P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans

ANDRES IDARRAGA is a lawyer, educator, and entrepreneur. He is currently Counsel at Scale LLP, where he provides fractional general counsel services to financial and technology companies and represents clients in complex commercial disputes involving financial services, securities, and antitrust matters. Andres is also a co-founder of the Transcending Through Education Foundation (“TTEF”). TTEF provides resources and support services to people in U.S. prisons who are pursuing post-secondary education. He also previously co-founded Creci, a social impact lending platform that closed in 2023. 

Andres was born in Medellin, Colombia, and emigrated with his family to Pawtucket and Central Falls, Rhode Island, when he was six. His family is originally from Marinilla and Cocorna, small towns outside of Medellin that were much affected by Colombia’s civil war. 

Andres received his JD from Yale Law School in 2011 and his AB from Brown University in 2008, where he was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and a Rose Writing Fellow. He also earned an Executive MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, where he was named a Youn Impact Scholar and received the Kellogg Social Entrepreneurship Award to support his education and social impact investing work.   

While at Brown, Andres worked on the Rhode Island Right to Vote campaign, which was successful in ending felony disenfranchisement in Rhode Island. As a result of that work, he testified in Congress in support of the Democracy Restoration Act of 2009, which would end felony disenfranchisement in federal elections.

At Yale, Andres served as student director of the Education Adequacy Clinic. In March 2010, the clinic won a major victory in the Connecticut Supreme Court that established a right to an adequate education under the state constitution for all Connecticut schoolchildren. He also co-founded the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project at Yale Law School, which sends law students to New Haven area high schools to teach a year-long course in Constitutional Law. Andres interned at the American Civil Liberties Union, Florida Legal Services, and the U.S. House Judiciary Committee while at Yale.