User:Wuiko Ola/sandbox/Paola Heudebert’s Cover Letter – Wikimedia Technology Law and Policy Fellow

Paola Heudebert’s Cover Letter – Wikimedia Technology Law and Policy Fellowship

Paola Heudebert (born June 1, 1992) is a French Intellectual Property and Technology Lawyer. She is currently a Fulbright Scholar at UC Berkeley Law where she is investigating the emerging regulatory framework of various technologies, including Blockchain. Her enthusiasm for the Wikimedia movement, her high research skills, and her can-do attitude make her the perfect candidate for this fellowship.

Background
Over the last few years, the multiple strands of Paola’s academic and professional experiences have begun to converge on one future path. After becoming fascinated by the social and historical forces that shape technology and how innovation, in turn, is shaped by the legal environment during her dual BA in History and Law, she then realized, during her gap year in Australia how this could be central to her future career. She became committed to using her legal expertise to champion innovation and support entrepreneurship.

On returning to France, Paola chose to pursue a Masters in Business Law followed by another Masters in Intellectual Property and Technology Law. Eager to continue her exploration of Technology law’s myriad specific applications and broaden her scope of expertise, Paola chose to apply to Berkeley Law. She sought to dedicate herself to research that analyzes U.S. startup law and the alternative legal environment it creates for financing in order to inspire future regulations and policy in France. Her proposal was awarded numerous scholarships including the Fulbright Scholarship, the Leonora Lindley Memorial Fellowship for descendants of the French Resistance Movemen t and the Monahan Foundation Scholarship for Law and Sciences.

This strong academic background nurtured Paola’s interest in a range of topics from copyright, patent law, trademark law, cybercrime law, privacy law, international law & conflict of laws, as well as a good understanding of open source issues.

Experiences
Prior to Berkeley, Paola demonstrated her hard-working attitude via a series of professional experiences. The pertinence of her internship with the French jewelry firm Arthus-Bertrand - where she carried out an intellectual property audit of the company and its subsidiaries and served as a legal liaison on a major copyright infringement case - was ultimately recognized with an offer of further paid employment. Paola’s professional training continued as a clerk to the Paris Court of Appeals - where she focused on intellectual property and technology law issues as well. While there, she wrote at least three case reports a week, summarizing the facts, procedures, claims and principal arguments, all the while gaining a privileged insight into the pressures and perspectives of the judiciary itself. This experience also nurtured her interest in policy advocacy as she had the opportunity to focus on many French technology regulations and policy, and understand in depth their ratio legis and context of adoption. She also did an internship within the intellectual property division of the international law firm Bird & Bird, experience that helped her improve her grasp of the interdisciplinary nature of the law, as she had to collaborate with professionals across sectors. Beside, Paola dedicated herself to provide pro-bono legal assistance to startups.

At Berkeley, Paola discovered Blockchain technology. Fascinated by this technology’s high potential, Paola joined Blockchain at Berkeley Law where she is now the Head of International Research. She is currently investigating the emerging regulatory framework surrounding Blockchain technology and will be involved with the city of Berkeley’s project that aims to launch an initial coin offering to raise funding for affordable housing. Paola is determined to advocate for a use of this technology that serves common good. Accordingly, she was a speaker at the Rebellious Lawyering Conference hosted by Yale University where she presented How to Tackle Human Rights Issues with Blockchain Technology.

Paola recently confessed that she hopes to continue this interdisciplinary journey with the Wikimedia Foundation.

Motivations
According to an anonymous but reliable source, when Paola learned about the Wikimedia Fellowship she knew it was it, her future, a realm where she could bring together her passions for realizing creative visions, applying the law and cultivating a global outlook.

Paola strongly believes that a fellowship position at the Wikimedia Foundation would be ideal for her. She relishes the way Technology Law constantly evolves: an environment of challenge, change and endless new stimuli. With new innovations and ways of communicating and connecting coming to the fore faster than ever before, Paola believes that law professionals have to devise creative, bespoke solutions, getting to grips with technical areas that span an incredible range of fields. In short, she believes that technology lawyers need to be prepared to anticipate a future defined by known unknowns - and unknown unknowns!

More importantly, Paola is known by her fellow comrades to be very sensitive to access to knowledge movement underline by the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. She has always found the Wikimedia Movement fascinating as its echoes to the Lumières philosophy, which is very appealing to this French woman.

Greetings
According to a direct source Paola would be: “delighted if she could meet with the Wikimedia team for discussing this great fellowship opportunity". She also added that she was “looking forward to hearing from the Wikimedia team very soon."