The Maine Center Awards, presented by the Maine Center for Graduate and Professional Studies, celebrated excellence, leadership, and innovation across three key academic programs: the MaineMBA, Maine Law, and the Muskie School of Public Service. This year marked the award’s inaugural ceremony on June 10, 2025.
The awards included seven honors in total across three categories. The Emerging Leader Alumni Awards recognize recent graduates (within five years) from each program who have shown exemplary leadership and service to their industries, communities, or alma maters. The Distinguished Alumni Awards honor alumni from each program who have achieved significant professional success and impact, particularly those who bridge business, law, and policy to drive systemic change. Finally, the Maine Center Award for Innovation is presented to a Maine-based professional—regardless of alumni status—who has demonstrated forward-thinking leadership and impactful contributions to the state’s economy through interdisciplinary collaboration. Collectively, these awards highlight the Maine Center’s mission to foster innovation, integrity, and cross-sector excellence in service to Maine and beyond.
Both Maine Law alumni award recipients showed leadership, innovation, and dedication throughout their post-law school careers, values that have also been hallmarks of their professional lives within the legal field.
Krystal Williams, who graduated from Maine Law in 2017 received the Emerging Leader Alumni Award. A nontraditional student, she was inspired to pursue law after a transformative thru‑hike of the Appalachian Trail ended at Katahdin and introduced her to the beauty of Maine and its resilient, hard-working people.
While at Maine Law, Krystal co-founded the Multicultural Law Society to support students of color. After graduation, she practiced energy and environmental law at Pierce Atwood and Bernstein Shur before founding Providentia Group PLLC, Maine’s first law and business advisory firm owned by a Black woman. In addition to her corporate transactional law practice, she focuses on embedding equity in corporate, nonprofit, and government settings. Under her leadership, the firm also supports BIPOC entrepreneurs in partnership with Black Owned Maine, and USM’s Center for Business and Economic Research, emphasizing scalable, capital-ready business models. Krystal is also founder and president of the Alpha Legal Foundation (ALF), a nonprofit with a mission to create a legal profession as vibrant and diverse as Maine’s communities. Recently, ALF launched the AmeriCorps Legal Access Navigators, a program that trains non-lawyers to provide court wayfinding and forms assistance. The program addresses the access to justice gap while also providing lower-barrier opportunities to gain experience in the legal sector. As a former Peace Corps volunteer, Krystal seeks opportunities to serve others. Krystal has served on multiple boards—including KinoTek, ACLU of Maine, Coastal Enterprises Inc., Maine Technology Institute, and the University of New England.
Ira Waldman ‘76 received the Distinguished Alumni Award, honoring his exceptional career as a real estate finance and development attorney. Beginning as in-house counsel at Union Mutual (now UNUM), he eventually transitioned to private practice and has been a partner at Cox, Castle & Nicholson LLP in Los Angeles for decades. Waldman specializes in representing developers on ground leases, particularly public–private partnerships—handling 60–70 % of Marina del Rey lease transactions since 1986
A prolific contributor to the legal research field, Waldman has written extensively on ground leases, development structures, and public–private partnerships, publishing in industry journals including the Daily Journal, SoCal Real Estate, ACREL News, and the American Bar Association.. Actively engaged in professional service, he has held leadership roles with the American Bar Association’s Real Property Section, the Uniform Law Commission, the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, and the L.A. County Bar Association.
An ardent advocate for Maine Law, Waldman credits the school with providing a balanced foundation in business and policy while also emphasizing the importance of the public good and service to any successful legal career.
