Savala Nolan

Savala Nolan is a writer, speaker, and lawyer. She is executive director of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she leads more than 50 lectures, symposia, teach-ins, and skills-building workshops a year for law students, scholars, and activists. She spearheaded the creation of a Race and Law concentration, successfully endowed a new racial justice fellowship, and works closely with affinity groups and law journals to prepare students for a thriving social justice practice.

Savala is a regular keynote speaker and panelist on social justice issues including implicit bias, structural racism, understanding Whiteness, and the importance of social justice work for all lawyers. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times Book Review, Vogue, Harper’s Magazine, Time, NPR, Forbes and more. At the Mesa Refuge in 2020, Savala worked on her essay collection, Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender and the Body. In 2023, she worked on her upcoming book, Good Woman, that lays bare the costs of being “a good woman” or a “good girl.”