Sudha Setty is the president and chief executive officer of LSAC. Prior to this role, 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, Setty focused on building structures to support social justice and public interest lawyering, as well as on increasing access to legal education. While at CUNY Law, she spearheaded a significant expansion of Pipeline to Justice, the law school’s signature access program, and led the founding of the First Impressions Youth Legal Collaborative, a multifaceted program to engage middle school, high school, and college students in engaging with questions of civics, law, and justice.
For many years, Setty has been a leader in coalition-building to advance access and opportunity in leadership roles, starting with pipeline and pathway efforts. As the first South Asian American woman to serve as dean of an ABA-accredited law school, Setty is particularly attuned to the fact that we must collectively do more to support those who have been historically excluded from leadership roles.
Setty is a nationally recognized scholar in national security and comparative civil rights law and is an elected member of the American Law Institute. 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.