LaShawn Warren

LaShawn Y. Warren is Vice President of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at American Progress, where her work focuses on the intersection of faith, values, ethics, law, and activism. Warren is a theologian and a public interest attorney. Prior to American Progress, she served as vice president and general counsel for the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, where she oversaw the legal, policy, communications, and field programming for the organization’s criminal justice, economic development, and civic engagement pillars. Before this, she worked as vice president of policy development and programming at the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy. Warren also worked as oversight counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, where she was lead counsel for the committee’s investigation into the enforcement of federal civil rights laws by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. During her tenure, she worked to develop legislative remedies on issues as varied as voting, employment, housing, predatory lending, criminal justice reform, and immigration. Before assuming her position with the committee, Warren was legislative counsel for civil rights in the Washington Legislative Office of the American Civil Liberties Union. She also served as a legislative analyst for the Seattle City Council and was an assistant attorney general for Washington state’s attorney general. Warren is a graduate of Yale Divinity School. She served as an editor for Glossolalia, the graduate journal of Yale Divinity School, and has also been a contributing author for Reflections: A Magazine of Theological and Ethical Inquiry. She is a graduate of Howard University School of Law, where she served as co-editor-in-chief of The Social Justice Law Review and was a member of the Charles Hamilton Houston National Moot Court Team. She graduated magna cum laude from Savannah State University and also has nonprofit management certification from Georgetown University.