Nikki Zinzuwadia

Nikita “Nikki” Zinzuwadia is a case manager at Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP.

Prior to joining the firm, Nikki interned at various civil rights and social justice organizations, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Public Interest Law Center, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and ACLU of West Virginia. Her ACLU-WV work, which studied the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the country's incarcerated population, has been featured on several platforms, including the National ACLU, Harvard Law Review, White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable, California Law Review, State Crime Journal, and more. Nikki also previously worked as a Research Assistant for both the Health Equity and Policy Lab in the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania and the Penn Center for Mental Health at the Perelman School of Medicine.

While in college, Nikki was a Student Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Office of Social Equity and Community, leading projects that furthered the school's mission of fostering social equity, diversity, and inclusion on campus and in the greater Philadelphia area. She also helped establish PIT@Penn, the first student organization dedicated to building the field of public interest technology within the Penn community. Mentoring fellow students, Nikki was a peer counselor with Penn Benjamins, a peer advisor in the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Chair of the Health and Societies Student Advisory Board. She also served as the Co-President of the Penn Hindu Jain Association and was an active participant in the university's Asian Pacific American Leadership Initiative.

Nikki received her B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She was awarded the College Alumni Society Prize for Health and Societies and received an honors distinction for her undergraduate thesis on COVID-19, prison health, and criminal justice reform. Nikki was also a Rosemary D. Mazzatenta Scholar, an Andrea Mitchell Center Undergraduate Research Fellow, and a Dean’s List recipient.