Tamara Giwa

Tamara Giwa is the Executive Director and Attorney-in-Chief of the Federal Defenders of New York, where she leads staff across four offices in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. Prior to her appointment in 2024, she served as the organization's Director of Strategic Litigation and as a Supervising Trial Attorney. In addition to serving on the Oversight Board of the Federal Defender Leadership Center, Tamara currently serves on the Federal Defenders Strategic Resources Advisory Board (SRAB) and the Performance Management Working Group (PMWG).

Tamara has spent her career representing indigent New Yorkers. Before joining Federal Defenders, Tamara worked at the Legal Aid Society, first as a Trial Attorney in the Criminal Defense Practice and later as a Staff Attorney in the DNA Unit, where she litigated forensic issues at trial and advocated at the state and national level for policy reform around the use of forensic tools in criminal proceedings. Earlier in her career, she was a Staff Attorney with the Brooklyn Family Defense Project, representing indigent parents in child abuse and neglect proceedings. She joined Federal Defenders of New York in 2019 as an Assistant Federal Defender.

A dedicated mentor to new lawyers, Tamara teaches Professional Responsibility in Criminal Practice at New York University Law School and trains and speaks regularly on criminal defense practice and public interest lawyering.

Tamara holds a J.D. from Vanderbilt University Law School and a B.A. in Public Policy Studies from Duke University.