Grace Tenbusch, ’21, just completed one of the most critical, stressful moments in her young professional career: sitting for the Michigan bar exam.“With all the nerves going, I thought I was going to throw up,” Tenbusch says, “And then you see a friendly face, and you’re like, ‘We’re going to do this together. We’re going to be alright.’”
That friendly face was Thomas Vance, ’21, who was one of Tenbusch’s peers in the 2017 cohort of the LEAD Scholars program. The last time they’d seen each other was working Welcome Wednesdays at the Alumni Association, handing out breakfast items and information to students on the Ann Arbor campus.
“We gave each other a big hug and caught up,” Tenbusch says. While Vance went to Columbia University to further his law education, Tenbusch went to Michigan State University to take advantage of the proximity to the figures and opportunities in the state capitol.
But when Tenbusch first arrived at U-M, she enrolled in the nursing curriculum.
“I knew I wanted to care for people, but I didn’t know how, and nursing just seemed like the way to do it,” Tenbusch says. Her parents were key inspirations — her father worked in Detroit for 20 years to advance educational opportunities for students, and her mother went back to school to become a nurse in her 40s.
When Tenbusch decided nursing wasn’t her path, she transferred to public health, then public policy, and then international studies. It was in a 400-level human rights course that she experienced a revealing moment. “In the middle of one lecture, the professor asked, ‘How many of you want to go to law school?’ Everyone except me raised their hands,” she said. For the first time, Tenbusch thought about a career as an attorney.
“I think the dreams that we have in this life are directionally proportionate to the part of the world that we’ve been exposed to,” she says. “I just didn’t know any female attorneys [in my family], so I didn’t have that dream for myself.”
The LEAD Scholars program put Tenbusch in contact with alumni who helped her lay out the path she has followed since.
“Not only did they teach me to dream for myself, but they also equipped me to pursue it. I wouldn’t be where I am right now without LEAD — 100 percent.”
While a student at Michigan State, Tenbusch worked at the school’s Immigration Law Clinic, where students serve as counsel for immigration cases relating to domestic abuse, human trafficking, and refugee claims. Tenbusch also worked in the offices of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and State Justices Elizabeth M. Welch and Megan K. Cavanagh, ’93. She provided advice on different bills that were in the legislature. In doing so, she solidified exactly how she would apply that desire to care for people.
“Each of these powerful leaders had a whole team that they were surrounded by, advising every single decision,” Tenbusch says. “So I knew I wanted to be an advisor. And then, going into law school and coming from a Spanish family, I knew I cared a lot about immigration.”
Growing up, Tenbusch spent innumerable weekends with family in southwest Detroit’s large Hispanic community. She saw firsthand how uncertainty and turmoil in visa statuses and asylum claims could impact well-being.
“We need sustainable solutions in immigration,” she says, aiming to work toward policies that can withstand political cycles to better serve the people they affect.
Though her bar results will not be available until later in the fall, Tenbusch is on her way to the next step in her journey. This September, she began her two-year judicial clerkship in the Imperial Immigration Court in Southern California, by way of being selected for the U.S. Department of Justice for the Attorney General’s Honors Program in the Executive Office of Immigration Review. From there, Tenbusch will pursue a position with the Department of Justice.
“I’m really grateful to have found that space of how I want to help people, to be able to give them peace of mind of knowing that they’re safe. They’re here,” she says.
Tenbusch says LEAD made her feel a similar sense of belonging while at U-M.
“That’s the great thing about LEAD,” she says. “You’re coming to a campus with 50,000 other kids and you just don’t feel like anybody can relate to where you come from. And then you get to LEAD and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh. These kids from my cohort, they get it. They absolutely get it.’”
Gregory Lucas-Myers, ’10, is the senior associate editor of Michigan Alum.
Editor’s Note: This article originally incorrectly stated that Tenbusch’s mother returned to school to become a nurse at age 50. It has been updated to reflect that she was in her forties at the time.
