Alumni
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Jennifer Pigge
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Jenny’s interest in criminal justice issues originated through her high school volunteering as a research intern at the Iowa City Public Defender’s Office. This experience introduced her to many of the egregious injustices existing within our legal and prison systems, and led her to choose criminal justice as her public policy concentration. She hopes to leverage a future law school degree to provide client-centered legal services and to partner with communities working to transform the criminal legal landscape.
During her three years at Vanderbilt, Jenny has been deeply involved with Vanderbilt Prison Project (VPP), and served as its 2019 President. The student organization aims to educate, equip, and inspire the Vanderbilt student body to work with the Nashville community for progress in the criminal justice system and to serve, advocate for, and uplift those impacted by it. Jenny helped found VPP’s annual awareness campaign to address the Vanderbilt community’s need for education around criminal justice issues, to equip students to turn education into action, and to strengthen partnerships between the Nashville and Vanderbilt communities. In bringing local and broader criminal justice issues to the attention of the Vanderbilt community, Jenny aims always to center the voices of those most directly impacted by the prison industrial complex. She believes students have a role to play through leveraging the resources available to them as students to support the grassroots work being led by directly-impacted community members. In the summer of 2018, Jenny interned as a Domestic Violence Victim Advocate at Waypoint Services in Cedar Rapids, IA. This experience taught her a great deal about trauma and what it means to be an advocate, lessons that inform her service in Nashville. In 2019, Jenny completed her Ingram Summer Project with the City of Philadelphia Office of the District Attorney, working on the development and utilization of a data management system to drive more effective juvenile justice policy and practices. Jenny is studying in Berlin, Germany in 2020 and taking advantage of opportunities to improve her German and learn about the country’s legal system through internships at Berlin’s Regional Court and Rostock’s Office of the Public Prosecutor.
Jenny is deeply grateful to the Ingram family for the opportunity to attend Vanderbilt University and continue growing her academic, professional, and service spheres with the support of the Ingram Scholars Program.