Natanya Pope-Sohel

Natanya Pope-Sohel is a portfolio manager at Equal Justice Works.

Natanya has more than seventeen years of experience in public service, including the past seven years working and volunteering in Chicago’s legal nonprofit community.

Prior to becoming a licensed attorney, Natanya worked as an automated documents producer for Illinois Legal Aid Online, an award-winning provider of free and accessible legal information and resources for the general public and legal aid attorneys. In that role, Natanya developed programs that generated completed court forms for self-represented litigants and collaborated with partners and stakeholders to increase access to justice for lower-income people seeking to resolve their civil legal issues.

After law school, Natanya worked at Legal Aid Chicago as a staff attorney in the Pro Bono & Community Partnerships practice group. In that role, she managed a court-based help desk that assists people seeking criminal records relief. In addition to supervising a staff of law student interns and volunteers, Natanya represented all help desk clients, ultimately assisting with the expungement of more than one thousand criminal and juvenile records.

As both a law student intern and attorney, Natanya has been involved with the Public Interest Law Initiative, now serving as a mentor to current interns seeking to gain experience in public interest law. She also volunteers as a subject matter expert and content contributor to Illinois Legal Aid Online and Illinois Free Legal Answers, an American Bar Association project that provides legal advice and information for people who cannot afford legal assistance.

Natanya earned her J.D. from Chicago-Kent College of Law and a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is licensed to practice law in Illinois.