Professor Victoria Shannon Sahani

Victoria Shannon Sahani is the Associate Provost for Community and Inclusion at Boston University and a Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law. As Associate Provost, Victoria helps guide BU’s efforts to ensure inclusive excellence of faculty and academic appointees, nurture a positive campus climate, and enhance diversity and inclusion within the academic program. Before joining BU, she served as Associate Dean of Faculty Development / Special Projects and Professor of Law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. She also served as Director of the Faculty Inclusion Research for System Transformation (FIRST) Initiative at Arizona State University, a university-wide initiative commissioned by the ASU President’s Office examining the history of race and inclusion among faculty at the University. She started her teaching career and was promoted to Associate Professor of Law at Washington & Lee University School of Law.

Victoria is an internationally recognized legal scholar in arbitration law and third-party litigation funding law and an award-winning teacher. She has 15 years of experience in international arbitration and more than a decade of expertise in third-party funding. She also serves as an independent arbitrator, consultant, and expert witness. She is a co-author of the book Third-Party Funding in International Arbitration (2d ed. 2017) (with Lisa Bench Nieuwveld) – the first book in the world on this topic – as well as numerous book chapters, articles, essays, and blog posts on international commercial and investor-state arbitration. She continues to hold several leadership positions in the international arbitration community, including Chair of the Academic Council of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration.

Before teaching law, Victoria served as Deputy Director of Arbitration and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in North America for the International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC) International Court of Arbitration and Deputy Director of the Arbitration and ADR Committee of the US Council for International Business (USCIB). Before joining the ICC and USCIB, she practiced law and worked on transactions relating to affordable housing and community-based real estate development, matters involving American Indian law, and housing discrimination claims in New Orleans immediately after Hurricane Katrina.

Victoria received her law degree from Harvard Law School and her undergraduate degree in psychology from Harvard College. She remains an active member of the bar in New York and the District of Columbia.