Sudha Setty is the president and chief executive officer of LSAC. Prior to assuming this role in July 2025, she served as dean of the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law and before that, as dean of Western New England University School of Law. In both of her deanships, she worked to broaden outreach and pathways to legal education, including innovative efforts to engage middle school, high school, and college students with questions of civics, law, and justice.
Since joining LSAC, Setty has continued to focus on expanding access to legal education, including initiatives aimed at first-generation college graduates, active military and veterans, and prospective students from rural communities. As the first South Asian American woman to serve as dean of an ABA-accredited law school, Setty continues to work with others to broaden and advance opportunity in leadership roles within legal education.
Setty is a nationally recognized scholar in national security and comparative civil rights law and is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. Prior to her first deanship, Setty was a faculty member at Western New England for 12 years, teaching courses in national security, comparative law, and constitutional law, among other subjects. Setty received her bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford University and her JD from Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. She began her legal career at the firm Davis Polk & Wardwell. She recently served on the Deans Steering Committee of the Association of American Law Schools, on the editorial board of the Journal of National Security Law and Policy, and on the New York State Bar Association Task Force on Artificial Intelligence.