Opening New Doors through Advocacy

In 2020, while working as a nursing assistant at Henry Ford Macomb Hospital in suburban Detroit, Tiffany Bankhead witnessed significant inequities during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Staff were experiencing burnout, and patients weren’t receiving equitable care,” she says. 

Bankhead voiced these concerns to the hospital executives, ultimately advocating for and securing a $15 minimum wage across all Henry Ford health systems. 

“Through that experience, it became clear that my passion lies in advocacy work, so I looked into applying to law school,” she says.

Michigan Law was Bankhead’s top choice, and she attended the Butch Carpenter Gala in 2023, which only reinforced her interest. During her 1L year, she became a student representative for the Black Law Students Association (BLSA), and this year, she is the treasurer. 

“BLSA has offered me a community and allowed me to see how race interacts with the law and understand the inequities that exist within it,” says Bankhead.

Outside her studies, she works at Google as a disinformation investigations analyst, focusing on cross-border negotiations and political disinformation. Bankhead was initially hired as a content moderator for YouTube, focusing on political disinformation related to the 2020 US election—and removing those campaigns from the platform. When she entered law school, she was interested in constitutional law, civil rights, and health law. Through her work at Google, she has added voting rights to that list.

“I want to work in corporate law after graduation, but I’d also like to be involved in government policy and advocacy work at some point in my career,” she says. “I couldn’t afford to be here without the scholarship I received; the financial support has allowed me to succeed in ways that I didn’t think I would be able to, and I feel more freedom to pursue the roles I’m interested in.”