Simona Agnolucci '06 and Courtney Power '01 join UC Law SF Board Of Directors

University of California Hastings College of the Law was established by statute in 1878 and is governed by a Board of Directors. With the exception of one Board member who, as specified by statute, shall always be an heir or representative of Serranus Clinton Hastings, the members of the Board are appointed by the Governor of the State of California, confirmed by the State Senate and serve for twelve years.

We are pleased to announce two new members: Simona Agnolucci ’06 and Courtney Power ’01.

“UC Law SF is excited to welcome Simona Agnolucci and Courtney Power to our Board of Directors,” said Board Chair Tom Gede ’81. “They have each demonstrated exceptionally strong leadership in their fields, and we all very much look forward to working with them.”

Ms. Agnolucci is a partner at Keker & Van Nest, where she specializes in high-stakes complex litigation, including intellectual property matters, class actions, white collar criminal defense and commercial disputes. Her clients have included smartphone manufacturers, medical device companies, and a Silicon Valley engineer indicted for economic espionage. Currently, she’s representing ride-hailing app Lyft and food delivery service Caviar in class actions concerning the classification of employees. “These are 21st-century questions,” she said.

Ms. Agnolucci maintains an active pro bono practice, primary representing women seeking asylum from gender-based persecution and unaccompanied immigrant children. In 2010, working in collaboration with the UC Law SF Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, she won a groundbreaking case on behalf of a Mexican woman who received asylum after decades of abuse by her common-law husband.

Ms. Agnolucci serves on the boards of several nonprofits and is serving her second term on the UC Law SF Alumni Association Board of Governors.

She received her Bachelor of Arts in comparative literature, with honors, from Stanford and in 2006 graduated magna cum laude from UC Law SF, where she completed two judicial externships and interned at a human rights nonprofit.

“UC Law SF made me into the lawyer I am today, and I’m committed to helping the school navigate the storms that legal education faces. I want to help UC Law SF remain a public institution that is affordable, accessible and diverse,” she said.

Ms. Agnolucci lives in San Francisco with her husband, Elias Batchelder ’06, who represents inmates on California’s death row, and their two children. She is an avid runner and yoga practitioner.

Courtney Power is a sixth-generation Californian, fourth-generation lawyer and part of a long line of UC graduates. She has spent more than a decade as in-house counsel at Google, where she has managed teams of attorneys providing product counsel and transaction work for Geo, Virtual Reality, Waze and other business units. “The legal issues have been fascinating, spanning from questions related to privacy to countries complaining about the ways we represented their borders,” she said.

Ms. Power graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1991. After studying for a year at the University of Sydney as a Rotary International Foundation Scholar, she helped develop educational programs for children at Broderbund Software and worked as a senior analyst for Fillmore Consulting Group.

She graduated from UC Law SF in 2001. “What I loved is that so many professors had a very practical approach. I feel like I went into the market well-prepared to be a practicing attorney,” she said.

After a job she’d lined up at a boutique Silicon Valley firm disappeared in the dot-com bust, her antitrust professor, Joel Sanders, referred her for a position at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher in Palo Alto. She spent four years there advising companies on Internet commerce law and representing clients in regulatory investigations and civil litigation in state and federal court. “It speaks to the way UC Law SF takes care of its students,” she said.

Ms. Power lives with her husband and two daughters in San Carlos, where she gardens and raises chickens.

In joining the Board, Ms. Power hopes to bring to bear her experience in the technology sector and changing roles within the legal profession.

“I’m excited to be at the start of a great adventure and have the opportunity to dig in, learn and see where my energies can best be tapped,” she said.