2018-2019 BOARD
DUA ABUDIAB
President
Dua M. Abudiab is a Public Defender at the
King County Department of Public Defense –
The Defender Association (TDA). Prior to her
joining TDA, she worked as a public
defender at the Colorado State Public
Defender’s Office. Ms. Abudiab serves on
the Lawyer’s Helping Hungry Children (LHHC)
board to help fight against child hunger. She is
the co-vice president of Diversity on the Washington Women’s Lawyers’ Board. She serves on the University of Washington Heart Health Campaign board. She volunteers at Seattle Children’s Hospital in their Child Life division where she gets to play with patients and siblings to minimize the impact of hospitalization. She also volunteers with North East Seattle Together (NEST) to help community members stay independent, active, and connected. She holds a B.S. from Texas A&M University Corpus Christi in Biochemistry and received her J.D. from South Texas College of Law.
SHAWN SHARIATI
President-Elect
JAJEC Chair
Shawn is an attorney at the King
County Department of Public Defense’s
ACA Division representing clients
charged with criminal offenses. Before
law school, Shawn worked at several
community-based legal non-profits
that helped bridge those communities’
access to justice. Shawn lives in Seattle and is pretty good at Street Fighter and Tetris. Shawn is a graduate of Columbia Law School, the London School of Economics, and CUNY Queens College.
SAFA PEERA
Secretary
Safa Peera is a Public Defender at the
King County Department of Public
Defense – Northwest Defenders Division
(NDD). She graduated from the
University of Texas College of Law in
Austin in 2017 and obtained her
bachelor’s degree from Southern
Methodist University in Dallas. She enjoys
her job, working on behalf of wonderful
clients by challenging a system designed
to silence them. She considers herself a global citizen, having grown up
overseas and with parents of different nationalities.
OMAR NUR
Treasurer
Omar Nur is an Attorney and Managing
Partner at Nur Law PLLC, where him
and his staff represent people with claims
stemming from car crashes,criminal
charges, and traffic tickets. Mr. Nur is very
active in the legal community having
previously served on the Young Lawyers
Committees for the Washington State Bar
Association and Snohomish County Bar
Association, the Washington State
Association for Justice Board of Governors, and the MELAW board (of which he was President in 2014) to name a few. MR.When he is not working or volunteering, Mr. Nur enjoys spending his time outdoors with his wife and daughter.
ALICE NOMAN
Publicity Chair
Alice Noman is an attorney with the
Department of Public Defense in the
Northwest Defender's Division. Prior
to becoming a public defender,
Alice practiced as an eviction defense
attorney for a year, providing on-going
representation for indigent clients
facing homelessness. She graduated
cum laude in 2017 from the Seattle
University School of Law. Alice is also an active member of her legal community and serves as the Publicity Chair for the Middle Eastern Legal Association of Washington. She has also spent many hours volunteering with the Housing Justice Project, providing day of representation for clients with eviction hearings. In her free time, Alice enjoys hiking and camping with her friends, family, and beloved dog, Riley.
KEREM LEVITAS
Legal Clinic Co-Chair
Kerem Levitas serves as a Policy
Analyst at Seattle’s Office of Labor
Standards (OLS). In that role, he
provides policy guidance to OLS
through ordinance and administrative
rule drafting and development as well
as interpretive analysis. In addition, he
provides guidance on wage and hour
and employment issues to the office. Prior to joining OLS, Kerem was an attorney in private practice at a plaintiff’s firm where he focused his practice on individual employment matters and wage and hour class actions. Previously, he spent nearly four years as in-house employment counsel at a publicly-traded Washington corporation. While there, he advised on all manner of employment and wage and hour risk. Kerem has experience managing employment matters, risk mitigation strategy, and compliance issues. He is a graduate of the University of Washington School of Law and Wesleyan University. Kerem is Turkish-American and lives in Beacon Hill with his wife and two children. He travels frequently to Turkey where he enjoys visiting family and friends, eating kumru, and attending Beşiktaş games.
MOHAMED KHALIL
Legal Clinic Co-Chair
Mohamed is a first generation Libyan
American. He graduated from Seattle
University School of Law in 2012, where
he focused on employment and labor
law. Mohamed currently serves as a
contracts compliance specialist for an
IT company based out of Seattle, WA.
He also consults/works part-time as
corporate counsel for a healthcare IT
company. Mohamed is an active member in the Libyan and Muslim community. He enjoys traveling, playing sports, and spending time with his family and friends.
SHAMIM MOHANDESSI
Immediate Past President
Shamim Mohandessi is a corporate
and securities attorney primarily
serving emerging growth and
mid-market companies in mergers
and acquisitions, venture capital
financing, and strategic capital
formation. His clients include internet
services providers, telecommunications
firms, and software companies in a number of different industries. Prior to this role, Shamim Mohandessi worked briefly as an energy policy analyst, managing and administering energy management pilot projects between large corporations and energy utilities and administering large federal grants. In addition to his practice, Mr. Mohandessi lectures at the University of Washington and Seattle University to on the strategy and needs of emerging growth and devotes time to a number of non-profit organizations, addressing needs of the community in the Pacific Northwest.
SAMY DANESH
UW MESALSA Liason
Samy Danesh is a current second-year
student at the University of Washington
School of Law. Previous to law school,
Samy completed his bachelors in
philosophy at UC Irvine, and then
worked as part of Amazon’s in-house
team. Samy is currently the
Co-President of MESALSA, the KCBA
student-representative and is an editor for the Washington Journal of Law, Technology and Arts. Upon graduation from law school, Samy hopes to work in the bio-tech industry with a focus on regulatory compliance and general corporate law.”
SULAF AL-SAIF
UW MESALSA Liason
Sulaf is a second year law student at the
University of Washington who is interested
primarily in corporate, privacy, and
intellectual property law. She earned her
undergraduate degree in chemistry from
the University of Washington in 2010. Sulaf
is the communications lead at the
Middle Eastern South Asian Law Student
Association (MESALSA). She is also on the board for the International Law Society and the Technology Law Society as well as the editorial board of the Washington Journal of Law, Technology, and Arts (WJLTA),
ARTHUR DELONG
Member At-Large
Arthur DeLong is a corporate
transactions attorney, and focuses
the majority of his practice on
securities offerings and mergers and
acquisitions. Arthur counsels
companies from a range of industries,
and is especially involved in advising
technology and start-up companies.
Arthur’s practice also includes
cross-border transactions,
intellectual property, and real estate transactions. Arthur has served on the board of the Middle Eastern Legal Association of Washington for the past two years. In addition to his law degree, Arthur holds a Master’s degree in International Business, speaks Spanish, and enjoys cooking, travel, and learning languages.
AHMAD KHALAF
Member At-Large
Ahmad Khalaf is a Palestinian
American Muslim Attorney, who owns a
Solo-Practice law firm (Khalaf Law,
PLLC) that focuses primarily on
Plaintiff's personal injury representation,
as well as providing estate and
business planning for clients, with a
primary focus on assisting members of
the local Muslim community in
achieving estate plans and/or
business structures that are both compliant with State and Federal law, as well as with Islamic principles and rules regarding inheritance and business transactions. During his free time, Ahmad loves spending time with his wife and his family members, especially going outside and enjoying the many wonderful attributes of the Pacific Northwest.
TANYA FEKRI
Member At-Large
Tanya Fekri was born in Tehran, Iran and she
and her family immigrated to the United States
in hopes to pursue the American dream.
Tanya personally experienced the immigration
process first-hand and that is why she became
interested in immigration law. She attended
UW as an undergraduate student receiving
a double degree in Political Science and Law,
Societies, and Justice; and a minor in
Diversity studies. She went on to become an
ESL teacher and citizenship instructor for the Refugee Resettlement Office in Seattle. Tanya is the Co-Directing Attorney of the Student Legal
Services at the University of Washington and she manages her own solo immigration practice in Kent.
