Salima Samnani is a Kenyan Indo-Canadian immigrant. Her experience as a litigator and as a lecturer, which focuses on public law and employment law, makes her an ideal workplace investigator, mediator, and facilitator. Salima applies her expertise in workplace issues through an anti-racist, trauma-informed, and indigenized lens.

Salima is a lecturer and Director of Litigation at the UBC Allard Hall Law School’s Indigenous Community Legal Clinic, which is located in the Downtown Eastside community of Vancouver on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sə̓lílwətaʔɬ(Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

In addition to her duties above, Salima has been appointed through an Order in Council in a quasi-judicial role as a Tribunal Member on the Civil Resolution Tribunal. In her role, she writes complex decisions in many areas of the law. Salima is also a long-time content creator and educator for the Legal Services Society.

Salima has served Indigenous groups for over a decade, first as Associate Counsel for the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry and then as counsel for the Union of BC Indian Chiefs at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Salima earned a Juris Doctorate from the University of Victoria, and a Master of Laws from the University of Fribourg in conjunction with the University of Bern and University of Neuchâtel, graduating at the top of her class. Her thesis, written for and in conjunction with the World Trade Organization and the Aga Khan Agency of Micro-finance, explored the impact of micro-finance banking under-regulation on people made vulnerable by society.