About
The Santa Monica Bar Association is a volunteer organization that functions through its Board of Trustees, its officers and through its committees. Committees offer members a means of becoming more involved in the SMBA within specific areas of focus. Here are our current roster of officers, court advisor, trustees, committees, and sections. How do you want to become more involved in the SMBA? Join SMBA.
Officers
JUDICIAL ADVISOR
Judge Elaine Mandel
Trustees
Barristers
Chair: Stephanie Taft
Employment
Chair: John McDowell
Family Law
Chair: Julia Schneider
Immigration
Co-Chair: Layla Khamoushian
Co-Chair: Allison-Claire Acker
Intellectual Property
Chair: Travers Morgan
Personal Injury
Co-Chair: Manee Pazargad
Co-Chair: David Gharakhanian
Probate & Trust
Co-Chair: Timur Berberoglu
Co-Chair: Karen Knutson
Real Estate
EVENTS
- Pro Bono Projects
- Judges' Night
- Installation Dinner
- Summer Party
- Toast
- Athletic Events
- MCLE Presentations
- Networking Events
- Judges' Brown-Bag Lunch
SMBA NEWSLETTER SUBMISSION
The SMBA publishes a quarterly newsletter. We encourage our members to contribute articles of approximately 500 words or less. Submissions can be sent to: smbaoffice@smba.net.
BOARD DEVELOPMENT
Sponsorship: Oversees sponsorship goals, outreach to new and existing sponsors and sponsorship policies, e.g. what perks are included with each sponsorship purchase. This is particularly important this year as we do not have our usual sponsorship methods available to us and the SMBA runs overwhelmingly on sponsorships dollars. We need creative ways to find sponsorship.
- Morvareed Salehpour
- Tony Brown
- Matt Baker
- Sheida Shoalehvar
Events: Oversees all events including their planning, calendaring, budgeting, attendance, and goals. This is particularly important this year given that we need to have a variety of different and creative types of virtual events planned to continue to keep SMBA members engaged. We also would like to plan a virtual holiday event and need some Trustees to get involved in planning that as well as other key annual SMBA events that we need to transition online.
- Morvareed Salehpour
- Alex Gruft
- Julia Schneider
- Sunita Popal
- Timur Berberoglu
- Sheida Shoalehvar
Internet and Publicity - i.e. Website, Newsletter, Social Media - Deals with website updates and issues; promotes activities and events on website, social media, etc.; and responsible for creating and running the quarterly newsletter.
- Jason Vogel
- Timur Berberoglu
- Julia Schneider
- Matt Baker
- Sunita Popal (instagram)
Membership: Focuses on growing membership and overseeing membership policies, e.g. membership fees, perks, discounts, etc. Again this is important this year given that the SMBA has lost much of its traditional sponsorship funding so we need to continue to think of ways to encourage new members to join.
- Tiffiny Fox
- Manee Pazargad
- Tony Brown
- Eva Feder
- Brian Brumfield
- Sheida Shoalehvar
Bylaws: Works on reviewing, analyzing, and providing proposed revisions to bylaws.
- Alex Gruft
- Tiffiny Fox
- Manee Pazargad
- Julia Schneider
- Eva Feder
- Sunita Popal
- Jason Vogel
- Brian Brumfield