April Xiaoyi Xu earned her Juris Doctor degree from Harvard in May 2021. She started her legal career clerking for a federal judge and is currently a Biglaw litigator. April was President of the Harvard Asia Law Society and a Salzburg Cutler Fellow in International Law. She was the Teaching Fellow for Judge Joseph Greenaway's "Great Cases of the Supreme Court" course, as well as a Research Assistant to HLS professors Jeannie Suk Gersen, Noah Feldman, and Urs Gasser, MIT professor Amy Finkelstein, and the HLS Program on International Law and Armed Conflicts. She interned for Judge Hellerstein at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY). April served as Managing Editor of the Harvard Negotiation Law Review and a masthead member for 3 other Harvard law journals and Cambridge Law Review (UK). A mentor to Harvard College pre-law students and HLS LLM candidates, April currently serves as President of the Harvard Law School Association’s Recent Graduates Network Board.
April was a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship. She graduated summa cum laude from Pomona College in 2018. April was elected to both Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Delta Pi junior year, and received the Phi Beta Kappa Graduate Scholarship, Downing Scholarship (full merit scholarship for the University of Cambridge's MPhil degree), Bernard Chan Service Award, John A. Vieg Politics Prize, and Dole-Kinney Creative Writing Award.
A freelance writer for 15 publications in 3 languages including the Huffington Post, South China Morning Post, and Caixin since high school, April has published more than 100 articles spanning diverse topics and interviewed more than 20 global leaders. She served as Editor-in-Chief of the Claremont Journal of Law and Public Policy and founded the North America-wide Intercollegiate Law Journal. April has conducted both independent and collaborative research in three continents, and has published papers on law, politics, and policy in several law reviews and other academic journals.
At the World Health Organization, April designed an original universal health coverage campaign for Greater China to further promote equity and quality health care service. She also founded an award-winning conservation club at her high school, where she was the presidential scholarship recipient of her class.
April enjoys singing, creative writing, tennis, Zumba, swimming, and learning foreign languages. She is seeking representation to publish two novels: (1) a legal-thriller romance novel exploring raw ambition and irrational fear and (2) a young adult fantasy novel set in 4 continents.
