Yvonne Diabene

she/her

Yvonne Diabene is the Clifford Chance Foundation Fellow in Vera’s legal department, assisting with in-house legal matters and transactions. As part of the fellowship, Yvonne also supports the Institute’s Unlocking Potential and Opening Doors initiatives, which promote postsecondary education and housing access for system-impacted people, respectively.

Before joining Vera in 2024, Yvonne worked to advance civil rights and criminal legal reform at various nonprofits and community organizations, including The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the Americans Civil Liberties Union, the New York Legal Assistance Group, and Fuerza Laboral/Power of Workers, a Rhode Island labor union. She also supported health equity research and publication efforts as a federal contractor.

Yvonne holds a BA in public policy from Brown University and a JD from the New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Public Interest Scholar.