06-11-2023 HOF - Flipbook - Page 47
Baltimore Sun Media | Sunday, June 11, 2023
G
rowingupinIndia,SheelaMurthylearned
there were two career paths that would
garner her respect: becoming a doctor or
an engineer. Any other position, she says,
and she’d be considered a “nobody.”
There was just one problem with that
choice.
“I hated blood, and I hate math,” says
Murthy, 61.
Instead, she was driven to pursue a
career in law, despite her father’s opposition. She asked an aunt, who had
earned a law degree, about the field when she was in eighth grade. Murthy
was determined even then to “fight for justice and the rights of the downtrodden and underprivileged,” she says.
After earning a B.A. from Stella Maris College in Chennai, India, she went
on to graduate from Bangalore’s University Law College and from Harvard
Law School in the United States, where she stayed.
In the U.S., the field of law garners “respect,” Murthy says. Growing up,
she says she considered the country a “fabulous bastion of rights and freedoms and liberties.”
After kick-starting her career as a lawyer at firms in New York City and
Baltimore, Murthy opened her own in Owings Mills in 1994. It was originally known as the Law Office of Sheela Murthy, but today is simply the
Murthy Law Firm. There, she oversees around three dozen lawyers, some
based in India, who are working to help clients from around the world, both
individuals and companies, navigate U.S. immigration law — from seeking work visas to bringing their families to join them in the United States.
Age: 61
Hometown: Bangalore, India
Current residence: Lutherville; Jacksonville, Florida
Education: B.A. from Stella Maris College
in Chennai, India; LL.B. from the University Law College,
Bangalore University; LL.M. from Harvard University
Career highlights: President and CEO of Murthy
Law Firm; associate attorney at Shapiro & Olander;
associate attorney at Gordon Feinblatt
Civic and charitable activities: Board member at
Baltimore Museum of Art; Board of Advisors JHPIEGO;
vice chair of the board of trustees at the Maryland
Institute College of Art; founder and chair of the
MurthyNAYAK Foundation; legal adviser of IT Serve
Alliance; chair of the Tocqueville Society of
the United Way of Central Maryland
Family: Married to Vasant Nayak
Murthy’s days are filled, in large
part, with client consultations;
she’s intimately familiar with the
hurdles to making one’s case as an
immigrant.
“I went through the immigration process personally, and I felt
that the lawyer never really cared
about me, took care of me,” she
says. “I was determined to start
a law firm where the focus was in
helping, educating, empowering
and taking care of others so that
they would never feel like how I
felt with my immigration lawyer.”
She’s also made a point of
taking care of the lawyers at her
firm.
Aron Finkelstein, a Baltimore native, started as an associate attorney at the Murthy
Law Firm in 1999, after earning
his law degree from the University of Baltimore. Today, he’s the
firm’s managing attorney. He was
only the second lawyer hired, he
recalls, and right from the start
Murthy took him under her wing,
poring over cases with him, late
into the evenings.
“Sheela decided that she saw
something in me,” Finkelstein
says. “Sheela literally built me
from the ground up.”
During “pizza Fridays,” a tradition Murthy started early on at the
firm, she took note that Finkelstein wasn’t partaking. When
she learned that he was keeping
kosher, Murthy brought in pizza
that Finkelstein could eat, he says.
Her level of care — in work
and in interpersonal relationships — strikes Finkelstein as
special. “Sheela has an amazing
skill to be able to trust people to
do what they need to do, but also
to educate them along the way,”
he says.
Says Murthy: “As I’ve grown a
little bit older, and I hope wiser,
[running the firm has] also been
about building a strong team,
being a visionary, being the team
leader and mentor.”
As a child, Murthy acted as a
protector to her two sisters, both
of whom became doctors. She
was “a great role model even back
then,” Suman Nabar, an ophthalmologist since 1993, says in an
email.
“The work Sheela is doing now
is phenomenal,” Nabar writes. “I
“I went through the
immigration process
personally, and I felt
that the lawyer never
really cared about
me, took care of me.
I was determined
to start a law firm
where the focus was
in helping, educating,
empowering and
taking care of others.”
— Sheela Murthy
would love to contribute a fraction of what she has to society.”
Murthy’s father, who initially
balked at his middle daughter’s
chosen career, also came to appreciate the impact that she has had
because of it, both in the field of
law and via philanthropy.
Through the MurthyNAYAK
Foundation, started in 2001 by
Murthy and her husband, Vasant
Nayak, she supports nonprofits in
the Baltimore area and nongovernmental organizations in India,
with a focus on women’s and children’s health, education, human
rights and more. In 2009, Murthy
pledged $1 million over five years
to United Way of Central Maryland, and she’s currently in the
midst of another $1 million donation, over 20 years, to the American Immigration Council, based
in Washington, D.C.
“If you are fortunate to make
money in your lifetime, more than
you can use for yourself, to feed
yourself or to put a roof over your
head, the rest has to be given to
empower other people,” Murthy
says her father taught her. “It’s a
moral and ethical obligation.”
— Abigail Gruskin
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