Privacy and Technology Law Forum

Ms. Amanda Margaret Witt Related Seminars and Products

Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP

Amanda Witt is the Vice Chair of the Privacy & Technology Law Section of the Georgia Bar and she co-leads the Technology, Privacy & Cybersecurity Practice at Kilpatrick Townsend.  She is also a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/US and CIPP/E), as certified by the IAPP.  In addition, she serves on the Board of the International Section of the Georgia Bar. 

Her practice includes the areas of U.S. and global privacy, information technology, cybersecurity, e-commerce, cross-border transactions, licensing and procurement, intellectual property protection and transactions, strategic alliances, and electronic signatures. Amanda was listed in the 2022 and 2021 editions of Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business and ranked nationally as a “Recognized Practitioner” in the area of Privacy & Data Security.

Ms. Cory Isaacson Related Seminars and Products

ACLU of Georgia

Cory Isaacson recently joined the ACLU of Georgia from the Georgia Resource Center, where she represented people on Georgia’s death row in state and federal habeas proceedings. Prior to the Resource Center, Cory was an attorney at Georgia Justice Project, where she represented people facing barriers to employment and housing because of their criminal history and advocated for reforms to Georgia’s expungement laws in the state legislature. 

Cory began her legal career as an attorney and clinical supervisor in the Youth Defender Clinic at the East Bay Community Law Center, part of the clinical program at UC Berkeley School of Law. In that position, she represented young people in juvenile court and in school discipline proceedings and supervised law students working on those cases.

Born in Atlanta and raised in Savannah, Cory and her husband returned to Atlanta in 2016, where they live with their three children. Cory is a graduate of UC Berkeley School of Law. 

Mr. John Martin Brigagliano Related Seminars and Products

Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP

John Brigagliano is a senior associate at Kilpatrick Townsend and focuses his practice on data privacy compliance, biometric technologies, electronic signatures, and technology procurement.

John has spoken on consumer and biometric privacy issues, among other topics, in front of groups such as national and local meetings of the Association of Corporate Counsel, Atlanta Chapter of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, and the Privacy and Security Forum.

Ms. Kaeley Russo Brown Related Seminars and Products

Snap Inc.

Kaeley Brown, CIPP/E, CIPP/US

Kaeley Brown is a Privacy Counsel at Snap Inc. Kaeley supports Snap’s global privacy program, including advising legal and business teams on matters such as honoring individual rights and implementing privacy by design. Her focus areas include U.S. state, federal, and global privacy compliance, age appropriate design, cookie and ePrivacy compliance, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and biometric privacy.
 

Previously, Kaeley was Privacy Counsel at Mailchimp, an associate in Alston & Bird’s Technology & Privacy group, and an associate in the Business and Tort Litigation practice in Jones Day’s Atlanta office. 

Ms. Mary Alexander Myers Related Seminars and Products

Jones Day

Mary Alexander Myers works closely with clients on a range of strategic technology transactions and cybersecurity and data privacy matters focused on protecting key intellectual property and data assets.

Mary Alexander develops strategic privacy compliance approaches relating to obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA) and Colorado Privacy Act (CPA), Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM), and Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) and other U.S. state and federal privacy and data security requirements. She counsels clients on data sharing and licensing, outsourcing and technology transactions, intellectual property licensing arrangements, and other related matters. Mary Alexander frequently advises clients on day-to-day operational issues relating to technology, intellectual property, social media, advertising, electronic commerce, and privacy. She has worked with a wide range of clients in various industries such as health care and financial services, including public companies, as well as growing technology-driven businesses and start-ups.

Mary Alexander also represents buyers and sellers in domestic and cross-border corporate transactions such as mergers and acquisitions, counseling on cybersecurity, privacy, and intellectual property matters, including due diligence and transitional arrangements.

Mary Alexander serves as vice chair of the technology division on the Executive Committee of the State Bar of Georgia Privacy and Technology Section. She frequently speaks on technology and privacy-related issues.

Mary Alexander maintains an active pro bono practice and involvement in the Atlanta community.

Ms. Jacqueline Alaina DeJournett Related Seminars and Products

Jones Day

Jacqueline DeJournett's practice focuses on all aspects of privacy and cybersecurity matters, including compliance, corporate transactions, incident response and investigations.  

Jacqueline works with clients across a wide industry of sectors, including critical infrastructure, automobile manufacturers, retailers, payment processors, and financial institutions. Jacqueline provides clients with strategic advise on compliance with state, federal and global privacy laws and regulations, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA), Colorado Privacy Act (CPA), Connecticut Data Privacy Act (CTDPA), Utah Consumer Privacy Act (UCPA), Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act, and other U.S. consumer privacy statutes. In particular, Jacqueline has significant experience designing and helping clients implement data privacy law compliance programs, including advising on data mapping, data subject request processes, internal and external-facing privacy and security policies and cross-border data transfer mechanisms.

Jacqueline also represents buyers and sellers in domestic and cross-border corporate transactions such as mergers and acquisitions, counseling on cybersecurity and privacy matters, including due diligence and transitional arrangements. Jacqueline’s experience includes negotiating data processing agreements and privacy and data security provisions in service provider agreements. Jacqueline also handles all aspects of U.S. and international data breach investigation and response, including advising clients on forensic investigations, notification and other legal obligations. Her experience includes representing clients under investigation by the FTC and other regulatory and government authorities. 

Jacqueline maintains an active pro bono practice. Through the Firm's Laredo Project, she has helped represent multiple individuals seeking asylum after being persecuted in their home countries. She is also part of the Firm's initiative to combat human trafficking.

Ms. Christina Dawn McCoy Related Seminars and Products

Cox Enterprises Inc

Proven leader of cross-functional, global legal teams working to address compliance, privacy, corporate entity, mergers & acquisitions, complex contract transactions, board governance, streamline and simplify internal processes, and other business-critical activities that enable companies exponential growth. Committed to advancing knowledge around data privacy and mentoring the next generation of attorneys. She has been a speaker at the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) P.S.R. 2022, IAPP GA KnowledgeNet Chapter, National and Security Forum 2021, and the immediate past Chair of the State Bar of Georgia Privacy & Technology Law Section. 

Ms. Celeste Noelle Gaines Related Seminars and Products

McKesson Corporation

Celeste Gaines is a Senior Counsel, Global Privacy and Cybersecurity at McKesson Corporation.  After beginning her career in private practice as a litigator, Celeste moved in-house to McKesson, practicing in the area of technology and procurement transactions. Most recently, Celeste transitioned into her current role where she mainly supports the enterprise’s technology organization, advising on data security practices.

Ms. Erin H. Gerstenzang Related Seminars and Products

EHG Law Firm

Erin Gerstenzang is the founder of EHG Law Firm —one of Georgia’s premier criminal defense firms helping people charged with DUI and other serious traffic, drug, and alcohol-related offenses.  She cares deeply about building a more fair and equitable justice system, starting with our traffic courts. In addition to running her busy metro-Atlanta practice, Erin is known as a dynamic, engaging legal educator constantly seeking out cutting-edge tools, frameworks, and systems to improve the delivery of legal services. She serves on the State Bar of Georgia’s Disciplinary Rules and Procedures Committee and is on the executive board of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Ms. Paula J. Frederick Related Seminars and Products

General Counsel

State Bar of Georgia

Paula Frederick is General Counsel for the State Bar of Georgia, a unified bar organization with 54,000 members. As general counsel, Frederick is responsible for interpreting the ethics rules for lawyers, prosecuting lawyer discipline cases, and providing legal advice to the officers and directors of the organization. She has served in the Office of the General Counsel for 35 years, and was Deputy General Counsel for Discipline before assuming the General Counsel role.

Frederick is a 1982 graduate of the Vanderbilt University School of Law and a 1979 graduate of Duke University. Prior to joining the Office of the General Counsel, she spent six years as a staff attorney with the Atlanta Legal Aid Society handling civil legal matters for low-income people.

Frederick is a past president of the Atlanta Bar Association and the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys. She is also an active member of the American Bar Association, where she is chair of the Center for Professional Responsibility.  In the past she has served the ABA as chair of its Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, chair of the Standing Committee on Lawyer Regulation, as a member of the Board of Governors, and as chair of the Center for Racial and Ethnic Diversity. 

Mr. Jason Michael Loring Related Seminars and Products

Vialto Partners

As Global Head of Privacy and Data Protection, Mr. Loring is the most senior privacy and data protection executive at Vialto Partners, a global consulting firm specializing in tax, mobility and immigration with a presence in more than 50 countries.  In this role, he oversees the development and management of Vialto's global data protection program and related initiatives.  

He is also responsible for global compliance with data protection laws, regulations, standards and other guidance in the context of a complex B2B and B2C professional services organization and leads a team of data protection attorneys and data protection risk liaisons throughout the globe.

Mr. Loring has been pracicing law for nearly 20 years in firm and in-house settings.  Prior to his current role, he was most recently the Chief Privacy and Security Counsel for Ernst & Young US.  He received his B.A. from the College of Charleston and law degree from Wake Forest Univeristy.  

Heidi Wachs Related Seminars and Products

Managing Director

Stroz Friedberg

Heidi L. Wachs is Managing Director, Engagement Management, and head of the Washington, D.C. office of Stroz Friedberg, an Aon Company, where she helps clients prepare for and respond to data breach and cybersecurity incidents and develop and implement data privacy and information security programs. Ms. Wachs oversees complex investigations involving the collection, use, and sharing of data and personal information, in particular through the use of APIs, scraping, hacking, cookies, and other third-party web page integrations. Ms. Wachs' experience includes serving as a technical analyst and Chief Privacy Officer for a leading national research university, and she frequently lectures and publishes on best practices for data privacy and breach response, information security, and information governance.

Ms. Wachs has led numerous incident responses to ransomware attacks, business e-mail compromises, wire transfer fraud, malware infections, and large scale data breaches involving personal information. She advises clients and works closely with in-house and outside counsel through the entire lifecycle of matters by quickly assembling digital forensics and incident response teams, supervising the deployment of proprietary incident response technologies, briefing C-suite executives and other business and legal stakeholders, and coordinating supplemental resources across multiple practice areas, such as the intelligence division to conduct deep and dark web monitoring.

In proactive matters, Ms. Wachs guides companies in developing and implementing information governance and information security policies, programs, and procedures, including leading tabletop exercises for executives and technical teams. Ms. Wachs has also co-led large-scale investigations to assist clients in understanding and reviewing their data collection, use, and retention policies. These complex technical and privacy investigations, including retroactive reviews, enable companies to identify historical and ongoing abuse of APIs and help clients to remediate the excessive collection, unauthorized sharing, misuse, and unauthorized scraping of data by third parties.

Before joining Stroz Friedberg, Ms. Wachs helped lead the Data Privacy and Cybersecurity practice at an AmLaw 100 law firm, where she counseled clients across a broad range of industries on privacy, information governance, and cybersecurity issues. Her practice spanned proactive and reactive advice on data breaches and cybersecurity incidents, including developing incident response plans, creating and facilitating tabletop breach response exercises, managing all aspects of breach response including drafting internal and external communications, engaging third-party cyber forensic investigators on behalf of clients to preserve applicable attorney-client and/or attorney work product privilege, and coordinating notification to regulators, federal and state government agencies, and affected individuals. She also advised clients on developing, reviewing, and revising privacy, information security, and information governance policies to mitigate information and cybersecurity risk.

Prior to her law firm experience, Ms. Wachs worked with information technology professionals in higher education and the private sector. She served as a Research Director on the Identity & Privacy Strategies team at a global research and consulting firm, where she authored technical publications for a global client base and presented at worldwide events on topics including privacy, information classification, and identity governance and administration. As the first University Chief Privacy Officer and Director of IT Policy for a leading national research university, she established and managed university-wide data privacy initiatives for information technology operations and data breach response. Earlier in her career, Ms. Wachs represented technology-focused clients as a public relations executive.

In 2017, Ms. Wachs was recognized by the National Law Journal as a Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Trailblazer. She was also named to the Legal 500 in 2017 and 2016. Ms. Wachs earned her B.A. in Journalism from Lehigh University and her J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where she served as Managing Editor of the Women's Law Journal. She is admitted to the bars of the District of Columbia and the United States Supreme Court and is a certified information privacy professional, CIPP/US.

Robbie Hudec Related Seminars and Products

Ciox Health

Robbie holds an undergraduate degree in Business Management – Human Resources and an MBA - Business Technology.  In her current role, she is responsible for the company’s enterprise IT Security, End User and Infrastructure teams.   Prior to Ciox, her responsibilities included overseeing global infrastructure and information security transformation for Schweitzer-Mauduit, Inc for 3 ½ years.  In her 25+ year career, she has extensive experience in leading global infrastructure and information security in various industries such as telecommunications, finance, and manufacturing.  Her background includes strategy development, architecture, operations, program and project delivery, financial management, vendor/partner management and organizational change management.  

Throughout her career, she had led key IT accomplishments such as the global network consolidation of 38+ sites with one network, Active Directory and O365 consolidations, consolidations of data centers (hybrid) and Azure, as well as streamlining core infrastructure to align with business needs. 

Key accomplishments in information security have been global projects such as multi-factor authentication, end user web filtering, improved firewall security, advanced email protection, immutable back-ups as well as a few other core security technologies.  Robbie has built IT Security Programs from ground zero.  She has also led the IT compliance and audits as related to various companies and industries to ensure successful outcomes.

Robbie’s experience has allowed her to lead global IT and Security teams to align with company strategy and ensuring that the Infrastructure and Security plans and architecture allow for flexibility, scalability, stability, and most importantly secured. 

Kristin Adams Related Seminars and Products

Aon

For over 25 years, I have led business development initiatives in the commercial risk and health industries, driving growth strategies and managing client relationships with organizations across the U.S., including private equity, REITs, financial institutions, public companies and law firms. Through my work in corporate M&A, private equity investment and capital markets, I have developed specialized expertise in transaction liability, risk transfer, cyber security, and intangible asset strategies.

Currently, I serve as a Board Member on the Audit and Loan Committees of Georgia Primary Bancshares, a Board Member and Co-Chair of Hire Ground and a Thought Leader for CFO Forum Atlanta.

My nonprofit advocacy includes Board service with The Alliance Theatre, The Woodruff Arts Center, Buckhead Coalition, The Atlanta Women’s Foundation, and HUB404.

I frequently share my perspective and insights on cybersecurity, insurance, benefits, board service and topics related to women in business. Recent speaking engagements include:

• Acquiring a Seat on a Private Company Board, Panelist – Private Directors Association, January 2023
• Business Outlook in the Face of the Mid-Term Elections, CFO Forum Atlanta, October 2022
• Emerging Trends with Cyber Security Threats: Effective Tactics to Assess, Prepare and Respond, Troutman Pepper & Aon Cyber Solutions, October 2022
• Evolving in a Digital Marketplace, Women in Insurance Conference, April 2022

I am a graduate of The University of North Carolina School of Law and maintain FINRA Series 7 and 63 licenses.

Ms. Antonette Igbenoba Related Seminars and Products

Toni Igbenoba is an Associate in BakerHostetler's Privacy Governance & Technology Transactions Practice. She is a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/US), a Certified Information Privacy Manager (CIPM), and a Fellow of Information Privacy (FIP) by the International Association of Privacy Professionals. Toni advises a variety of organizations in the Technology, Retail, Communications, Finance, Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing, and Consumer Services industries regarding complex international and domestic data privacy compliance initiatives.

Rachel Drucker Related Seminars and Products

Diebold Nixdorf

Rachel Drucker is a Privacy Expert specializing in helping companies build and run comprehensive global privacy programs. Rachel has almost 20 years of privacy experience working with Fortune 100 companies, start-ups, and the Federal Government.  A graduate of The George Washington University and Rutgers University, Rachel holds CIPP/US, CIPP/G, CIPM certifications from the IAPP and a CDPSE from ISACA.

Ms. Heather Kuhn Related Seminars and Products

Genuine Parts Company

Heather Kuhn manages her practice at the intersection of law, cybersecurity, privacy and the business world. Assisting clients across a range of industries, she works in a proactive capacity to help them develop and manage privacy and cybersecurity policies and procedures. She also guides clients through the response and investigation processes when a security or privacy incident has occurred, handling notification and regulatory inquiries and ensuring that all compliance obligations are met.

Having 10 years of business experience before entering private practice, Heather understands the privacy and security perspectives of both the client and the attorney, enabling her to provide individualized solutions for each situation.

Chad Hunt Related Seminars and Products

FBI

With over 19 years of experience at the FBI, Mr. Hunt is currently a Supervisory Special Agent at the Atlanta Field Office.  He leads a team who conducts investigations to identify, pursue, and defeat adversaries, by imposing risks and consequence upon them.  

 Mr. Hunt also served as a Program Manager at FBI Cyber Division Headquarters, and was assigned to Australia as a cyber Assistant Legal Attaché.  

 Prior to joining the FBI, he worked for twelve years in the private industry.

Jodi Daniels Related Seminars and Products

Red Clover Advisors

Jodi Daniels is Founder and CEO of Red Clover Advisors, a privacy consultancy, that brings data privacy strategy and compliance together with its flexible and scalable approach that simplifies data privacy complexity, refines, updates or builds privacy structure, and makes both the business and the legal issues accessible and actionable for all.   Jodi is a Certified Informational Privacy Professional and serves as the outsourced privacy office for companies. 

Jodi Daniels is a national keynote speaker, co-host of the top ranked She Said Privacy / He Said Security Podcast, co-author of Wall Street Journal & USA Today best selling book Data Reimagined: Building Trust One Byte at a Time, IANS Faculty Member, and also has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Forbes, Inc., Authority Magazine, Thrive Global, Inc., and more. Jodi holds a Masters of Business Administration and a Bachelor of Business Administration from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.

Ms. April Michelle Ramsden Related Seminars and Products

US Department of Justice

Michelle Ramsden serves as Senior Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties, which is establishing a Data Protection Review Court pursuant to the Executive Order of October 7, 2022, “Enhancing Safeguards for United States Signals Intelligence Activities.” In addition to compliance and privacy policy work, Michelle leads the Department’s engagement with the Global Privacy Assembly and working groups of the US-EU Trade and Technology Council. She also coordinates Department initiatives around US, EU, and UK privacy legislation, the intersection of privacy and competition, and the protection of victim and witness information. Before coming to the Department of Justice, she was a Presidential Management Fellow and Privacy Compliance Specialist at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Michelle is a Georgia native and a 2014 graduate of Emory University School of Law. 

Mr. Charles Randall Britt Related Seminars and Products

Charlie Britt is Vice President, Legal – Global Privacy at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts where he is responsible for the global privacy program.  He has extensive experience in the privacy and information security fields.  Before his current role, Charlie was Senior Privacy Counsel, Global Data Privacy at NCR and a privacy and cybersecurity leader at Cox Communications in Atlanta, Georgia.  He started his career with PwC where he spent several years as an IT Security and Privacy consultant helping Fortune 100 companies build and operate programs designed to mitigate privacy and cybersecurity risks.

Charlie graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in Mathematics and earned a law degree from Georgia State University College of Law.  He holds the Fellow of Information Privacy (FIP), Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/US), and Certified Information Privacy Technologist (CIPT) certifications through the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP).

Robert Jett Related Seminars and Products

Bunge

Robert S. Jett III (“Bob”) recently joined Bunge as its first Global Data Privacy Officer.  In this role he is leading Bunge’s global privacy efforts working with local privacy leaders as well as supporting key business initiatives related to digital transformation and data management. Bob has more than 30 years of experience as a legal advisor and in-house counsel with multi-national organizations in the medical device, insurance and financial services industry and has worked closely with colleagues and issues related to Information Technology, Data Privacy and Protection, Information Security and Corporate Compliance functions. This has included the creation, implementation and maintenance of global compliance, incident response and data privacy programs and managing a global privacy office for several global companies.

He was most recently the Chief Privacy Officer for Crawford & Company where he led the Global Privacy Office as well as supporting Crawford’s Global Incident Response Team and Workplace Reintegration Taskforce for COVID-19.

Laura Gardner Related Seminars and Products

Microsoft

Laura Gardner is Senior Corporate Counsel in Microsoft’s Office of Data Protection, where she leads engagement with data protection regulators around the world. Ms. Gardner joined Microsoft as a Global Director for Privacy Policy, in which role she collaborated across Microsoft to provide input on global privacy legislation and regulation. Ms. Gardner has also served as privacy counsel for WarnerMedia, and prior to that role was a senior attorney with the U.S. Department of Commerce, focusing on international trade in services, including the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, e-commerce and privacy.  Laura studied International Affairs at the University of Chicago, and earned her J.D. at the University of Virginia School of Law and her M.A. in International Law and Economics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. 

Ms. Nikole M. Davenport Related Seminars and Products

FTI Consulting

Ms. Davenport is Head of Regulatory Readiness and Response Programs for WhatsApp at Meta, responsible for coordinating strategic compliance in the areas of privacy, integrity, commerce and regulatory response. Prior to joining Meta she served as the CPO and VP of Privacy Programs at HiTrust where she was able to utilize her experience developing data privacy programs, from problem identification through implementation, at over three dozen international companies during her time as a leader in Deloitte’s Privacy and Data Protection Practice. Before entering the privacy and compliance world, Ms. Davenport was a partner at Chitwood Harley Harnes in Atlanta, where she worked with Attorneys General nationwide as a securities class action litigator.

Recognized by the IAPP as a Fellow in Information Privacy (FIP), she holds a JD and LLM degree, as well as CIPP/US, CIPM and CDPSE privacy certifications.

Josh Torres Related Seminars and Products

Assistant General Counsel

Home Depot

Ms. Heidi Baltes Related Seminars and Products

Chief Privacy Officer Legal

Heidi Braniff is an IAPP certified privacy professional and experienced privacy attorney, licensed to practice law in South Africa and Georgia, USA. In her role as Associate General Counsel – Privacy/Co-Chief Privacy Officer for Korn Ferry she is responsible for leading the privacy function and advising on privacy matters affecting Korn Ferry’s digital products, and its advisory and recruiting businesses globally.

Ms. Braniff has law firm and in-house experience which spans three continents. She is a graduate of the University of Johannesburg (BProc/LLB), the University of South Africa (LLM), Wits Business School (MAP), and Emory Law School (LLM).

Mr. Jonathan Aaron Neiditz Related Seminars and Products

Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP

Ms. Jennifer Murphy Romig Related Seminars and Products

Emory University School of Law

Jennifer Murphy Romig is a Professor of Practice at Emory University School of Law. She joined the faculty in 2001 and now teaches first-year legal research and writing, professional responsibility, and an advanced writing class on legal blogging and social media.

Professor Romig's 2015 article Legal Blogging and the Rhetorical Genre of Public Legal Writing can be found here. Romig has written extensively about checklists for improving legal writing and is co-editor of The Indigo Book: A Manual of Legal Citation (2d. ed. 2021), a free and open-access legal citation manual available in HTML and PDF. Romig is the co-author of Legal Literacy and Communication Skills: Working with Law and Lawyers (Carolina Academic Press 2020), a first-of-its-kind research and writing textbook tailored for legal master's students—non-lawyer professionals seeking legal knowledge and skills to enhance their work in law-adjacent roles. Romig is a member of the State Bar of Georgia, and serves on the State Bar’s Formal Advisory Opinion Board.

Education:  J.D., University of Virginia School of Law; A.B., B.J., University of Missouri

Tanya M. Washington Related Seminars and Products

Georgia State College of Law

Tanya Washington, a native of the city that bears her last name, is a professor of law at Georgia State University College of Law. After earning her J.D. from The University of Maryland School of Law she clerked for then Associate Judge Robert M. Bell on the Maryland Court of Appeals.

After practicing for several years as toxic tort defense litigator at Piper & Marbury, she completed the Albert M. Sacks Fellowship, the A. Leon Higginbotham Fellowship and earned her LL.M. from Harvard Law School. She has been teaching Civil Procedure I and II, Family Law, Education Law and Race and Law at Georgia State for the past twelve years. Her research and scholarship focuses on issues related to educational equity,  domestic relations, race and children’s constitutional rights.

Washington’s articles have been published in law journals across the nation, including: the Harvard Journal for Race and Ethnic Justice, the Indiana Law Review, the Iowa Journal of Gender, Race and Justice, the Utah Law Review, the Whittier Journal of Child and Family Advocacy, the Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal and the George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal. A self-professed activist and scholar, Washington has worked collaboratively to ensure that legal scholarship has a practical and positive impact for vulnerable individuals and communities. Her co-authored amicus briefs filed with the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges highlight the harmful impact of exclusionary marriage laws on children in same-sex families and they challenge states’ characterization of these laws as child welfare measures. The Obergefell brief was cited by Justice Anthony Kennedy in the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in that landmark decision.

A belief that the true value of the law lies in its capacity to improve the human condition animates her work, which has been presented at numerous conferences, programs and law schools including Harvard Law School, the University of Maryland Law School, Emory University School of Law, the University of Iowa College of Law, the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association, and the National Bar Association 2014 Presidential Showcase. In addition to her tenured position at Georgia State College of Law, Washington is a former adjunct faculty member at Howard University Law School where she served for more than ten years.

She has taught comparative law classes for study abroad programs in Brazil, Europe and China. Washington has also led pipeline programs designed to increase enrollment of students of color in U.S. law schools. These programs include: The Charles Hamilton Houston Preparatory Institute, The Justice Benham Law Camp, G-PLUS, and the Council on Legal Education Opportunity’s Six-Week Summer Institute. Her efforts to expand and deepen the pipeline of students entering law school earned her recognition in 2013 as one of 50 minority law professors under 50 making an impact in legal education.