Zahra Saifi ‘27 elected as Harvard Legal Aid Bureau President

“I feel lucky to get to work with this wonderful group of people to drive change that I hope will make a genuine difference in people’s lives.”

The Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, the oldest student-run legal services organization in the country - has elected Zahra Saifi ’27 as its 113th president.

Saifi grew up between Virginia and the United Arab Emirates before her family moved to Arizona. She is currently completing a joint Masters in Public Policy and JD across the Harvard Kennedy and Harvard Law Schools focused on the pursuit of racial and economic justice in the United States. She hopes to be a public defender after graduating. She will be the Bureau’s first Muslim president.

Saifi says she will prioritize continuing to build the Bureau’s relationships with organizers across the state, focusing on the Bureau’s ability to strengthen and support grassroots movements for systemic change while maintaining the high quality individual representation the organization has always provided.

“The Bureau is an extraordinary community of students and clinical instructors that respect and value each other just as deeply as we respect and value our clients and the organizers we work alongside. That is rare, and something I don’t take for granted.

The communities we work with have been under attack for decades, but in this moment when elements of the crisis feel more acute, I feel lucky to get to work with this wonderful group of people to drive change that I hope will make a genuine difference in people’s lives.”

 ————————————————

The Harvard Legal Aid Bureau was founded in 1913 and is an entirely student-run non profit organization providing legal services to indigent communities in Massachusetts.  Working closely with community partners across the state, Bureau members seek to use the law to respond to the systemic racial, social, and economic inequalities that are the causes and consequences of poverty.