"She talked about Maurer with such a passion that I ended up not even applying to any other schools."
Carolina Colomba comes from a long line of attorneys in her family, but it wasn’t until she saw the headlines—and images—of a capsized boat, of Syrian migrants being rescued and worse, recovered, off the coast of Lampedusa that she knew she wanted to become an attorney.
It was October 2013 and the blue wooden boat, carrying Syrian refugees, came under attack from Libyan forces, their gunfire puncturing enough holes in the vessel to sink it. More than 60 of the estimated 268 migrants who died in the incident were children, and the photograph on the front page of the São Paulo newspaper the next morning pierced Colomba’s heart.
“I remember seeing the cover, and there was this little Syrian boy,” Colomba recalled. “I was in high school at the time, and this little boy, well, he must have been three years old. He was wearing a red t-shirt on the beach with his father, and you could see the devastation on their faces.”
That, she said, is when she knew she wanted to be involved in human rights and immigration law. Colomba knew she wanted to learn the law so she might help others avoid the same fate as those hundreds of Syrian refugees.
She studied five years at Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado, earning an LLB degree in late 2022. By then, Colomba knew she wanted more out of a legal education. When she found herself at an LLM fair in her native Brazil, she came face-to-face with Gabrielle Goodwin, representing a law school in a city and state Colomba had never heard of, let alone visited.
“Professor Goodwin was just amazing. She talked about Maurer with such a passion that I ended up not even applying to any other schools,” Colomba recalled. “I had a backup school in mind, but when Maurer sent me my acceptance letter, I didn’t need any other option.”
Colomba enrolled in the Law School’s Law and Working LLM program, giving her the opportunity to work in a local legal job while taking classes. She found her home at Student Legal Services, an Indiana University organization that offers legal assistance to students.
There she’s had the opportunity to work on landlord-tenant disputes, as well as issues closer to her heart.
“They know I’m passionate about immigration law, so they’ve given me most of those cases,” Colomba said. “We’re applying for green cards for some students and even working a few asylum cases. It’s been incredibly rewarding.”
Immigration is top of mind for Colomba as Brazil grapples with an influx of refugees from other central American countries engaged in conflict. The country recently announced new rules that tighten access for those without valid visas.
“We don’t have any laws helping them,” Colomba said of those coming into her country. “The U.S. has been dealing with immigration law for years and years, but in Brazil, we don’t have any laws because it’s never been much of an issue.”
Coming to an American law school was key to gaining a new vantage point on the issues.
“I thought the U.S. would be the best place to learn immigration and international law to discover how to best help these immigrants in the best way possible,” she said.
Even though she’d never been to Bloomington before arriving at Maurer, Colomba found an environment that was everything she could’ve wanted—and more.
“I’ve loved everything since my first minute here,” she said. “Bloomington is such an amazing place to be. There are things happening every second of every single day. I’m from Sao Paolo, one of the biggest cities in the world, so I thought it would be hard to move to a relatively small town. I thought that would be the hardest part of my transition. But the city has amazing nightlife, amazing bars, amazing restaurants. And the people here are amazing, too.”
It was so amazing that Colomba reacted enthusiastically when presented with the idea of staying another year to add an MCL to her LLM degree. She’s on pace to finish that in May 2025, with the degree giving her the opportunity to take the Indiana bar exam.
Having an LLM and MCL from the Maurer School of Law will position Colomba for success in a number of places, she said, whether that’s in Indiana, the U.S., or back home in Brazil.
“For now, the important thing career-wise is that I want to help Latinos and particularly Latino immigrants,” she said. “It doesn't matter if it's in Brazil, if it's in the US, I know that I want to help them out. I’ll go wherever that leads me.”
