When Shaziah Singh told her parents that she wanted to be a lawyer, her father started crying. “I am the child of immigrants from India,” Singh, now a corporate partner at Nixon Peabody LLP, said. “As a child of a doctor and an engineer, my path was pretty much laid out for me. I was either going to be a doctor or an engineer.”

But Singh didn’t enjoy her studies as a neuroscience major at the University of Michigan, and she was sufficiently worried about her parents’ reaction that she broke the news to them on a flight. “It wasn’t out of disappointment,” she said of her father’s response. “I think it was out of fear,” since her father was a doctor and, she added, “in his mind, the only type of lawyer you could be was a personal injury lawyer.” Instead, she opted for corporate law.

Singh, who was named a partner in February, also discussed managing her practice as she moved with her husband, a cardiologist, from Cleveland to New York and Tampa, Fla. for his residencies and then to Grand Rapids, Mich., where she grew up and he started practice.

She advises on global deals in the private and public space and is a member of the firm’s Entertainment & Sports team. In 2023, she was part of the team that advised SAES Getters SpA in the sale of its medical Nitinol business, including U.S. subsidiaries Memry Corp. and SAES Smart Materials Inc., to GTCR LLC- and Carlyle Group Inc.-backed Resonetics LLC for $900 million. In 2021, she was part of the team that advised Creo Capital Partners LLC holding Flagship Food Group LLC in its acquisition of a majority stake in LA Tortilla Factory Inc. from the Tamayo family for an undisclosed amount.

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