Meet our Interim Board

  • CO-PRESIDENT

    Laura Shannon is a rising 3L at the University of Chicago Law School, where she participates in the Federal Criminal Justice Clinic, is the Topic Access and Recruitment Editor on The Law Review, and founded the Chicago Plaintiffs’ Law Association. Outside of school and NPLA, Laura teaches group fitness classes at Pure Barre. She received her undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Northeastern University in 2018. After law school, Laura is working at Keller Postman in Chicago where she was a summer associate last summer.

    Prior to law school, Laura worked as a paralegal at a large defense firm. Despite enjoying the work and finding it substantively interesting, she struggled to square her progressive values with her day-to-day role in helping corporations avoid accountability. This experience sparked her passion for plaintiff-side advocacy.

  • EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR

    Yusuf Al-Bazian is a 2L at UC Law San Francisco where he competes on the Trial Team, is president of the Muslim Law Student Association, and founded the Society of the Arts (an organization centered around art and networking). Yusuf spent his 1L summer working at Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger, where he worked on mass torts and personal injury cases. He received his undergraduate degree in Rhetoric and French from UC Berkeley in 2020. Before law school, Yusuf worked as a paralegal for two plaintiff-side personal injury firms: Kermani LLP in Santa Monica, and the Aleem Law Firm in Atlanta. These early experiences were formative in shaping his career goals and passion for plaintiff-side representation. In his free time, he enjoys reading fantasy novels, working out, and collecting stationery.

  • EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR

    Julia is a 3L at Stanford Law School. She fell in love with plaintiffs’-side litigation when she worked at a small employment discrimination firm after graduating from Swarthmore College in 2019. But when she arrived at SLS, big law was all anyone would talk about. She helped revive the then-inactive Stanford Plaintiffs’ Law Association with a few of her classmates and served as both Events & Communications Chair and Treasurer on its board. She was also Co-President of SLS’s First-Generation & Low-Income student organization and is currently the Symposium Editor for the Stanford Law Review. She is also on the Stanford University Club Tennis Team. After graduation, Julia will work at Reid Collins & Tsai in Austin, Texas.

    Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Julia is a first-generation law student and daughter of Ukrainian immigrant parents. She attended Stuyvesant High School and received a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Political Science from Swarthmore College. In her free time, she loves to solve crosswords with her friends, practice with her law school cover band, and spend time with her pup, Pepper.

  • ALUMNI MANAGER

    Carson is a 3L at the University of Texas School of Law. He is the co-president and a co-founder of PALS, the Plaintiffs’ Advocacy and Litigation Society at Texas Law. As part of NPLA, Carson connects former members of its network with current students. As a law student, Carson is a teaching quizmaster for the school’s writing seminar and an executive editor for its international law journal. Last year, he was a semi-finalist in the school’s moot court competition and won the Dean’s Achievement Award in trial advocacy. This summer, he was a summer associate at DiCello Levitt in Chicago. After graduation, he will clerk in the Eastern District of Texas. He is currently training for the Austin Marathon.

  • EXECUTIVE MEMBERSHIP DIRECTOR

    Doug Snyder is the son of a Buckalew Elementary School teacher and a U.S. Navy Mustang. He was raised in New Orleans and the Houston suburbs, then attended the University of Texas at Austin, majoring in Government and Information Systems with a minor in Classics. Before law school, Doug worked in political data strategy for state parties and was the Legislative Director for a Texas State Representative, focusing on education and juvenile justice policy with an eye toward expanding restorative justice programs. Doug is now a 2L at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and is also pursuing an M.B.E. at the Perelman School of Medicine. He is involved with the Mock Trial Team, the Jewish Law Student Association, and the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.

    Doug loves classic movies, crossword puzzles, and exploring Philadelphia’s many historical sights. After spending his first summer as a clerk at Kline & Specter, a medical malpractice firm in Philadelphia, he’ll be joining (working for) fellow NPLA co-founder Laura Shannon at Keller Postman this summer.

  • COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

    Ellen Teuscher is a 2L at Harvard Law from The Woodlands, Texas. She graduated in 2020 from the University of Texas at Austin with a B.A. in Government and Humanities. Before law school, Ellen worked at a political digital advertising and public affairs agency. At HLS, she is the President of the Harvard Plaintiffs’ Law Association, Communications Chair for Lamba, and Social Media & Graphics Chair for the Alliance for Reproductive Justice. She is also involved with the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, and the Cyberlaw Clinic. This past summer Ellen worked at Finkelstein Blankinship Frei-Pearson & Garber, a plaintiff-side firm in New York representing consumers, employees, and others who have been harmed by corporate greed and unlawful practices. In her (limited) free time she loves to read and attend concerts in the greater Boston area!

  • CO-PRESIDENT

    Pranaya Pahwa is a 3L at Harvard Law School from San Jose, California. He is the co-president of Harvard’s Plaintiffs’ Law Association (HPLA) and Sponsorship Chair for the Harvard South Asian Law Student Association, West Coast Club, and Space Law Society. This past summer, Pranaya dedicated himself to advocating for plaintiffs, splitting his time between Upper Seven Law in Helena, Montana and Hausfeld in Washington D.C. After law school, Pranaya is joining Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder as a Trial Advocacy Fellow.

  • EXECUTIVE OPERATIONS DIRECTOR

    Ella is a 3L at Yale Law School with a background in civil rights and economic justice work. She spent her 1L summer as an Equal Justice America Summer Fellow at Lawyers for Civil Rights and her 2L summer at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, a plaintiffs’ class action firm that fights for victims of corporate misconduct. On campus, she is an advanced clinical student for the San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project and a Coker Fellow in Constitutional Law. Prior to law school, she studied conflict transformation as a Mitchell Scholar at Queen’s University Belfast and worked as a Policy Fellow at the National Vote at Home Institute. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a B.A. in American Studies. After graduation, she will clerk in the District of Connecticut. She loves cooking, hiking, and podcasts about the legal entanglements of reality TV stars.

  • EXECUTIVE FINANCE DIRECTOR

    Brennan is a 2L at Texas Law. He is the Co-President and Co-Founder of Texas Law’s Plaintiffs’ Advocacy & Litigation Society (PALS) and regularly assists other law students in founding plaintiff-friendly organizations at their respective law schools. Brennan also serves as a member on Texas Law Review, competes in interscholastic moot court competitions, and assists Professor Theodore Rave with research on Multidistrict Litigation. As a 1L, Brennan worked in plaintiff-side employment law at Kaplan Law Firm and then split his summer on the defense side at Morgan Lewis & Bockius before returning to plaintiff-side representation working on mass tort and catastrophic injury cases at Arnold & Itkin. Brennan will split his 2L summer between Arnold & Itkin’s mass tort practice, Burns Charest’s plaintiff-side antitrust, consumer protection, and environmental practices, and Susman Godfrey’s commercial litigation practice. He is an expert-level USCF chess player and an avid punk rock enthusiast.

  • EDUCATION MANAGER

    Payton is 3L at Capital University Law School, where she founded the Tort and Injury Law Society (TAILS), is a Budget Committee Member of the Student Bar Association, and currently works as a law clerk at Leeseberg Tuttle, a Plaintiffs’ Law Firm in Columbus, Ohio that passionately and aggressively advocates for injured people and their families who have suffered from complex personal injury, medical malpractice, or wrongful death. Payton received her undergraduate degree in Advertising and Multi-Media/Photojournalism from Creighton University in 2018.

  • NEW CHAPTER MANAGER