Tamara Giwa

Executive Director and Attorney-in-Chief

tamara_giwa@fd.org

(212) 417-8719

Tamara Giwa is the Executive Director and Attorney-in-Chief for 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 a supervising trial attorney and as the organization’s Director of Strategic Litigation. Tamara is a member of the Federal Defenders Staffing and Resources Advisory Board (SRAB) and the Performance Management Working Group (PMWG).

Tamara enjoys mentoring new lawyers and currently teaches a course on Professional Responsibility in Criminal Practice at New York University Law School. Before joining the Federal Defenders, she spent eight years at the Legal Aid Society. During her tenure she served as a staff attorney in the DNA Unit, where she represented clients and advocated at the state and national level for policy initiatives related to the use of forensic tools in criminal proceedings. Prior to that, Tamara worked as a trial attorney in the Criminal Defense Practice of the Legal Aid Society and as a staff attorney with the Brooklyn Family Defense Project. Tamara holds a B.A. from Duke University and a J.D. from Vanderbilt University Law School.