Dear SABA Friends and Family:
Last month, our President (now Immediate Past President), Tara Raghavan, sent her last President’s Newsletter of the 2022-2023 SABA North America year. In it she promised you would be spared from extremely long newsletter communications from her – but she didn’t say anything about long newsletter communications from me, your new (as of July 23rd) President! I want to take a moment to thank Tara for her able leadership of SABA this past year, which was just an extension of the years of dedication she has shown to SABA. She constantly challenged us do more and dream bigger for this organization. She made it a special point to ensure that everyone’s voice was heard, especially those she didn’t necessarily agree with personally. The energy she brought to everyday tasks was an inspiration to us all. After a well-deserved break, I am confident we will be seeing more of her throughout SABA.
I am honored to serve as your 21st President of SABA North America. Over the last decade, I have seen first-hand the growth and maturation of SABA under the direction of generations of able leaders. Thanks to their efforts, SABA now has 30 chapters (including SABA Central California, who we welcomed this past May) and over 10,000 members spread across the US and Canada. Through our collective efforts, we have helped South Asian lawyers reach the pinnacles of our profession in the public and private sectors and shined a national spotlight on the issues dearest to the South Asian community. Those are impressive feats for which we should all be proud. But our work is hardly done. SABA now stands at a crossroads. We have an opportunity to take SABA to the next level—in support for our local chapters, in advocacy for the broader South Asian community, and in mentoring, sponsoring, coaching and teaching our members to achieve even greater heights. We also face the challenge of ensuring that, even as our organization grows larger and spreads farther, we continue to nurture the same feeling of family that has allowed our members to grow and to reach, to debate and to disagree, to teach and to learn that SABA has offered so many over the last two decades.
Last month, at our Annual Conference, we swore in our new Executive Committee, with the Honorable Judge Vibhav Mittal of the Superior Court of California, County of Orange on hand to administer a bespoke oath of office.
President Charan Brahma
President-Elect Keerthi Sugumaran
Treasurer Rahul Ranadive
Secretary Vani Vedam
VP – Annual Conference Aaron Bains
VP – Sponsorship Asker A. Saeed
VP – Public Relations Krithika Rajkumar
VP – Membership Rashmi Chandra
VP – Affiliate Relations A.J. Dhaliwal
VP – Advocacy Nishi Kothari
VP – Programming Lalitha Alladi
VP – Young Lawyers Division Madiha Merchant
VP – Professional Development Gopi Panchapakesan
I speak on behalf of our entire Executive Committee when I say that we look forward to serving you this year, and we want to hear from you about what SABA North America could be doing better, what more we could be doing to support your local chapters and how you would like to get more involved. Because making the SABA of tomorrow takes more than the effort of our leadership—it takes all of YOU. Your effort, your energy and your insight are what have made SABA what it is today. And we hope you will continue working with us to achieve our goals over the coming year.
To that end, July was capped off with our biggest and best Annual Conference ever, themed “The Next Revolution” at the Boston Park Plaza July 20-23! We had over 800 registered attendees coming from chapters all across North America, with great representation from the private sector, government, public interest, and the judiciary. Over three days, we had the chance to re-connect with old friends and make new ones, learn about cutting edge issues and celebrate each other’s successes and accomplishments. We heard from leading luminaries, like U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, Alamdar Hamdani, General Counsel of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Anisha Dasgupta, General Counsel of leading global alternative investment firm Wafra, Sumana Setty, and Chief Appellate Counsel and Managing Attorney for the Sierra Club, Sanjay Narayan, to name just a few. We heard firsthand about the lessons learned from the apprehension and prosecution of the Boston Marathon bombers from former Assistant U.S. Attorneys Aloke Chakravarty and George Varghese (ably moderated by a man who knows a thing or two about high-profile prosecutions, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara). We held a summit for corporate counsel, put on our first pitch program, and held an interactive keynote session with Rudhir Krishtel on the power of the SABA family. And we topped it off with a spectacular Gala featuring Madame Justice Renu Mandhane of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Brampton) and musical guests, Fateh and Simar. Many thanks to our past VP of Conference (and current President-Elect), Keerthi Sugumaran, SABA Greater Boston, and our over 85 sponsoring law firms, companies and government agencies that all helped make this a record-setting year for sponsorship.
But most importantly, we rekindled the feeling of home that SABA provides for so many. Despite, and because of, our differences in background, practice and ideology, each year’s Conference gives us the chance to restore our conviction that we are stronger together.
If you had the chance to attend Conference and can’t wait to come back for next year, or if you missed it and are now consumed by regret, next year’s Conference will be here before you know it—“Passport to the Future” will be held from July 11-14, 2024 in Toronto! SAVE THE DATE!
August provides a brief respite, but we get back into full swing in September. The month starts off with some of us attending the Hispanic National Bar Association’s Annual Convention in Minneapolis (Sept. 6-8). We also enter the thick of chapter gala season, with SABA Dallas hosting their gala on Sept. 9th, SABA Connecticut celebrating its gala on Sept. 13th, SABA New York hosting its gala on Sept. 26th and SABA DC celebrating its public interest gala on Sept. 30. And our full Board will be in Washington, D.C. for our Leadership Retreat on Sept. 29-30. We look forward to seeing many of you at these events.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please send me an email at president@sabanorthamerica.com.
Best Regards, |
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Charanjit (Charan) Brahma
President, SABA North America
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