Andowah Newton earned her Bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and dual law degrees from Cornell Law School and the Sorbonne. Ms. Newton is fluent in French and proficient in Spanish. Her Note on African immigration to the U.S. was published in the Cornell International Law Journal, awarded the Robert H. Jackson Award for best published student writing on international law, and cited by a Congresswoman in the Harvard Journal on Legislation.

Before law school, Ms. Newton was a CPA/auditor for 4 years at PwC and Estée Lauder. She began her legal career clerking for the First Vice President Judge of the International Criminal Court, then litigated complex commercial cases for 8 years at top NYC law firms. She was named a NY Super Lawyers Rising Star and was selected for the Hispanic National Bar Association’s Latina Commission Leadership Program.

During her law firm years, she dedicated hundreds of hours annually to pro bono work—obtaining asylum, work visas, and protective orders for survivors of domestic violence and human rights abuses and advising detained immigrants—for which she was recognized as an Empire State Honoree. For 3 years, she chaired the New York Choral Society’s Board of Trustees’ Audit Committee and for 12 years, mentored, coached, and judged legal debates for high school and law school students in the Legal Outreach and Inroads programs.

Ms. Newton continued her legal career as Vice President, Legal Affairs of LVMH Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy for eight years, where she created and led their Pro Bono program, organizing clinics with Safe Passage, CUNY’s Citizenship Now, and NYC Bar Association’s Fresh Start. She also volunteered with the Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights Election Protection program. As the Founder & President of The RAN Fund, she currently chairs a Board of five professionals in a nonprofit that empowers youth, through entrepreneurship, athletics, and performing arts, in furtherance of her baby brother Ryan’s legacy.

Ms. Newton’s testimony before Congress in November 2021 prompted overwhelming bipartisan passage of the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, dubbed the “most significant labor legislation of this past century,” in 2022. For her role in getting the historic legislation passed, Ms. Newton was publicly recognized by the President of the United States at the White House’s Bill Signing Ceremony as 1 of the 4 "courageous survivors who led this historic reform” and invited to a private meeting with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, along with the three other survivor-witnesses, before the Ceremony.

Ms. Newton was recently recognized as a Global Top 100 Most Influential Person of African Descent—Law & Justice. She has been quoted in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and Ms. Magazine, and won the Crime Victim Treatment Center’s Advocacy and Awareness Award for her work on behalf of survivors. She was a keynote speaker at the Women, Influence, and Power in the Law conference panel Leading by Example: How Women Successfully Passed the Most Bipartisan, Transformational Law Ending the Silencing of Sexual Misconduct Claims. Ms. Newton has paved the path for all survivors to access justice, even as she continues to fight for her own.