gender Studies, and Asian American Studies at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. While a student at Hunter College, she was a member of the Coalition for the Revitalization of Asian American Studies at Hunter (CRAASH) and Pilipinos of Hunter (POH). She earned a JD from CUNY School of Law where she was trained in the Workers Rights Clinic, representing low-wage workers in litigation to win back stolen wages, and the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility (CLEAR) Clinic, representing Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and other communities targeted by government agencies under the guise of national security and counterterrorism. She was an intern at the National Union of People's Lawyers (NUPL) in the Philippines, where she trained in international human rights law. She also joined the National Lawyers Guild International Committee to continue her legal activism.
After graduating law school in 2016, she became a staff attorney at legal services organizations, focusing her practice on immigration law, representing unaccompanied minors in deportation defense proceedings, and human trafficking survivors seeking legal relief and accountability from exploitative employers. She has also served as a legal resource for the Mission to End Modern Slavery (MEMS), an organization that seeks to build a survivor-led movement to end human trafficking. Currently, Jackelyn organizes in the Filipino community as a member of the Malaya Movement, a grassroots anti-dictatorship and pro-democracy organization borne out of the movement against President Duterte's authoritarian administration, envisioning freedom and democracy for the Filipino people. She teaches at Hunter College's Asian American Studies Program and practices law at her small law firm in Queens. She channels her creative energy into being the vocalist for Pinoy punk band Material Support.