Sheela Ramesh (CFA, DC 2009)

Sheela Ramesh graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2009 with dual degrees in Vocal Performance and Psychology. After graduation, she received the prestigious Marshall Scholarship to get her master’s in vocal performance at the Royal College of Music in London. During her first year of the program, she realized she wanted to help change the world with more than music, so she redirected her focus. In her second year, she applied and was accepted to Yale Law School, from which she graduated in 2014. Since law school, she has clerked for a federal judge, advocated for marginalized communities and victims of child trafficking, and built a career defined by courage and passion. Today, she’s returned to her first love — music — while reflecting deeply on how her experiences in law, social justice and performance intersect.

An Interdisciplinary Life at Carnegie Mellon

At Carnegie Mellon, Sheela pursued an unusual and extra demanding academic path: earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Vocal Performance from the School of Music while simultaneously completing a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. This dual focus meant she was constantly balancing two worlds, the rigorous discipline of conservatory training and the analytical demands of scientific research. Her weeks were packed with hours of rehearsal, voice lessons and performance preparation, alongside independent research in two psychology labs and completing her senior honors thesis.

Sheela kept her academic and artistic worlds separate, rarely discussing her research in the music school, and she avoided talking of her musical work in academic spaces, thinking this was the only way to be taken seriously in both spheres. Her workload was intense — sometimes as many as eighty-four units in a single semester, nearly double the standard full-time load. But in the end, Sheela’s determination and careful planning allowed her to thrive. By her senior year, she had completed most of her psychology coursework, giving her the flexibility to deepen her focus on performance while preparing for what would become one of the defining opportunities of her academic career: the Marshall Scholarship.

The Marshall Scholarship and a Turning Point

In her senior year, Sheela worked with the Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholarly Development (OURSD) to complete her application for the competitive Marshall Scholarship. It was grueling and deeply introspective work, but after a year of writing personal statements, refining her resume and career narrative, and constant interviews, her hard work was rewarded. By the end of her senior year, she had earned the Marshall Scholarship, which took her to London to pursue a master’s in Vocal Performance at the Royal College of Music the very next year.

“I was restless, and I started to realize I wanted to be doing something that felt more connected to the major social issues around me." 

At the time, it seemed like the perfect next step for an aspiring opera singer. Her days were filled with voice lessons, acting workshops, language studies and rehearsals, fully immersing her in the life of a professional performer. Yet living abroad during a period of significant global upheaval began to shift Sheela’s perspective. Events like Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring and the back end of the 2008 financial crisis made her increasingly aware of broader social and political issues.

“I was restless, and I started to realize I wanted to be doing something that felt more connected to the major social issues around me,” Sheela said. 

A defining moment came in 2010 when she came home from England for a short vacation. That year, a volcanic eruption in Iceland grounded flights worldwide, stranding Sheela in the U.S. for days past her planned trip. One day, while sitting at the Juilliard School waiting for a friend to finish class, she began to consider a life after opera training. While she waited, she began looking up law schools.

“By the time my friend came out of class, I was like, ‘I think I’m going to do this.”

Sheela petitioned the Marshall Scholarship to shift her second year of study into a master’s in Cognitive and Decision Sciences at University College London. This experience matched up with her second passion from Carnegie Mellon — psychology — and allowed her to work to get closer to law school admissions. While there, she explored juror decision-making and rediscovered her intellectual curiosity, experiences that ultimately set the stage for her next chapter: Yale Law School.

Finding Her Place in the Law

Following her second year of the Marshal Scholarship and a successful application to Yale Law School, she began her legal studies in 2011. Sheela knew she wanted to focus on public interest law but was not entirely clear where her legal career would lead. She quickly immersed herself in clinics and projects focused on children’s rights, education and refugee protection. Through the International Refugee Assistance Project, she worked on behalf of a stateless client seeking asylum. In one clinic, she helped litigate a landmark case on equitable school funding in Connecticut, while in another clinic she represented children in abuse and neglect proceedings.

"You learn from watching how judges, jurors and attorneys think. I learned more in that one year [of clerking] than in all of law school.”

Because Sheela pursued her passions and engaged in clinics and research, she felt a deep connection to, she was able to gain a wealth of valuable legal experience at Yale Law School. She used this experience to clerk for The Honorable Jeffrey A. Meyer in the Federal District of Connecticut after graduation, an experience she describes as transformational to her development as a lawyer.

“Clerking was the best experience I could have had. You do so much research and writing, and you learn from watching how judges, jurors and attorneys think. I learned more in that one year than in all of law school," Sheela said.

Following her clerkship, Sheela continued her incredible progress into the law with the prestigious Skadden Fellowship. This fellowship allowed her to pursue public interest work at Bay Area Legal Aid representing youth survivors of sex trafficking. And later, she helped launch and became the second employee at Freedom Forward, a San Francisco nonprofit dedicated to addressing systemic drivers of child trafficking. Through these roles, Sheela continued to grow her fierce advocacy on behalf of marginalized communities and her ability to navigate complex systems of policy and law.

Stepping Away from the Law

However, even at the height of her legal career, Sheela never fully left music behind. While working in the Bay Area, she worked on musical theater productions on evenings and weekends, continuing to nurture the passion she had carried since childhood, now mostly as a music director and conductor rather than as a singer. But when she moved to New York City in 2021, her opportunities in music expanded rapidly, and the theater industry’s schedules quickly turned music into a full-time job.

“I thought I might just keep doing music on the side," Sheela said. "But in New York, the industry expects you to rehearse from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day and then perform eight shows a week.”

At the same time, her nonprofit was undergoing a leadership transition, and Sheela was caring for her newborn daughter. Three full-time commitments seemed unsustainable. So she decided to dive fully into her new life in her new city: she stepped away from nonprofit leadership and legal practice to focus on her music. Today, she performs as a freelance Broadway musician while leaving open the possibility of returning to the legal world in the future.

“Right now, I’m focused on music, but I haven’t closed the door on law. If the right opportunity came along, I’d definitely be open to it.”

From CMU to Today

Reflecting on her path, Sheela encourages Carnegie Mellon students to embrace the fullness of their interests, even when those paths seem unconventional. From the opera stage to federal courtrooms, from grassroots advocacy to Broadway, Sheela Ramesh’s journey reflects a career built on adaptability, passion and courage. By following her curiosity and refusing to be constrained by expectations, she continues to define success on her own terms.

“CMU is a really special place where you don’t have to be any single thing," Sheela said. "You can pursue all the things that inspire your curiosity — but you have to take the initiative to do it.”