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Born in New York City and raised in San Diego, California, Hershey Suri is a student at the University of Chicago Law School on a partial merit-based scholarship. She graduated Pomona College in 2021 and began working as a civil rights paralegal at Loevy and Loevy and an actress/director/producer within the city of Chicago, Illinois.
At Pomona, Hershey was a Politics and Theatre double major at Pomona where she fully immersed herself within leadership roles in both departments and across campus. Within the Politics Department, Hershey was a Politics Liaison from her sophomore to her senior year where she assisted in organizing a series of multidisciplinary and engaging events, including - but not limited to - a press conference with presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, a talkback concerning law/prison reform and abolition following a production of "21 ChumpStreet" the musical, and multiple speaker series of different Politico academics. As a Theatre Major, she has been an active actor, director, and producer at the Pomona College Theatre Department. Over the course of her theatre career at Pomona, she performed in four department shows and was Artistic Director of the Green room, the Claremont Colleges Student Theatre Production Company, for two years. In addition, during her first year, she produced and directed the play "5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche" with an all-female cast and crew. Her senior year she and producer Max Fine (CMC '21) received a 20K grant to produce an all virtual movie musical of the Addams Family which was a raging success and received over 700 individuals in online-attendance in the heat of the pandemic. Her third year, she was selected as one of 16 students internationally to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (London, UK) for the Spring 2020 semester through NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Aside from the work she did within her major departments, Hershey has also been a large advocate for survivorship and has made it her goal to change the systems we have in place to properly address sexual violence prevention. During her second-year, she became Title IX director of Pomona College. From that moment, she assisted her school administration in providing student perspective as they began to rebuild Pomona College's entire system of approaching sexual assault education, support, and Title IX procedure. She was an integral part to the founding of the CARES Office which know ensures that confidential survivor support, sexual violence prevention education, and Title IX procedure all are separate yet inter-related to each other and each prong has their own built in oversight. Furthermore, she ensured that the Associated Student of Pomona College (ASPC) had a voice within the CARES office to ensure that the student voice was always an important part of the Title IX system. She presented the work she did on the CARES office with Sue McCarthy (Pomona College Title IX coordinate 2018-2021) at the NASPA Strategies Conference in New Orleans on January 2020. She also was selected as one of four fellows for the American Bar Foundation's Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship where she assisted Laura Beth Neilson in her National Science Foundation Research on Title IX policies and sexual assault laws across the United States. During her senior year, and the COVID year, Hershey ran for Vice President of Student Affairs and became Pomona College's first VPSA which handles all Title IX, Judicial Council, and other Student Affair related policies. During her time as VPSA, she led the formation of the Claremont Colleges Coalition of Survivor Advocacy (CCC4SA) which brought together all student advocates groups from across the 5C's together for the first time in Claremont College history. With the CCC4SA, Hershey helped the Claremont College President's Council and Task Force navigate forming a 5C Title IX policy under Betsy DeVos's 2020 guidelines. The CCC4SA's input was essential in ensuring that policy was trauma informed and structured in a way that did not cause more harm to survivors than this country's legal systems in place already allow. As VPSA, she also led a Committee to address Pomona College's Student Disciplinary Policy which she felt was archaic and non-educational called the "Points System." With the collaboration of administrators and students, she was able to help get that policy changed within the year to a more structured educational system between students and administration. She gradated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Pomona College in 2021 with the Ada May Fitz Award, an award given to one woman in the graduating class for outstanding intellectual leadership and influence on other students at the College. Since moving to Chicago, IL with some of her best friends she worked as a paralegal at Loevy and Loevy-one of the country's leading civil rights law firms. There, she supported two of the highest managing partners with their enormous caseload, led many litigation teams, and wore multiple hats in and out of the courtroom. One of her proudest moment were assisting attorneys Anand Swaminathan and Joshua Tepfer with the investigation of the Benitez case, uncovered new evidence of the real perpetrators of the crime, and helped exonerated Benitez. She also served as lead paralegal for the winning trial team of Cosenza v. Hazlehurst in the District of Massachusetts in 2022 and as lead paralegal for Huber v. City of Kenosha et al (Kyle Rittenhouse Civil Case). Aside from her work in civil rights litigation, Hershey spent the majority of her time in Chicago making a name in the performing arts. She began her own theatre company in 2024 entitled Pop Up! Productions - a company dedicated to putting on shows that "pop up" in different cities and spaces across the country to advance goals of equity through storytelling. As a non-union professional theatre, her company is committed to providing artistic opportunities to all individuals, regardless of their chosen career path (i.e. you do not only have to be an actor to act in a professional show). She directed the company's first production of the Tony-Award Winning Musical "Next to Normal" at the South Asia Institute - as it was the world-premiere of the Indian version of this show. The production received glowing reviews in the Chicago Reader, Brown Girl Magazine, and F-News. Since this show, PopUp! has performed in both Chicago and New York with plans to extend to D.C. in 2026. Aside from directing and producing with her theatre company, Hershey has been acting and storytelling since the age of thirteen. She is currently represented by DreamTeam Talent for on-screen and musical theatre. After law school, Hershey hopes to continue a career in impact litigation that advances our society's public interest while continuing to grow her theatre company in tandem. Apart from pursuing a dual career in law and theatre, she also loves to cook and start random artistic projects with her close friends - with plans to start a podcast commenting on famous Romantic Comedies in 2025! |