About our Speakers:
Attorney Farhad Sethna began practicing law in 1991 and in May 1996, he started his own practice focusing on Immigration Law. His business focuses on a diverse group of clients, ranging from individual students to huge multi-billion dollar corporations and their employees.
He has his juris doctorate from The University of Akron School of Lawn and his MBA in International Business & Marketing from The University of Akron College of Business Administration.
Sethna is also a private pilot, and like any good pilot, studies maps to chart his course, and anticipate alternatives if bad weather approaches. Sethna often equates flying to immigration – legal theory must be checked, right applications need to be filed and you have to be flexible to deal with unforeseen problems.
Madhu N. Sharma has served as the Executive Director of the International Institute of Akron since November 2017 and as a Director of Immigrant Legal Services since August 2015. She is an Indian immigrant and a human rights attorney practicing and teaching in the field of immigration law for 20 years. Certified by the State Bar of California, she has represented migrant farm workers, unaccompanied minors, victims of state sponsored torture, human trafficking and crimes from countries spanning the globe. In 2011, she was awarded a Congressional Certificate of Honor and the ACLU Immigrant Advocacy Award for representing victims in the first federal alien smuggling case to result in visa issuance to hostage victims.
About our Moderator:
Steven T. Savides is a scholar-practitioner in the field of strategic peacebuilding, a journalist, and ordained minister. He holds a Ph.D. in Theology and Peace Studies from the Keough School for Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, and a Master of Divinity from Andover Newton Theological School (now ANS at Yale).
Dr. Savides’ scholarship integrates political theology, decoloniality, strategic peacebuilding, and mass media studies as he investigates resistance to hegemonic social imaginaries and the development of sustainable counter-imaginaries. He has taught journalism, critical theory, ethics, and peace and conflict studies at Principia College and theology at the University of Notre Dame. As an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, his work is mostly focused on conflict management and transformation in a range of organizations. His journalism credits include The Pretoria News and Eastern Province Herald in South Africa as well as The Christian Science Monitor and, most recently, Signal Akron in the United States.
Originally from South Africa, Dr. Savides moved to the US in 2000 and now resides in Akron with his spouse, Rev. Nanette Pitt. They became US citizens in 2018.