Alumni in Love: Columbia Law Couples

Daniela Salazar Marín ’05 LL.M. and Eric Hager ’06

Eric Hager ’06 was sitting at a table in the lobby of Jerome L. Greene Hall, recruiting participants for an Outdoors Club ski trip when Daniela Salazar Marín ’05 LL.M. stopped to ask a question. But she was late for class, and Eric asked if he could follow up by email. “He wrote me a very, very polite note, so I wrote him back because I got a good vibe when we met,” says Daniela. The emails led to meeting for coffee, lunch, and eventually becoming a couple. “Fate had it that Daniela swung by the table during my two-hour shift,” he says.

When Daniela graduated, they were unsure if the relationship would last because Eric had another year of law school, and she had accepted a job with a human rights organization in Thailand. Over the summer, before she was due to leave, they spent time together in Boston, where Eric had an internship, and in Ecuador, where Daniela’s family lives. “We were having a great time together,” she says. “We didn’t want it to end.” 

Fate intervened again when Daniela got a last-minute job offer in Washington, D.C., from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, where she had applied for a position many months before. “I decided not to go to Thailand so at least we could be in the same country and keep the relationship alive,” she says, adding, “I’ve still never been to Thailand!” After Eric graduated, he followed her to Washington and joined Goodwin Procter as a litigator. 

In 2007, they got married—twice. A justice of the peace presided at their first wedding in Bourne, Massachusetts, where Eric’s family lives. “It was very intimate and personal,” says Daniela. “It was perfect, and I loved it.” They recited their vows for a second time in an old Spanish colonial church in Quito, Ecuador, followed by a reception at a hacienda outside the city. “I learned that Ecuadorian weddings require hours and hours of dancing, which I’ve enjoyed many times since,” says Eric.

In 2009, they moved to Ecuador, where they live with their 14-year-old son. Eric is now a partner at Conrad & Scherer in Quito, and Daniela serves as a judge on the Constitutional Court of Ecuador. At home, their conversations tend to be more about Daniela’s work than Eric’s. “I focus on civil litigation, so a lot of my cases don’t come with interesting stories,” he says. “Whereas Daniela is dealing with constitutional issues in a rapidly changing country on a day-to-day basis.”

And Daniela values his backing. “It’s amazing to have the support of someone like Eric, who’s as committed to democracy and human rights as I am,” she says. “I am very lucky.”

Heng Gong ’10 and Xiao Zhu ’10

When Heng Gong ’10 and Xiao Zhu ’10 met as 1Ls, they discovered they had much in common. Born and educated in China, they had each come to the U.S. for graduate studies—Heng to pursue a degree in engineering at Stanford University and Xiao a Ph.D. in biological sciences at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. They both lost interest in STEM careers and pivoted to the law, shifting to Columbia, where they shared a similar temperament and similar interests in good movies, music, and books. “We’re quiet people who don’t go out much and like to read,” says Xiao.

By the fall of their 2L year, they had become good friends who, unbeknownst to one another, had each accepted jobs as summer associates at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York and Hong Kong. “We began dating shortly after that,” says Heng. “In retrospect, we should have accepted offers from different firms.”

“In retrospect, it doesn’t matter!” says Xiao, noting that they did not keep their budding romance a secret at Davis Polk. What’s more, they both returned to Davis Polk as full-time associates after graduation; Heng worked there for two years and Xiao for five.

During their Law School years, Heng was a research assistant for Benjamin L. Liebman, Robert L. Lieff Professor of Law, vice dean for intellectual life, and director of the Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies. He and Xiao became friendly with Liebman, and when their parents came to New York for their graduations, they invited Liebman to celebrate with them at a Chinese restaurant near campus. “I remember Professor Liebman having very vivid and intense conversations with our parents in Chinese about Chinese politics,” says Heng. “It’s a very fun memory.”

After they graduated, Heng proposed while the couple was having brunch at one of their favorite restaurants, Cafe Lalo, which was featured in the Nora Ephron romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail. “I said ‘yes’ right away,” says Xiao. The couple married at the New York City Clerk’s Office in 2011 and later had a wedding reception in Shanghai, where Xiao’s family lives.

The couple decided to build their careers and raise their family in the U.S. Today, Xiao works in finance and Heng is a partner at Blue Peak Law Group, where he specializes in litigating patent and intellectual property disputes. They live in Scarsdale, New York, with their school-age twin sons. At home, they don’t talk a lot about work per se. “But we understand each other’s professional lives and what the other is going through daily,” says Xiao. “We don’t have to explain certain things to each other like having to take a work call while on vacation.”

Alexandra Settelmayer ’17 and Michael Linneman ’17

Michael Linneman ’17 and Alexandra (“Ally”) Settelmayer ’17 will never forget the first cocktail they shared. It was the night they met, the winter of their 2L year, and their mutual friend Davis Martin ’17 invited them to his apartment for pine-smoked old fashioneds. “He was burning a block of wood with a blowtorch to infuse a smoky flavor into the glasses,” recalls Mike. “Ally piqued my interest. She was pretty and funny and things went fairly quickly from there.”

Having drinks with friends would become a leitmotif of their relationship. “Our group of friends had a standing plan to meet at Arts and Crafts Beer Parlor across from the Law School on Wednesday nights,” says Ally. “The people that we met at Columbia play such a huge role in our story.” The group also studied for finals together, reserving a conference room on the top floor of the university’s Philosophy Hall. “In some respects, studying as a group was very productive because you can bounce ideas off each other,” says Mike. “It could also be wildly unproductive, especially when we ordered in from Jacob’s Pickles, and after 2,000 calories of carbs and fat, you no longer feel like studying!”

After graduating and taking the bar exam, the couple and a retinue of Columbia Law friends went on a five-week trip, beginning in New Zealand and continuing on to Australia, Barcelona, Croatia, and Mykonos. “When we began to plan our wedding, we wanted to recreate the magic of that trip,” says Ally. “We wanted our wedding to be another shared memory.”

In September 2023, they were married in Santorini, Greece, surrounded by 65 friends and family members, including a Columbia Law contingent that numbered 17 (with spouses and partners). Their wedding day was so picture-perfect—from the vows exchanged with the Aegean as the backdrop to the bridesmaids in their assorted Mediterranean blue dresses to the fireworks display following the couple’s first dance to Taylor Swift’s “Lover”—that their photographer, Sophie Kaye, submitted the pictures to Martha Stewart Weddings, which published a lavishly illustrated story about the wedding last August.

To make sure that their guests understood how much the couple appreciated their traveling to Greece to celebrate with them, Ally and Mike wrote individual notes to each guest, which they received when they sat down to dinner. Ally says it was “a daunting task” to find time to write the notes while planning the wedding and juggling their Big Law careers: Ally defends the First Amendment rights of journalists and media companies as an associate at Davis Wright Tremaine; Mike focuses on criminal and civil litigation as an associate at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. “We worked on the notes together every night for weeks before the wedding,” says Ally. “We are the ultimate teammates.”

Jennifer Mooradian Levin ’97 and Jared Levin LAW ’98, BUS ’98

Jennifer Levin ’97 and Jared Levin LAW ’98, BUS ’98 met as 1Ls, when they were assigned rooms in the same suite in an East Campus residence hall. “We were the only two who used the kitchen,” says Jen. “We’d find ourselves each evening cooking something, so we started to share meals and study together.”

The dinners turned romantic. By spring, when they had to apply for their 2L living arrangements, they decided to move in together officially in off-campus housing. “We adopted our first pair of cats and that helped cement our relationship,” says Jared.

Neither of them had chosen law school with clear-cut career goals. “I thought having a law background would be good for anything I wanted to do—at least that’s what had been drilled into me from a young age,” says Jared, who was in the joint J.D./MBA program with Columbia Business School. Jen imagined that, being trained as a lawyer, she would be able “help people seeking the truth” and develop skills “to understand arguments and get to the bottom of facts,” she says.

Two months after Jen’s graduation, they were married in Beverly, Massachusetts. “It was an outdoor wedding with a reggae band, and it was a lot of fun,” says Jared. Jen then went to work in Big Law while Jared finished his studies before working in investment banking and later asset management. Jen left Big Law after seven years, deciding to devote herself to raising the first of the couple’s three daughters. “Jen was such a good attorney,” says Jared. “At every social event, her partners raved about working with her. Personally, I would have found it hard to leave the profession with that kind of support from my bosses.”

By 2014, they were living in Larchmont, New York, and discussing how they would like to own their own business. On a whim, Jen did an internet search for “businesses for sale in Maine” (where she had gone to college and spent her childhood summers), and the second business on the list was Chilton Furniture, which sells made-in-America, New England-inspired furniture from domestically sourced hardwood. They purchased the company in 2014 and moved to the Pine Tree State. Jared commuted back and forth to New York for several years until Mainely Tubs—an employee-owned retailer of hot tubs, swim spas, and saunas right across the street from Chilton in Scarborough, Maine—asked him if he would like to be its president. “It was an exciting opportunity and a way for me to stay in Maine full-time,” he says.

Today, under the Levins’ stewardship, both businesses have expanded. They are thriving, and so are Jen and Jared, who draw upon tools they developed at the Law School in both their professional and personal lives. “The key skill set is the ability to listen very carefully and communicate clearly,” says Jen. “Communication and shared goals are the key to any relationship.”

Anne Voigts ’99 and Troy Foster ’99

Anne Voigts ’99, a graduate of Yale University, and Troy Foster ’99, a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, came to Columbia Law School with very different ambitions. “I wanted to be a partner at Wachtell Lipton,” says Troy, referring to the top-tier corporate law firm. “I knew that Columbia was a feeder school for that firm, so I wanted to go to Columbia.”

Anne arrived at the Law School after being a Peace Corps volunteer in a tiny village without electricity or running water in Ivory Coast. “I wanted to go to a terrific school with strengths in international law,” she says.

They got to know each other as 1Ls in neutral territory—their Civil Procedure section, taught by Judge Jack B. Weinstein ’48, which met at 8 a.m. “He was a fantastic professor and a kind man who brought us coffee and donuts to make up for the fact that the class was so early,” says Anne. 

“We were in the same study group, became friends, and the relationship just blossomed from there,” says Troy.

After graduation, Anne secured a clerkship on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in California. At the last minute, Troy decided to forgo a position at his dream firm to take a clerkship with a different judge on the same court. “The motivating factor in accepting the offer was being with Anne,” he says. The following year, they managed a long-distance relationship: Anne moved to Washington, D.C., to clerk for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, and Troy moved to Northern California to start his career at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a firm in Silicon Valley.

In 2003, they celebrated their wedding surrounded by Columbia Law classmates at the Flood Mansion overlooking the bay in the Pacific Heights area of San Francisco. As newlyweds, they lived in Pacifica, a laid-back oceanfront town south of San Francisco, then Santa Monica, before returning to Northern California and raising three children. Anne spent a dozen years as an assistant U.S. attorney before joining a firm, representing clients before the U.S. Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, state and federal appellate courts, and trial courts; she now leads the appellate practice at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. Troy now serves as co-chair of the emerging companies and venture capital practice at Perkins Coie, where he focuses on representing clients in the tech sector.

“We’re still on different professional paths,” says Anne with a hearty laugh. “I think Troy would say his career is based on bringing people together since he does corporate work, and mine as a litigator is based on pulling people apart. But I would say it’s more about getting justice for my clients.”