Gautam Reddy: President

Gautam Reddy is a Partner at Kilpatrick Townsend.  He focuses his practice on construction and infrastructure projects and government contracting. He has represented a wide variety of clients in the construction industry, including owners, EPC contractors, general contractors, subcontractors, and design professionals, both in the U.S. and internationally. His practice includes both front-end contract drafting and negotiation and litigating cases in a variety of forums, including state and federal courts, domestic arbitration, international ICC arbitration, and the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals.  Gautam also maintains an active pro bono practice with a focus on immigration and housing discrimination.     

Gautam is a Michigan native and graduated from the University of Michigan in 2010 with a B.S. in Industrial & Operations Engineering.  He then moved to Atlanta and earned his J.D. from the Emory University School of Law in 2013.

WAQAR KHAWAJA: president-elect

Waqar Khawaja is the founder of Khawaja Partners, a national legal search agency committed to making career-defining connections that help attorneys develop professionally and, in the process, build a stronger legal community. A trusted and successful legal recruiter, he has helped partners, associates, and in-house counsel take the next steps in their legal careers.

An Atlanta native born to first-generation immigrant parents, Waqar is the first in his nuclear family to obtain a college education, as well as the first (and only) attorney in his extended family. As such, Waqar is passionate about networking and cultivating relationships to give South Asian attorneys and law students a leg up.

Waqar is deeply involved in the legal community, both in Georgia and nationally. As a long-standing member of the Board of Directors for SABA-GA, he enjoys using his ability to network and connect attorneys to grow SABA-GA’s membership and secure speakers and sponsors for various events.

Waqar is involved with many bar organizations, legal associations, and affinity groups from across the country that focus on building community. Waqar holds his J.D. from Mercer University and is licensed to practice in Georgia. He received his B.A. in Political Science and English from Georgia State University.

Madiha Merchant: SECRETARY

Madiha Merchant is Corporate Counsel at Kaleyra, an Italian based software company. Madiha drafts and negotiates software licensing agreements and data protection agreements with large retail companies, telecommunication providers, and other technology companies. Madiha also plays a key role in ensuring company-wide regulatory compliance.

Madiha received her B.A. from the University of Florida in 2009 and her J.D. from Florida International University in 2013. Madiha served as an Executive Board Member of the Indian American Bar Association from 2014-2015. She is also a volunteer with Glitter of Hope, a non-profit organization that is devoted to providing meals, shelter, and emotional support to orphan children rescued from refugee camps in Africa and Asia that are now living in the US as refugees.

ZAIN HAQ: director

Zain Haq is an Associate at Kilpatrick Townsend. He helps clients navigate a range of cybersecurity, privacy, regulatory compliance, and technology/ commercial transaction matters. Zain is a Certified Information Privacy Profession (CIPP/US), a designation issued by the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

Zain was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. He obtained his B.A. degree from the University of Western Ontario, and his JD from Georgia State University College of Law.

ROMI JAYSWAL: director

Romi K. Jayswal is a personal injury attorney and co-founder of Deochand & Jayswal Law Group, LLC in Atlanta, Georgia.

He focuses his practice on representing clients injured in car wrecks, motorcycle accidents, truck accidents, dog bites, premise liability, medical malpractice, and nursing home negligence cases.

Mr. Jayswal graduated from Georgia State University, receiving a Bachelor of Science in Economics with a minor in Philosophy. He then returned to his alma mater and earned a law degree from the Georgia State University College of Law in 2018.

nithya amarneni: director

Nithya Amaraneni is Counsel at Cousins Properties, a publicly traded commercial real estate developer who owns and manages almost 20 million square feet of office space across its portfolio.

Prior to joining Cousins at the end of February 2021, Nithya was a Real Estate associate at Troutman Pepper (formerly Troutman Sanders) where she practiced for over four years representing developers and investors in acquisition, financing, development and leasing of office, industrial and mixed-use projects throughout the United States.

Nithya is an Atlanta local and a graduate of both Emory University (2011) and Emory Law School (2017). She has roots in Louisiana, including two years teaching in Baton Rouge (through Teach for America) and a federal clerkship at the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana. In her spare time Nithya enjoys baking bread and loves to spoil her almost 2-year old goldendoodle, Draper.

Khushbu Patel: director

Khushbu is an in-house attorney that works mainly on commercial SaaS agreements at a marketing-tech company. Khushbu was a member of SALSA while in law school at UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco (later transferred to University of Georgia School of Law), and has been a member of SABA-GA since 2021.

Being fully remote in her job, Khushbu loves attending SABA-GA events to get to know fellow South Asian attorneys in person. Khushbu thoroughly enjoyed attending the SABA-NA conference this year in San Francisco, and in addition to catching up with some old friends, connected with amazingly accomplished attorneys from across the U.S.

As a member of the Board of Directors, Khushbu plans to be more involved in helping to organize future SABA events/programs to cater to a wider variety of practice areas, including more collaboration with the Georgia chapter of the ACC, of which Khushbu is a member.

Rahul Garabadu: director

Rahul Garabadu is the Senior Voting Rights Staff Attorney at the ACLU of Georgia. A native Georgian, Rahul is passionate about protecting the right to vote and ensuring that elections across the state are free and fair.

Rahul is currently litigating cases challenging Georgia's new election law, SB 202, and the state's redistricting maps passed in 2021. Rahul's involvement in democracy and voting rights spans the globe. In 2011, Rahul traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo on behalf of the Atlanta-based Carter Center to help set up a long-term election observation mission in advance of presidential elections in the country.

In 2017, Rahul traveled to Myanmar to provide research support to local lawyers and activists pursuing constitutional reforms in the country. While in law school, Rahul worked as a student-attorney for Protect Democracy, a non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting elections and preserving the rule of law in the United States. During the Obama Administration, he interned at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Rahul also frequently provides commentary on voting rights and election law issues in the media; he has been quoted in publications including NBC News, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Public Broadcasting, Mother Jones, and Axios.

Rahul received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and his B.A. in Economics and Government from Georgetown University. He served as a law clerk to Judge Jill N. Parrish in the 2019-2020 term.