Sujata Barai Chugh is an attorney, political consultant and civic leader who applies her multi-faceted skills to pressing issues facing organizations and communities. Sujata Chugh has wide-ranging experience counseling domestic and international financial institutions, manufacturers, government agencies and small and large nonprofit organizations. As an attorney, she represents clients in matters related to entity formation, corporate governance, board structure, reorganizations, state and federal regulatory compliance, tax exemptions, mergers and acquisitions, contract preparation and negotiation and other transactional matters.

In addition to her legal experience, Sujata has served as a consultant and public policy adviser for both nonprofits and government agencies, where she advised on matters of strategic direction, public policy, board recruitment and governance, and grant writing. She also led an initiative in Kentucky Governor Steven Beshear’s Office of Health Policy. Sujata currently serves on the board of Hoosier Women Forward and the Asian Pacific American Bar Association (Indiana chapter), as well as the Student Life Committee of Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School. She was a founding board member of Women4Change Indiana and served for many years on the Executive Committee of the Better Indiana PAC. Among the issues she is most passionate about is women’s leadership and autonomy – reproductive, economic, and political. From her time in high school (!) as a volunteer speech writer for her local Planned Parenthood in Merrillville, Indiana (putting her speech & debate skills to real world use!) to her time in college writing an award-winning thesis on the Violence Against Women Act’s protections for abused immigrant women to serving as a Gujarati-English translator in court for immigrant victims of domestic violence to being an early Board member of Hoosier Women Forward, Sujata makes the time and finds the energy to advance the causes she cares about. She grew up the oldest daughter of an OB/GYN who performed abortions and shared the most compassionate, humane, compelling stories of the women who were her patients and how she felt so proud being able to help them in this difficult moment in their lives. Sujata is not a physician, but she carries those stories and values with her.

Sujata received her law degree from Harvard Law School in 2003. She attended the London School of Economics on a Fulbright Scholarship, earning a MSc in Social Policy and Planning in 1999, and received her undergraduate degree summa cum laude from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1998. She has worked and lived in different spots around the country and the world, but she hails originally from Munster, Indiana and currently lives in Hamilton County.