Turning Adversity into Action
As an attorney and cancer survivor, Olivia Hiltbrand ’25 deeply understands what it means to be an advocate.
Hiltbrand went through almost three years of chemo, including during her entire 1L year. Since then, she has come to understand the power of using her voice, not only in the courtroom, but in spaces where her experience can make a difference.
“For me, advocacy means standing up for something and making it easier for the next person,” she said. “After surviving cancer, advocacy has taken on new meaning. I know I benefited personally from people who advocated for cancer research and treatments and raised money years ago. Those people didn’t know me, but because of their advocacy and commitment to this cause, I got the benefit of advances in cancer research. I got to go to law school, graduate, and begin working as an attorney, and I got the gift of more years to spend with my family and friends. I feel motivated to pay that forward so other people can have those experiences.”
Though it was an incredibly difficult time, the friendships she made helped sustain her throughout her time as a student and beyond.
“I felt really lucky to find a community of close friends at Moritz,” she shared. “Coming into law school as a nontraditional student, I was a little concerned about finding law school friends in a similar stage of life. But I made several close friends, also nontraditional students, and we’ve remained close.”
Hiltbrand’s treatment also did not slow down her plans for her career. In an article from 2022, Hiltbrand discussed how her background as a journalist shaped her professional ambitions to work in media law. Since then, Hiltbrand had several opportunities to delve further into the topic. She worked at the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School during her 1L summer and the Knight First Amendment Institute during her 2L summer. Both organizations focus on First Amendment, press freedom, and public recordswork.
Hiltbrand has also published several papers related to media law. Her student note on noncompete agreements in news was published by the Ohio State Law Journal Online. She also wrote a piece about intellectual property concerns for news outlets as a result ofgenerative AI that appeared in the Stanford Technology Law Review. Hiltbrand’s latest work on reporter’s privilege which will be published next month in the University of North Carolina’s First Amendment Law Review. She now works at Squire Patton Boggs in Columbus and recently had the opportunity to help with a few defamation matters, including representing a Cleveland news outlet.
In ways both professionally and personally, Hiltbrand hopes to continue being an advocate in profound ways.
“It’s been really meaningful to see my experience with cancer—the hardest thing I’ve gone through in my life—turn into a way to help people,” she said. “While I wish I’d never had to deal with cancer, I have a chance to do something about it now for other people in the hopes that someday cancer will affect far fewer families. For now, I hope it makes the path easier for those going through it.”
Hiltbrand is a candidate for Blood Cancer United’s Visionaries of the Year in Columbus. She and her team, which includes friends she met at Moritz, are working to raise $100,000 for cancer research by May 1. To learn more about Hiltbrand’s story and contribute to her fundraising efforts, visit this page.