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One of the student groups at IU McKinney will be led by an all female executive board during the 2019-202 academic year. Nothing unusual there. But consider this: the women will be leading the Intellectual Property Student Association, and intellectual property law is an area where women are traditionally underrepresented.

Malissa Magiera will serve as president, Emily Whitsett will be vice president, Annalee Patel will work as treasurer, Katt Trott Boaz will be secretary, and Lauren Ingram will serve as the Student Bar Association Representative for the organization. All are 3Ls.

Magiera is a dual-degree student who is pursuing a masters in biology. She'll graduate in May 2021, and has an eye on working as a patent attorney, either doing prosecution or litigation. She's completed a patent externship at Eli Lilly and Company, and the Indiana University Innovation and Commercialization Office. She's also done an IP externship at CMG Worldwide. She's currently a law clerk at Indiano and McConnell LLP, with a focus on patent and trademark work. Her goal for the group is to increase networking events and inform other students about the prominence of IP issues in current events.

Whitsett is working as a law clerk at Brannon Sowers & CraCraft, and has been working as a contractor at Eli Lilly and Company throughout law school. Her goal is to work as an IP attorney, specifically as a patent attorney, for a small firm in Indianapolis. As an evening student who works during the day, she hopes to make IP-related events as inclusive as possible for both day and evening program students.

Patel is relatively new to this area of the law, having worked at the Indiana Attorney General's Office during Summer 2018 for the Correctional Law Litigation section through the Program on Law and State Government's summer program. She then interned for the AG's office until May 2019, when she began interning for Catholic Legal Immigration Network. She also has been working as a volunteer for the Burmese American Community Institute, where she has been helping people study for citizenship tests and drafting human rights policies. She and Magiera took part in the Saul Lefkowitz National Moot Court Competiton, which has traditionally been a trademark law competition.

Boaz has taken part in several sports law externships, including at the NCAA and the Horizon League. She also was a summer associate with Church Church Hittle + Antrim. She hopes to work at a law firm in a sports law capacity, and was drawn to IP law because of the number of such issues that arise in sports. The issues that come up in collegiate athletics, such as image and likeness, are of particular interest to her, Boaz said.

Ingram is interning at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office during Summer 2019. She was an extern for U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Walton Pratt during Summer 2018, and clerked for the NCAA Office of Legal Affairs, where she will return for the 2019-2020 academic year. She became interested in this area of law after taking a trademark class, and attending an IP open house at Professor Xuan-Thao Nguyen's home. Professor Nguyen is the director of IU McKinney's Center for Intellectual Property Law and Innovation. Ingram hopes to expand her student group's role at IU McKinney and make her fellow students aware of how much IP impacts their everyday lives.