Biography

Idella Wilson, who serves as Assistant Director of The Public Law Center, is a 1988 graduate of Tulane Law School, where she was honored as Outstanding Woman Law Graduate and received the Hirsch Public Service Award. While a student at Tulane, she founded the Hispanic Law Student Association, La Alianza, and served as Treasurer of the Tulane Law Women. She joined the Tulane Public Interest Law Foundation and received a Public Interest Scholarship in 1986.

Following graduation and immediately prior to joining the Center, Ms. Wilson served for two years as a staff attorney with the Texas Legislative Council, where she researched and drafted legislation under the auspices of the Texas Legislature and was responsible for the codification of statutes. Ms. Wilson joined The Public Law Center in 1990.

In August 1997, Ms. Wilson and the Center's Executive Director, David Marcello, conducted a four-day legislative drafting workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa for legislators and drafting personnel from various provincial parliaments, the Ministry of Justice, and law school. As a result of that workshop, she was invited by the Legislature of the Province of the Eastern Cape in Bisho, South Africa to deliver several presentations in October 1997 on legislative drafting. Since then, she and Mr. Marcello have conducted training programs in the Dominican Republic, Moldova, Georgia, and Bulgaria. She has also taught drafting in Tajikistan and, most recently, South Sudan.

Ms. Wilson has a substantial background of more than ten years teaching at both the secondary school and college levels prior to her supervision and training of law students at The Public Law Center. She has a Master’s degree in Foreign Language Education. She brings a trilingual capability to the program, as a native speaker of Spanish who is also fluent in French.