C.J. Albertie Masimore ’01 counts herself as one of many Calvin alumni whose direction was forever altered by an off-campus program experience.
She spent time as a Calvin student in Italy, Greece and Spain—but it was in Hungary that the vocation light burned the brightest for her.
“The Hungarian semester abroad changed my life,” she said.
Masimore admitted that she didn’t even know where exactly Hungary was on a map before she went, but the experience directed her toward human rights work. She returned to Budapest some years later, after earning a law degree from the University of Michigan, working for the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC).
After that, she returned to the U.S. to work in Kansas City for a federal judge and at a corporate law firm in New York City. But her passion for assisting those with little access to the legal system eventually brought her to Open Hands Legal Services, where she serves as executive director.
“We work with very low income people in the city,” she said. “I’m pragmatic and a person who wants to get direct results for clients. It’s my job to eliminate the legal barriers that keep people from really flourishing as full human beings.”
Open Hands was started in 2009 by a group of Christian attorneys in New York City, spurred on with visions of biblical justice at a legal fellowship meeting led by the Rev. Tim Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church.
Masimore was hired in 2011 with a mandate to expand Open Hands. Since that time, its client base has expanded by 600 percent. Open Hands now serves low-income New Yorkers in seven locations across the city with the help of more than 100 volunteer attorneys.
Her work has caught the attention of the city’s legal community. The New York Law Journal recently named Masimore as one of 42 young attorneys the publication calls “Rising Stars”—defined as those in the profession who “exhibit the first-rate legal skills, keen judgment, creativity and dedication that have made a lasting impression on their colleagues and clients.”
“Open Hands partners with mostly faith-based nonprofits, fulfilling the legal needs of their clients,” Masimore said. “An example is the Bowery Mission, which literally gets people off the streets. So many of their clients struggle with jobs and income because they can’t overcome past legal issues. We want to complement our partners’ services—it’s a holistic care approach.
“If someone is $20,000 in debt and has a $7-an-hour job, that’s enough for some to say, ‘What’s the point?’ and slide back into homelessness,” she continued. “If we can help them determine what’s valid or invalid about that debt or renegotiate their debt, they can actually plan and hope for the future.”
Open Hands has now hired its first staff attorney and has a vision to be a full-service organization with more lawyers on staff and additional nonprofit partners.
“We’ve found that adult single men are among the least-served in the city,” she said. “Many men we serve have been incarcerated, have substance abuse issues, owe child support—and all of them are underrepresented in the legal system. It is a misnomer, but who wants to help those perceived as deadbeat dads?
“The Bible calls us to ‘serve the least of these,’” Masimore noted, “so I see this as a biblical mandate. And what we do has been transformational for many of them.”
She said that her Calvin career was punctuated by consistent messages to “serve, serve, serve,” and it has been deeply fulfilling for her to find that opportunity as a lawyer in a Christian environment in New York City.
“What my colleagues and I have been drawn to is the chance to serve together and not have to hide our faith. That’s why we come out to this street corner in East Harlem on Saturday mornings,” she said.
