Saba Rehman: Law, Literature, Leadership, and Big Sisters

Saba Rehman (left) and Yamha Sami

In early April, an awards ceremony held by the University of Cincinnati’s Women Center hosted many of the most determined, powerful, and effective student leaders to honor and award outstanding students and their work, and to present the C-Ring Leadership Award to one selected student.

While the Athletics Department first honored the C-Ring Award in, it is now awarded through the UC Women’s Center, with Dana Bisignani as its current director, to a woman-identifying or non-binary graduating senior student who demonstrates outstanding leadership on and off campus. Faculty and staff nominate students, and the lengthy selection process begins. Through rounds of interviews and applications, five final nominees are ultimately chosen, with one winner picked by the selection committee.

Presented that evening by the 2024 C-Ring winner Maya Goertemoeller, the 2025 C-Ring winner is Saba Rehman.

The impact that Saba has made on the university’s students is tangible. I sat down with Saba at the Rohs Street Café just a few weeks after the end of the spring semester. As we were chatting, a student sat down at a table near us. Saba immediately recognized and warmly greeted her when she walked by us. She explained she was one of the students involved with Women in Law, a student organization co-founded by Saba and fellow student Mackenzie Collett. Women in Law, as she explained, is more than just an organization for pre-law students to learn and explore professional skills; it is also a community.

However, Saba did not stop with Women in Law. A passionate reader, she also created Pages of Color, a book club dedicated to reading and discussing works by authors of color and of the LGBTQ+ community. Both of these organizations have grown beyond Saba’s initial intent. As she graduated this spring semester, these communities will continue from the leadership she forged.

Saba is joyous in her work. She speaks about her experiences, even the hardships, with such reverence, grace, and hope. Her leadership and dedication are born from the passion she has for helping others. I sat down with Saba to talk about how she got started, the importance of empathy, and the inspiration of big sisters. 

Interview by Olivia Taylor.
Photography: Courtesy of Pixxel Designs.

A mission of Women of Cincy is letting people tell their own stories. So, with that, could you tell me a little bit about your story and why you've decided to pursue this path?

I am a Pakistani woman, and I was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, and then I moved to UC for college. I'm the youngest of two older sisters – twins. I come from a girl family and I've always been surrounded by really strong women. I was the first to want to pursue a field that was outside of medicine, outside of the STEM fields. I was the first to take on a journey of the legal profession. When I came to UC, I joined a bunch of pre-law organizations. And when I entered that environment, I really quickly discovered that this field is male-dominated, and especially white male-dominated. Entering that was hard to find other brown lawyers, female lawyers who could help me pursue this path.

I was able to get more involved with organizations like Women in Law, and I was on the founding board of Women in Law, which was awesome. We finally were able to meet other people who look like us and are going through the same experience. That was in my freshman year, and it opened up a bunch of doors for me. Every year, I gained more knowledge that I wanted to pass on to other girls who were coming into the field, especially from my community, which is a Muslim community in Dayton. There were girls who messaged me saying, “Hey, I'm considering that, too.” I felt like their big sister in a way, which was funny because I was always a younger sister, so now I got the opportunity to be a bigger sister.

I think that over the past four years, I've been able to gain knowledge from other women in the field and work towards putting out more knowledge and being a resource for other girls who want to pursue something that's different from what they’ve been raised to pursue.

You mentioned Women in Law, could you tell me a little bit about that?

Women in Law is an organization that Mackenzie Collett and I founded because we wanted an organization to be a resource, but also a community. So what we do is we hold professional development meetings, fellowship meetings, and professional development meetings. Those would consist of panels of UC law alumni to come in and talk to us about what their steps were in preparing for the LSAT exam or finding mentorships, internships. We also have things like karaoke nights, too. Through this experience, I was able to meet such a wide range of people who were all pursuing different paths, for example, we had criminal justice majors alongside political science majors.

I think my leadership grew through that because I was able to pass all my knowledge to these girls. There were times when I would face imposter syndrome, or I would be like, “This is my first time doing it, too.” But then I would be shocked when someone would come up and say, “Hey, did you take these classes? Hey, I'm having this problem with a coach of mine,” and I would be able to provide them with information that I learned from my experiences. So, Women in Law has been the backbone of my career development.

How do you help other students navigate the challenges that come with being a student in the field of law?

I think about what I would have wanted to hear. Sometimes, it involves the imposter syndrome that a lot of people experience – that I experience. And reminding someone, regardless of the goals and the obstacles, that it’s part of the journey. It is so natural. But you’ve come so far, overcoming all these hurdles, and telling students, telling girls, telling anyone from the student legal field, that anyone can do it – anyone can do it. And we’re doing it together.

The whole point of the fellowship of Women in Law is to say: we can come to our meetings after we had a really hard exam or we had a long conversation with a professor or legal mentor, and know we can all relate, but we're going to keep pushing, we’re getting to the other side of it. Oftentimes, I try to tell other girls who are struggling with imposter syndrome, or trying to find an internship and struggling, you have to keep trying. Time is always going to pass; what matters is what you do with that time.

I know for me, if I know that there's something challenging coming up in my life, I tend to build it up in my head where I need to just go in and do the hard work, and then it'll be finished.

Yeah, I look back to remind myself that I've gone through so much and tell myself that I’ve survived everything that I’ve been through so far, and I can get through so much more.

One of your passions is reading and literature, and you even created an organization called Pages of Color on campus. Could you tell me about Pages of Color?

Absolutely! I remember I had always been really passionate about reading, and I kept on coming across books that were good, but I wasn’t seeing myself in any of them. So I came up to a bunch of my friends, and I said, “Hey, how do you guys feel about starting a book club?” Pages of Color is dedicated to reading works that are more representative – written by authors of color, by authors of marginalized communities.

We went through the whole process of becoming a registered student organization, and it was kind of scary at first, because I was like, who is going to join? But the thing is, UC students will show up. People were really interested in this club, and immediately got an amazing support network, which is so wonderful, and people were able to tell us the books that they wanted to read. And now the board is made up of so many different communities. Immediately, we jumped into action, and we started reading books by East Asian authors, Muslim authors, and members of the LGBTQ community. It was just so incredible because I was reading these stories, and in my head, I was like, “Oh, I'm woke.” But the thing is, you're never as educated as you think you are; there's always potential to learn. So while I thought that I was educating other people, I was also learning in that process, and I was getting to read these stories. Over the past two years, the organization has grown so much. And we just elected our board for the next year and added new members. The fact that there were so many students who were passionate about uplifting voices is so powerful to me.

The 2025 C-Ring Leadership Award Finalists from left to right: Tahta Fofana, Vidushi Trivedi, Kyra Butler, Jaela Kennedy, Saba Rehman

A girl who had joined our club reached out and said, “I moved here from South Africa, and I didn't have a community, I didn't have anyone, but then I joined this club, and the first book we read was about an African woman. I remember having that discussion and that discourse in the community, in this group, and it was just so comfortable.” And I think that's exactly the point of the club, right? We’re reading books that represent our joys and our happiness, because I think sometimes people feel like you have to be reading about the struggles of a person of color, but we're so much more than just that.

It's so powerful to read stories from the person.

Yeah, when you get to hear someone else's stories, you get such a better understanding of another person's life. You empathize with people so much more. Empathy is one of the most important traits to develop. It’s so easy to get lost in your own world, your own level, but there are so many different lives than your own.

One of the biggest things I have to teach some people is how to empathize, how to understand someone's life that may not relate to yours. Because it’s like, political, social movements may not apply to you specifically, but they apply to me, right? If you empathize with me, then you'll understand why they're important.

Was there anything that you had to learn when it came to mentoring and being a leader to other students?

Especially with Pages of Color, because it was something that I was so passionate about, and I'm a talker so it’s almost like a club that I was joining rather than leading, so when the club started, I wanted to read all the books and move on to the next book. But when you become a leader, you need to learn how to take a step back. Mentorship is about helping other people grow, and while you may also grow in the process, the point of leading is to put the focus on those around you.

When leading this club, I learned how to facilitate discussions and how to make other people in the room feel comfortable sharing their opinions and thoughts. They might want to hear what I have to say, but I also want to hear what they have to say. One of the first things that I learned is that leading is almost like being a teacher in a way because you’re asking questions like, “What would you rate the book?” Learning how to be more of a people person, and just learning that they want to be here for a reason.

So have you had that moment where you realize, I am on the right path, I am where I'm supposed to be?

Honestly, I hate to say it took four years, but we recently had a big DEI scare at UC, so we had a meeting coming up with the girls, and I remember sitting there and thinking, “What do I tell them?” Because this organization is in limbo right now. We don't really know what's going to happen with our club. We don't know if our organization is on the path to continue.

So knowing that I had to go talk to them about this was daunting for me. When I went to the meeting, I said, “Regardless of whether we’re an organization or not, our community stays strong and we’re still here for each other.” And I think at that moment, I thought, I belong here. I had worked for this moment. I had worked with these girls and our community for so long, and I'm really confident in my ability to keep pursuing this legal path, because hurdles are always going to come, but so many have already been overcome.

What are your next steps? Where do you see yourself in five years?

I'll be going to law school, and at law school, I hope to facilitate more communities. I was looking into schools where I would feel comfortable in my minority identities, because I feel like being here, I've been able to find these communities, and that's what's helped me do what I want to do, helped me do what I dream of. And the schools I'm looking into have student associations like Women's Law Caucuses. So I want to get involved with clubs like that. I hope the organizations at UC will continue to flourish and grow, and that's why we elected a new board of students for the upcoming year, so these organizations can continue.

And in five years, I hope to still be working with organizations like that. I want to get involved with women's legal services to help women who have experienced discrimination in the workplace or who experience sexual discrimination. The future is scary, but I'm really excited. I think when I came to UC, I had no idea where I was going to be in four years. And I look back now, and I'm really proud of myself, and I'm really excited.

Who is a woman or a gender expansive person in your life who has impacted you?

The first one would be Anshu Anand. She is the partner at the law firm that I intern at, and on my first day, I got a message from her saying, “Could you come to my office? I want to introduce myself.” I went in, and she was a South Asian attorney, and she was the first South Asian attorney I'd ever met. But not only that, she’s the senior partner at this law firm, and seeing her was such a huge inspiration to me. I was like, “Yeah, that's who I want to be.” She has shown me nothing but kindness and respect. She has uplifted me so much. She's the busiest woman in the world, but she took the time to mentor me. Over the past two years, any time I've had a legal question or I've been curious what my next step should be, I've gone to her for advice. And I really do hope to be someone like her. Because when people get into higher positions, they can lose sight of the fact that there are people looking up to them, and she's never lost sight of that. She's always showing me what I'm capable of doing, and I respect her so much.

And then my older sisters. They literally helped me become who I am. I know everyone says, “Little siblings steal their sisters’ personalities,” and yes, I did! [Laughs]. They have taught me how to be strong. They have taught me that there are cultural norms that we don't have to follow, that we can embrace our culture and embrace being an American, too. And they've taught me how to keep going. They’ve taught me that when things are tough, I can call them. If I have an exam, they text me in the morning like, “Good luck, you’ve got it!” Seeing such strong women, seeing both of them overcome hurdles, overcome challenges, has inspired me to do that, too. And so I owe everything to my big sisters.