PRESIDENT - Sunny Kakwani

As Your Counsel’s founder and principal attorney, Sunny provides a disruptive voice in an industry stagnated by convention. He established AYC’s model of personalized legal services + strategic business counseling after more than 10 years (and 10,000 hours) practicing on both coasts. AYC is a boutique business law practice dedicated to providing best-in-class representation across all of its focus areas through its unwavering subscription to its core values: empathy, integrity, caliber and community.

Sunny, born in New Delhi and raised in New York, discovered his passion for policy and advocacy early in life, which led him to Washington, DC in pursuit of his undergraduate degree in Business, Economics and Public Policy at George Washington University. That reverence evolved into practice while he studied law in Boston, MA at Suffolk University. In his free time Sunny enjoys pro bono work, mentoring, traveling, biking, yoga, meditation, coaching, playing basketball, golf and snowboarding.

VICE PRESIDENT - Akriti Bhargava

Akriti is a Policy Analyst with NREL’s Strategic Energy Analysis Center, focusing on clean energy law and policy. She holds a J.D. from Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon concentrating in Energy Law and International Law, and a B.A. in environmental studies and economics from the University of Vermont.

Building and deepening relationships has always been her top priority, and so she has focused on community-building wherever life has taken her. At UVM, Akriti was the Co-Captain of the college's Bollywood dance team, UVM Jazbaa, and at L&C Law, she founded and led the L&C South Asian Law Student Association. While in law school, Akriti also served as the President of L&C Law's Student Bar Association. In the Oregon legal community, Akriti is a member of the Oregon Judicial Diversity Coalition, the OSB Alternatives to the Bar Exam Taskforce, and the OSB Licensure Pathways Development Committee.

Treasurer - Somya Kaushik

Somya Kaushik is the founder and former President (2018 - 2023) of SABA-OR. She is currently the Senior Corporate Counsel of Mineral, Inc., an HR Compliance SaaS/Tech company based out of Portland, Oregon.

Prior to going in-house, Somya practiced in Portland and New York City as a trial attorney for over a decade, where she represented clients in complex healthcare, technology, commercial, intellectual property and medical malpractice claims at the state, federal and appellate level.

Along with practicing law, Somya was the founder and CEO of Esq.Me, Inc., a legal document marketplace for lawyers, by lawyers.

Somya is also an adjunct faculty member at The Lewis & Clark Law School and she sits on the Oregon State Bar’s IP Executive Committee.

In September 2023, Somya and her family relocated to Chicago, Illinois. Somya is still an active member of the OSB and continues to serve on the SABA-OR Board as the Treasurer.

SECRETARY - Nida Hasan

Nida was born in Canada and moved to New York with her family before they made their way to her home state of Arizona. She attended the University of Arizona and received her Bachelor of Science in Public Health with a focus on Health Systems and Delivery. Her undergraduate research experience combined with her work at an education advocacy non-profit sparked her passion for the law.

She continues her spirit of advocacy as a 3L at Lewis & Clark Law School in her capacity as President of the Student Bar Association and Vice President of the South Asian Law Students Association. She is looking forward to connecting South Asian law students and attorneys in Oregon and building community as the SABA Student Liasion.

After law school, she hopes to pursue one of her many legal interests in healthcare and technology.

MEMBER AT LARGE - Justice Aruna Masih

Aruna Masih has been a member and leader in Oregon’s legal community for over 25 years. She and her husband came here in 1997, after law school, with an appreciation for Oregon’s natural beauty and a goal to use their legal education to serve the community. She pursued a civil rights and worker rights law practice with the Portland law firm of Bennett Hartman, LLP, and her husband became a public defender. She has also served as Chair of the Oregon State Bar Association’s Advisory Committee for Diversity and Inclusion and its Labor and Employment Section Executive Committee and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Oregon Minority Lawyers Association, the Oregon Women Lawyers Foundation, the Oregon Women Lawyers, the Multnomah Bar Association, and the Roseway Recovery Cafe. She has been a Constitution Team coach at McDaniel High School since 2017.

Public service was instilled in Aruna at an early age by her parents, a Punjabi Indian father and British mother, who served as medical professionals in a rural hospital in Punjab, India. She was born in New York but grew up in India, returning to this country in high school. While in India, she and her brothers attended Woodstock School, an international school in the Himalayan mountains. She feels a deep connection to the mountains of the Pacific Northwest and is grateful to have found a home and an opportunity to serve the community here in Oregon. In August of 2023, Governor Tina Kotek appointed Aruna to the Oregon Supreme Court. She was sworn into office as a Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court on September 1, 2023.

MEMBER AT LARGE - Judge Mustafa Kasubhai

Judge Mustafa Kasubhai (he/him) is a child of immigrants and he was born and raised in southern California. After graduating from UC Berkeley in 1992, he attended UO Law and received his J.D. in 1996. Judge Kasubhai was appointed to the federal bench in 2018, following 11 years of service as a Lane County Circuit Court Judge.

Prior to joining the state bench, Judge Kasubhai practiced plantiff’s civil litigation throughout southern Oregon with offices in Eugene and Klamath Falls, Oregon and served as a member of the Oregon Workers’ Compensation Board. Judge Kasubhai is the first Muslim American federal judge the country. His service as a U.S. Magistrate Judge, and prior service as state trial court judge and member of the Oregon Workers’ Compensation Board, are marked by a deep dedication to access to justice, including a more diverse and representative legal community.

In a recent article featured in the OWLSAdvance Sheet, entitled "Pronouns and Privilege," Judge Kasubhai described his "own continuing journey, with all its stumbling and fumbling, toward equity." Along with attorney Sarah Malik, Judge Kasubhai also shared a poignant narrative on being a Muslim American in the Oregon legal community the Oregon State Bar Bulletin entitled, “Is There a Place for Us? On Being a Muslim American in Oregon’s Legal Community.” He is a founding member of the South Asian Bar Association of Oregon, and the Oregon Muslim Bar Association.

MEMBER AT LARGE - Judge Zohra Bakhtary tourville

Zohra Bakhtary Tourville was born and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan. She immigrated to the United States as a refugee and later attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree. Upon graduating from UNLV, she moved to Washington D.C. to serve as a short-term Fellow for the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

In 2011, upon admission to the State Bar of Nevada, she accepted a position as an Associate Attorney at the Law Office of Gabriel L. Grasso litigating complex federal CJA panel cases before the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, as well as handled complex and high-profile cases before the Eighth Judicial District Court and the Nevada Supreme Court.

In 2013, Zohra accepted a position at the Clark County Public Defender’s office in Las Vegas, NV. For nearly a decade, she served as a public defender litigating thousands of complex felony cases.

In 2020, Zohra was appointed by the City of Beaverton City Council to serve as a Judge for the Beaverton Municipal Court “BMC”. BMC is the largest municipal court in the State of Oregon. It’s a high-volume court processing thousands of misdemeanor and violation cases annually. Zohra is tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that each person accused of a violation, infraction or crime is guaranteed and provided with all of the Constitutional rights to a fair and speedy judicial process. In addition to the standard docket, more recently, Zohra was entrusted to lead the B-SOBR court. B-SOBR court is a treatment court for repeat DUII offenders. The focus of this program is to guide participants through intensive treatment as well as offer a support system. This program has achieved remarkable results, with a recidivism rate of just 5% one year after graduation.

STUDENT Liaison - Paril Patel

My name is Paril Patel (puh-rill puh-tell) and I am a 2L law student at Willamette University. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, where I earned my Bachelor of Arts in History with a minor in Ethnic Studies from the University of La Verne. I went on to complete my Master of Arts in Cultural Studies at Claremont Graduate University and a Masters in Legal Studies from the University of Southern California. I moved to Oregon for law school and really grew into the idea of finishing my law school journey here and eventually sit to take the Oregon bar.

I am interested in cannabis and the education policy surrounding it, along with issues around constitutional law and prison reform. My goal after graduating is to become a professor, not sure where exactly but I do suspect it will involve history, philosophy, and cultural studies in some way, shape or form.