Sarah Azizo ’27 wanted to work in theater to help produce art that had an impact on its audiences. When she grew disillusioned, she decided to transfer her stage management skills to law. Azizo loves that Fordham Law is not far from New York City’s theater district. After she earns her law degree, she hopes to chart a career advocating for women’s rights.
What is your hometown?
I graduated high school in Dobbs Ferry, New York, though I grew up in a combination of Westchester, New York, and Surrey, England. I attended undergraduate school at Washington University in St. Louis.
What was your journey that led you to apply to law school?
I have a passion for both art and social change, so when I graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a B.A. in both theater and history, I was eager to work on productions that challenge the status quo.
The thing about being a freelance stage manager, however, is that you can’t be terribly picky. I wove in and out of musicals and plays, some of which I admired greatly and made the work feel important, and others that just felt like a job to cover a chunk of the year until I made it to the next one. As I watched things I care about begin to crumble over the years, I became dissatisfied with only occasionally making any kind of impact. It was time to move on to something more consistently fulfilling, and I always knew, even in college, that one of the most direct skill transfers from stage management was to a legal career. That was so clear to me that I started looking at the LSAT in 2019, despite waiting to apply until 2023.
Luckily, I spent the year before I finally submitted my applications on a play that really helped me gain focus. The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window was an incredible experience that offered me everything—it was about what I think plays should be about, it was directed with care and acted beautifully, it carried us to the Tony Awards, and it opened doors for the cast to speak out publicly on things that mattered to all of us. That play helped organize all of my thoughts and ambitions, and it became the natural conduit for my personal statement which, up until then, felt shapeless. Ironically, it was the kind of play that would previously have made me question whether it was actually time to move on from the industry or if I should stick it out a little longer, but instead it just galvanized my need to take this leap.
What made you pick Fordham Law?
Though I’ve decided to leave the theater industry, it is a deeply special community. Fordham Law offered me the best of both worlds: a top-notch legal education, and the chance to maintain my connection to the community that I built my life around. Not having to trade one life for another, and instead be able to expand my world, is ideal.
What do you hope to do with your law degree in the future?
I hope to join the fight for reproductive rights and protect survivors of gender, sexual, and domestic violence, on both a national and an international level.
What is something interesting about you that people may not know?
I’m half Puerto Rican and am working towards becoming fluent in Spanish to provide assistance in Puerto Rico. The harmful political and economic state of the island matters greatly to me and my family.
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