Sayed will join the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project to investigate AI-driven discrimination in banking practices.
CUNY Law congratulates Marwa Sayed ’25 on being named a 2025–2026 Justice Catalyst Fellow. Through this project-based fellowship for graduating law students, Sayed will work with the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) to examine the discriminatory impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) used in banking, particularly in Know Your Customer and anti-money laundering protocols.
Her project, Stopping AI-Enabled Discrimination in Banking, focuses on investigating financial institutions’ usage of AI and other automated decision-making tools in risk assessments, resulting in discriminatory outcomes. Sayed cites her personal experience as a Muslim person and the negative impacts her community faces when “Banking While Muslim” as motivations to work on this project. One of her goals is to bring greater attention to the harmful practice of being unbanked due to racial discrimination.
“I’m truly honored to receive this fellowship and to be able to work with STOP. This is an incredible opportunity to work on cutting-edge issues that will continue to proliferate in the coming years. I hope to make headway into investigating this issue and provide solutions to those impacted by it.”
– Marwa Sayed ’25
Justice Catalyst administers one-year fellowships to recent law school graduates. When reviewing applications, Justice Catalyst looks for projects with path-breaking approaches to social justice lawyering that have real-world impact. Sayed’s project combines anti-discrimination, surveillance, privacy, civil rights, and financial regulation law to investigate ways to address an urgent issue.
Learn more about Marwa Sayed’s project on her Justice Catalyst Fellowship page.