Saba Bireda, the lawyer that filed the 200 million, big law, gender wage discrimination claim, is an Associate in the Washington, DC office of Sanford Heisler, LLP, a national law firm with offices in Washington, DC, New York, and California. She received her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and her law degree from Harvard. Ms. Bireda represents employees in individual and class actions involving race, gender, and pregnancy discrimination.
Ms. Bireda joined Sanford Heisler after three years as a member of the senior political staff at the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, DC, including two years as Senior Counsel in the Office for Civil Rights. Her experience includes service as a policy and legal advisor at Educational Counsel, LLC, as Deputy Director of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, and as an Education Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress. Saba was also a Philadelphia Bar Foundation Fellow, working both as a Litigation Associate at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, LLP and as a Staff Attorney at the Education Law Center in Philadelphia.
Ms. Bireda has written and spoken on a variety of topics related to civil rights and education. In May 2016, she was appointed by Mayor Muriel Bowser to serve a three-year term on the District of Columbia Public Charter School Board.
While at Harvard, Ms. Bireda was an Executive Articles Editor of the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and a Teaching Fellow for Professor Lani Guinier. As part of Harvard’s Trauma and Learning Policy clinic, Ms. Bireda successfully defended the rights of special education students in due process and discipline hearings. She also completed Harvard’s Trial Advocacy Workshop and represented defendants in criminal proceedings as a student attorney with the Criminal Justice Institute.