Graduate of the Last Decade
The Graduate of the Last Decade (GOLD) Award honors recent Washburn Law graduates whose performance and commitment has set an example of professionalism and demonstrated leadership in the legal field, in their community, or to the School of Law.
2021 Recipients
Jennifer Cocking, '12, is currently vice president and assistant general counsel for Capitol Federal Savings Bank in Topeka. She started her career as a research attorney to the Honorable Lawton Nuss, chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court. At the Supreme Court, she advised the justices on both civil and criminal matters and was the lead attorney assigned to the Gannon school finance case.
Cocking was appointed to the Kansas Continuing Legal Education Board in 2016 and has served as its chair for the past three years. She is also the immediate past-president of the Women Attorneys Association of Topeka, which, under her leadership, experienced significant membership growth and established an endowed scholarship for Washburn Law students. She is co-chair of the Kansas Women Attorneys Association's Membership and Communications Committee; chair of the Kansas Bar Association's Membership Committee; chair of the Topeka Bar Association's Public Relations Committee; and a Kansas Bar Foundation fellow. She worked extensively on the campaign to retain the five Kansas Supreme Court justices on the ballot in 2016 and is a passionate advocate for judicial independence. In 2018, Cocking was appointed by Laura Kelly, then the governor-elect, to serve on the first ad hoc Kansas Court of Appeals Nominating Committee. She was recently honored by the YWCA of Northeast Kansas as a Women of Excellence and recognized as one of Topeka's Top 20 Under 40. Cocking serves on the Washburn University Alumni Association board of directors and is a lifetime member of both the University's and Law School's alumni associations. She is a member of Washburn Women's Venture Partners and has served as a mentor to first-year law students.
LeTiffany Obozele, 12, serves as the chief of prosecution for the City of Topeka Legal Department. With a supportive legal team, she performs a wide range of administrative duties, prosecutes misdemeanor, traffic, and code enforcement cases, and is responsible for case appeals to district and appellate courts, including the Kansas Supreme Court. She also provides legal guidance to the city’s elected officials, employees, and interns. Obozele has also worked for the Douglas County district attorney, the Office of the Kansas Attorney General, and the Sedgwick County district attorney.
Obozele has been committed to actively giving back to Washburn Law. She serves as an adjunct professor where she co-teaches trial advocacy and other skills courses and coaches the TYLA trial team since 2015. She is active in her profession and community. She is a member of the City of Topeka Core Team for the Kansas Leadership Center, a member of the Topeka Bar Association, Women Attorneys Association of Topeka, and Sam A. Crow Inn of Court. Obozele is on the board of directors, leadership team, and the health herd for Forge Young Professionals. She also is the Topeka representative for the Kansas African American Museum board of directors and is the rotating host for KTWU’s I’ve Got Issues program.
2020 Recipient
Kursten Phelps graduated from Washburn Law in 2010. While in law school, Ms. Phelps was active in Law Clinic, Jessup international Moot Court, Hispanic American Law Student Association, and Gay-Straight Legal Alliance. She has a passion for policy reform and providing legal services for noncitizens including, asylees, undocumented children, and victims of domestic violence. She is currently working at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Washington, D.C. In her role, she supports the direction of legal programming and operations at Commission projects providing direct services at the border in the San Diego and in the Texas Rio Grande Valley, and to the Commission’s Houston-based Children’s Immigration Law Academy. Previously, she worked at the Tahirih Justice Center, serving as a staff attorney, managing attorney, and ultimately as co-director of client advocacy. At Tahirih, she supported the organization’s five offices in delivering high quality and efficient interdisciplinary legal services to immigrant survivors of gender-based violence, including asylum, VAWA self-petitions, SIJS petitions, T visas and U visas. Previously, she was the Immigration Project attorney at the Kansas Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, where she directly represented immigrant survivors, mentored pro bono attorneys, and provided training and technical assistance to professionals interacting with immigrant survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking. (Watch video, 6:50)
2019 Recipient
Danielle Hall serves as a deputy disciplinary administrator for the state of Kansas, where she investigates and prosecutes lawyer misconduct and serves as a coordinator for the attorney diversion and law practice management programs. Her primary focus, however, is in mentoring lawyers and assisting them with implementing best practices and improving their law practice management and technology skills. Through her office, she is currently developing a statewide Proactive Based Management Regulation program that will provide resources and training in the area of law practice management and attorney well-being. Prior to joining the Office of the Disciplinary Administrator, Hall served as the law practice services director for the Kansas Bar Association. Hall is an adjunct professor at Washburn University, serving as a faculty member for the School of Law's Intensive Trial Advocacy Program and teaching Law Office Technology in the legal studies department in the School of Applied Studies. She coaches the trial advocacy competition teams at Washburn University School of Law and serves as the director and coach of Washburn's mock trial program. In 2016, alongside her husband, Jay Hall, B.A. '04, J.D. '07, she coached the School of Law voir dire team to a national championship and a national runner-up finish in 2017.
Hall regularly speaks on law practice management, ethics, and technology topics for local and national organizations. She serves as the Topeka Bar Association Technology Committee chair and the Kansas Women Attorneys Association Minority Women in the Profession Committee co-chair. In 2014, she was awarded the Kansas Bar Association Outstanding Young Lawyer award for her work in the area of law practice management. In 2019, she received a Women of Influence award for mentoring from GO Topeka's Entrepreneurial and Minority Business Development program.
2018 Recipients
Jessica Dorsey teaches law in the politics, psychology, law and economics program at the University of Amsterdam and is an associate fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague, where her research concentrates mainly on foreign fighters and counterterrorism-related human rights issues. She is also a core member of the Transnational Academic Network for the Study of Armed Drones, based at the Norwegian Peace Research Institute Oslo. Previously, she was a senior legal and policy officer at Londonbased Rights Watch and a project officer in the humanitarian disarmament department of Dutch non-governmental organization PAX, where she carried out research and advocacy related to human rights, counterterrorism, and national security issues with a specific focus on the use and proliferation of armed drones as coordinator of the European Forum on Armed Drones.
In 2017, the European Parliament contracted Dorsey to publish a study outlining policy guidance for the use of armed drones for European member states. She has also previously worked as a researcher at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut, an international law research institute based in The Hague and collaborated on legal issues with the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism on a 2013 report on the civilian impact of armed drones. She has taught a summer program at Duke University on human rights and international humanitarian law and is the assistant editor of the international law weblog, Opinio Juris.
Christy Campbell leads the pro bono efforts at Kansas Legal Services in the newly created statewide pro bono director role. She has worked at Kansas Legal Services since 2008, practicing in a variety of areas. She routinely encourages attorneys to partake in pro bono activities while actively taking cases from the protection from abuse docket and organizing Kansas Bar Foundation CRHA grant expungement projects. She is the most recent past-president of the Wichita Bar Association Young Lawyers Section and a past-president of the Wichita Women Attorneys Association.
She was recently elected to the Wichita Bar Association board of governors and serves on the Summer Intern Committee, Civil Law Committee, Family Law Committee, Pro Bono Committee (as chair), and Wesley E. Brown Inn of Court (associate member and secretary). She is a member of the Kansas Bar Association and is pro bono liaison of the Young Lawyer Section. She serves on the Kansas Women Attorneys Association's Conference Program Committee and Education and Awards Committee. She is a member of the American Bar Association and National Association of Pro Bono Professionals, sits on the Kansas Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters Committee, and was recently appointed to the Access to Justice Committee. She was recognized in 2016 as a KBA Young Lawyer of the Year and received a Wichita Bar Association President's Award in 2018. She is a volunteer for the Wichita Area Sexual Assault Center SafeBar Alliance and can be seen in local theater productions both on stage and behind the curtain.
2017 Recipient
Mark Dupree was sworn in as District Attorney of Wyandotte County, Kansas, on Jan. 9, 2017. He leads an office of 60 employees in Kansas' fourth largest county and focuses on equitably prosecuting crime, being proactive, and attacking violent crimes and crimes that affect the standard of living. Previously, he was an assistant prosecuting attorney in Jackson County (Missouri) and practiced in the firm, Dupree and Dupree, LLC, along with his wife, Shanelle Dupree, '07. Dupree speaks at numerous churches and schools and has sponsored legal clinics and shadow days. He is an associate pastor and ordained church elder, and a member of the Kansas Bar Association Board of Governors and the Kansas Legal Services Board of Directors.