About Us/Board

Cecil J. Thomas, President

Cecil J. Thomas is a staff attorney at Greater Hartford Legal Aid, Inc., where he represents low-income clients in a broad range of civil matters, including housing, employment, and family law. Mr. Thomas attended college at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where he majored in Politics and History, with honors. During his senior year at Brandeis, Mr. Thomas participated in an accelerated B.A./M.A. program. Upon successfully defending his Master's thesis, Mr. Thomas was awarded a Master of Arts in American History along with his Bachelor's degrees cum laude, in 2003.

Upon graduation, Mr. Thomas moved to Connecticut to begin law school at the University of Connecticut School of Law. As a law student, Mr. Thomas was active in the South Asian Law Students Association and the UConn Law Connections High School Mentoring program. Mr. Thomas was also a student law intern in the University of Connecticut's Low Income Tax Clinic, where he represented low-income clients before the Internal Revenue Service. Upon graduation in 2006, Mr. Thomas was awarded the Nina E. Olsen and Janet Spragen Low Income Taxpayer Clinic Award for his outstanding representation of his tax clinic clients.

In addition to his responsibilities with the South Asian Bar Association of Connecticut, Mr. Thomas is a board member of the Center for First Amendment Rights and a co-chair of the Connecticut Bar Association Young Lawyer's Section Public Interest Law Committee.

Namita Shah, Vice President

Ms. Shah is a graduate of Boston University School of Law and has been an attorney with Day Pitney for the last 12 years. She practices in the areas of public and private finance. Her practice involves all aspects related to the issuance of governmental bonds, including disclosure, tax analysis and the negotiation of various agreements.

Her private finance work includes asset-based financing, mezzanine debt and bank loans. She is on Day Pitney's pro bono committee and hiring committee and is a member of the CT Bar Association, National Association of Bond Lawyers and the CT Government Finance Officer's Association.

Sudha Setty, Secretary

Prior to joining the faculty of Western New England College School of Law in 2006, Professor Setty spent seven years as a litigator with the New York firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell. At Davis Polk, Professor Setty focused on cases in the areas of contracts, antitrust, and securities regulation. Her pro bono practice included work in the areas of prisoners’ constitutional rights and state constitutional challenges to immigration-related ballot initiatives. Professor Setty graduated from Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar and a writing and research editor for the Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems.

Professor Setty teaches Comparative Constitutional Law, Civil Rights and Contracts. Her scholarly writing focuses on the areas of comparative constitutional law, comparative politics and Title IX regulation.

She is a member of the Connecticut Bar Association Task Force on the Future of Women in the Legal Profession, and is the co-chair of the Law Schools Subcommittee of the task force. She currently serves as the Secretary of SABAC, and was previously the Treasurer of the organization.

Tejal Patel, Treasurer

Tejal K. Patel is an associate at Shipman & Goodwin LLP and practices in the area of business and finance, intellectual property, and information governance. She has experience with transactions involving commercial lending, mezzanine financings, securities, mergers and acquisitions, and other general corporate matters.

Ms. Patel assists with counseling middle market companies as well as regional and national lending institutions. She has also assisted with counseling clients on intellectual property and information governance related matters such as website development agreements and document retention and destruction policies. Ms. Patel received her B.A., magna cum laude, from the George Washington University in 2002 and her law degree from the University of Connecticut School of Law in 2008. Prior to attending law school, she worked as a legislative assistant in Washington D.C.

Rupal Shah Palanki, Director

Ms. Shah-Palanki is an Assistant Attorney General in the Finance Unit of the Office of the Connecticut Attorney General. She primarily works in the area of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement and related enforcement and also has represented the Departments of Banking, Revenue Services, Insurance and Consumer Protection on various matters. Prior to joining the Attorney General's Office, she practiced with the firms of Bingham McCutcheon and Cohn, Birnbaum and Shea, where she practiced in the areas of cross border insolvency, financial transactions and commercial litigation.

Ms. Shah-Palanki received her B.S. from the College of the Holy Cross in 1995 and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1999, where she was a member of the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy and a Vice President of the International Law Society. She is admitted to practice in Connecticut and New York. She is a member of the Oliver Ellsworth Inns of Court and the Connecticut Bar Association. She currently serves on the Board of the North American South Asian Bar Association and has served on the boards of My Sisters Place, Inc. and Lawyers Without Borders, Inc.

Julie Alleyne, Director

Julie Alleyne graduated from the Syracuse University College of Law in 1995 and has focused her career in the area of Construction, Surety and Fidelity law. Mrs. Alleyne began her legal career as an associate at O'Brien, Shafner, Stuart, Kelley & Morris in Norwich, CT where she focused on commercial litigation. She then served as in-house counsel at Travelers in its Bond Department where she provided legal advice to both underwriting and claims for approximately 6 years. At Travelers, she was also responsible for training claims professionals and aided in launching the department’s international surety initiatives.

Mrs. Alleyne currently serves as a Director in the Bond Claim Department of The Hartford, where she manages a team of claim professionals and attorneys. Mrs. Alleyne serves as in-house counsel to her business colleagues and represents her Department's interests on pending legislative and regulatory issues before various state insurance departments, the American Insurance Association and the Surety and Fidelity Association of America.

Mrs. Alleyne also currently serves as a member of the Surety and Fidelity Association of America’s Diversity Committee. Mrs. Alleyne was a speaker at the American Bar Association Torts and Insurance Practices Section's Fidelity and Surety Law Committee's Fall Program in 2006 and is a contributing author to the 2006 ABA publication entitled "The Annotated Commercial Crime Policy."

Andy Corea, Director

Andy Corea is a member at the intellectual property law firm St. Onge Steward Johnston & Reens LLC in Stamford, Connecticut. He advises clients in all aspects of trademark and copyright law, including pre-filing counseling, prosecution, litigation, and licensing. He has represented clients in Federal District Courts as well as before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. Before entering private practice in Connecticut, he served as a trademark examining attorney with the United States Patent & Trademark Office. He joined the SABAC Board of Directors in 2009.

Mr. Corea received his law degree in 1995 from the George Mason University School of Law, where he was on the board of editors of the law review and was named a Dean's Scholar. He earned his undergraduate degree in English Literature, with a minor in Economic, from the College of William & Mary in 1992.

Asha Rangappa, Director

Asha Rangappa is the Dean of Admissions at Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut, where she has worked since 2005. From 2002-2005, Asha served as a Special Agent in the New York office of the FBI, specializing in counterintelligence investigations. Her work involved assessing threats to national security, conducting classified investigations on suspected foreign agents, and performing undercover work. Asha graduated from Princeton University and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study constitutional reform in Bogotá, Colombia.

She received her law degree from Yale Law School and served as a law clerk to the Honorable Juan R. Torruella on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She is admitted to the State Bar of New York (2003) and Connecticut (2003).

Krishna Patel, Director

Krishna R. Patel has been serving as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut since March 2003. Since 2004, Ms. Patel has been designated by the United States Attorney to coordinate efforts to combat human smuggling and human trafficking in the State of Connecticut and serves as the Chair of the Connecticut Smuggling and Trafficking of Persons Investigative Task Force (STOP IT). Ms. Patel has also served as an ex officio member of the Connecticut State Legislature working group on human trafficking. Ms. Patel also serves as the Coordinator for Project Safe Childhood, an national initiative to combat a variety of crimes involving the exploitation of children. Ms. Patel has provided training to foreign law enforcement in Sierra Leone, Taiwan and others on issues relating to human smuggling/trafficking and child sex offenses.

From 1999 until 2002, Ms. Patel worked as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Prior to joining the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Ms. Patel was associated with the firm of Winston & Strawn in New York where she worked on a variety of commercial litigation matters. As an associate at Winston & Strawn, Ms. Patel also did pro bono work for the Lawyer’s Committee for Human Rights and the Open Society.

From 1994 until 1996, Ms. Patel was admitted to the United States Attorney General’s Honor Program. She has also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Alan H. Nevas of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut.

Ms. Patel is a 1993 graduate of Rutgers University School of Law where she graduated with honors in international and foreign law and received her B.A. in 1990 from Rutgers University with honors.