Victoria Sahani

Victoria Shannon Sahani is the Associate Provost for Community and Inclusion at Boston University and a Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law. As Associate Provost, Professor Sahani helps guide BU’s efforts to ensure inclusive excellence of faculty and academic appointees, nurture a positive campus climate, and enhance diversity and inclusion within the academic program. She also provides leadership in implementing two essential pillars of BU’s 2030 Strategic Plan — “Community: Big Yet Small” and “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion” — as the University works to enhance the environment and opportunities it affords all BU community members.

Professor Sahani leads a growing portfolio of programs, including the Belonging & Culture Survey Initiative, a University-wide assessment to measure students, staff, and faculty’s sense of belonging and culture at BU and identify successes and opportunities for improvement; BU Diversity & Inclusion, educating and training the BU community to build a positive and inclusive campus environment, with a focus on faculty and staff; the Newbury Center, supporting first-generation undergraduate, graduate, and professional students; the LGBTQIA+ Center for Faculty & Staff, fostering community and sparking transformation for LGBTQIA+ faculty and staff at BU; the BU Arts Initiative, a joint collaboration with the College of Fine Arts, ensuring that the arts are fundamental to the student experience by developing and supporting university-wide programs to advance the role of the arts at BU; and Organizational Development & Learning, a joint collaboration with Human Resources, offering a wide range of opportunities for employee professional development that spans all stages of an employee’s career journey at BU.

Before joining BU, Professor Sahani served as Associate Dean of Faculty Development / Special Projects and Professor of Law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. She also served as Director of the Faculty Inclusion Research for System Transformation (FIRST) Initiative at Arizona State University, a university-wide initiative commissioned by the ASU President’s Office to examine data on race and inclusion among faculty at the ASU. She started her teaching career and was promoted to Associate Professor of Law at Washington & Lee University School of Law.

Professor Sahani is an internationally recognized legal scholar in arbitration law and third-party litigation funding law and an award-winning teacher. She has more than 15 years of experience in international arbitration and more than 12 years of expertise in third-party funding. She also serves as an independent arbitrator, consultant, and expert witness, and she has testified before the United States Congress about her research. She is a co-author of the book Third-Party Funding in International Arbitration (Wolters Kluwer, 2d ed. 2017) (with Lisa Bench Nieuwveld)—the first book in the world on this topic. She has also authored numerous chapters in books, law review articles, and essays published in prominent domestic and international journals. She is Chair-Elect of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on International Law, a Counsellor of the American Society of International Law (ASIL), an Elected Member of the American Law Institute (ALI), an American Bar Foundation (ABF) Fellow, and the Immediate Past Chair of the Academic Council of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA).

Before teaching law, Professor Sahani served as Deputy Director of Arbitration and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in North America for the International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC) International Court of Arbitration and Deputy Director of the Arbitration and ADR Committee of the US Council for International Business (USCIB). Before joining the ICC and USCIB, she practiced law at Pillsbury and worked on transactions relating to affordable housing and community-based real estate development, matters involving American Indian law, and housing discrimination claims in New Orleans immediately after Hurricane Katrina.

Professor Sahani received her law degree from Harvard Law School and her undergraduate degree in psychology from Harvard College. She remains an active member of the bar in New York and the District of Columbia.

Professor Sahani’s CV and publications are available on her law faculty profile page.