Sonal Shah

guessing at birthday above^, please correct.

Sonal grew up in an adorable little town in Illinois called Wheaton and (without trying to sound totally full of herself) was always a performer. She started her career as a competitive improv dancer when she was five years old and has choreographed many award-winning dances. Because of the support of her lovely parents, Sonal was very active within her community. While attending Wheaton-Warrenville South High School, she was named Miss DuPage County Queen and one of DuPage's Top Twenty Students. She was honored with the Burstan Kiwanis Leadership Award and attended Loyola University of Chicago as a Presidential Scholar. While at Loyola, Sonal was inducted into the national Psychology and Biology Honor Societies and later received the Weinig Travel Fellowship (which she utilized in a semester abroad in Rome…and deepened her passion for acting via epic train rides throughout Europe). She earned the Philanthropic Leadership Award and at graduation, she was selected as the student speaker to give the keynote address. She graduated cum laude with a major in theatre, minors in psychology, biology, and chemistry, and a concentration in pre-medicine. She decided not to go to medical school and hoped that one day she would have the honor to play a doctor on tv.

After college, she immersed herself into Chicago theatre and performed with the Tony award Winning Goodman Theatre, Collaboraction, Running With Scissors, and Stir Friday Night (to name a few). She is a founding member of Rasaka Theatre Company and supplemented her acting education at Improv Olympic and The Moscow Art Theatre School at Harvard University.

After moving to Los Angeles, Sonal was quick to start testing for pilots and booked her first series regular role in a sitcom pilot for ABC Family. Never one who can stop learning, she studied with Lesly Kahn, The Groundlings, and also graduated from The Second City Conservatory (where she worked on improvisation, sketch writing, and creating random characters…I hope this is not a run-on sentence). She performed with esteemed theatrical companies, The Lonestar Ensemble, Artwallah, and CAPE, and was selected to participate in the NBC Diversity Showcase.

Sonal most recently shot a major recurring role on SCRUBS as a new intern, Dr. Sunny Dey. In the same role, she has also completed shooting the web series INTERNS which can be seen at www.abc.com.

Sonal hopes to utilize acting to discover, create, and connect with people and inspire them to laugh, cry, and/or feel…something.