Krista Granen graduated from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law (UC Hastings) in May 2015 with a concentration in Social Justice. In May 2009, she obtained her B.A. in English Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. While attending UC Hastings, she was heavily involved in its public interest community. Throughout her time there she participated on the board of the Hastings Public Interest Law Foundation in order to raise funds for students taking on unpaid public interest summer internships, serving as Co-President from 2013-2014. During her second and third years she fostered legal scholarship in the intersectional areas of race and poverty with the Hastings Race & Poverty Law Journal, publishing her Note on the need for payday lending reform in California in its Winter 2015 issue.
Due to witnessing the effects of elder abuse in her family, Krista pursued a Juris Doctorate to become a lawyer and advocate for low-income seniors. To effectuate this goal she participated in UC Hastings’ Medical-Legal Partnership for Seniors clinic to provide holistic services to San Francisco seniors, externed with the Oakland based non-profit Legal Assistance for Seniors to help victims of elder abuse, and spent her 2L summer working with the nationwide advocacy non-profit Justice In Aging on complex policy issues pertaining to healthcare and Social Security. She also has extensive experience in the areas of consumer protection & Social Security, having worked with the East Bay Community Law Center’s Neighborhood Justice Clinic, and Bay Area Legal Aid’s Consumer Law and Economic Justice units.
As a 2015-2016 Borchard Fellow in Law & Aging, Krista will partner with Bay Area Legal Aid to implement a multi-faceted project to provide direct services, establish a mobile “pop-up” clinic to accommodate seniors’ physical and capacity based impairments, and promulgate resource materials in the intersectional areas of consumer protection and Social Security. Her project will promote economic security for low-income seniors residing in Santa Clara County, a county that simultaneously experiences extreme class stratification and a dearth of necessary legal services.
