Proudly Lab: Alumni Highlight Series - Camilo Rivera '14
From the Debate Team to federal court chambers, Camilo Rivera ’14 has built a career defined by intellectual rigor, public service, and a fearless willingness to ask hard questions.
A 2014 graduate of The Lab School, Camilo Rivera was known as a proactive, involved, gregarious student who balanced a rigorous academic schedule with a rigorous extracurricular schedule. Always interested in election cycles, politics, and laws, Camilo became a member of the DC Youth Advisory Council early in his high school career. He also served as Chair of the Board of Education and Youth Superintendent for the YMCA Youth and Government organization, was a three-time delegate to the YMCA Conference on National Affairs, and interned with Congressman Steve Cohen. Camilo's experiences and in-depth knowledge of global issues led to many successes as a member of Lab's Debate Team and a Model UN delegate for Lab. When thinking back on his eight years at Lab, these last two activities rank among Camilo's fondest memories. He says, "I loved getting to go to different cities and meeting other students who were excited about domestic and international policies - - and winning some trophies along the way for Lab."
As an undergraduate student at Columbia University, Camilo continued to participate in Model UN and traveled to competitions in Rome and Montreal. In 2018, he graduated from Columbia with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with a concentration in history. Camilo then worked for a polling firm and as a field organizer in Tennessee for the Tennessee Democratic Party and the Phil Bredesen for Senate Campaign. He also served as a fellow on the Hill for Congressman Steve Cohen (the same office where he had completed his junior year internship at Lab) and as a junior aide for Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, the original co-author of the Dream Act.
In the fall of 2021, Camilo began his legal studies at Columbia Law School. While there, in addition to being named a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar in recognition of superior academic performance, he served as a Judicial Intern with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit with Judge Joseph Greenaway and the United States District Court Eastern District of New York for Chief Judge Margo Brodie. Camilo earned his J.D. with honors in 2024 and since October of that year has been an Associate at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP in New York.
Camilo has carried lessons from his time at Lab into his professional life - the self-knowledge that you think and learn differently from others, the importance of asking questions, and the value in productive dialogue with others. To this day, he values the Lab community's devotion to "ensuring that children can enter this world with the best tools possible to embrace any challenge they face and get the most out of it." He asks, "How could I not stay connected to an institution that taught me not to be afraid?"
