At a time when The American Lawyer has been focused on The Global 100 and Big Law’s impact around the globe, it’s fitting to introduce you to a young lawyer who this fall is setting out to make a personal difference in the world: Asher Waite-Jones, whom my company is sponsoring as a fellow through the Equal Justice Works program.

That Waite-Jones made it through college and the UC Berkeley School of Law is remarkable in itself. As a teenager, he was homeless for several years, camping out under a bridge at times. But that searing experience opened his eyes, he says, to a pernicious problem: the criminalization of homelessness.