Ivy Lee

Ivy is an attorney whose practice has focused on defending and advancing the rights of survivors of human trafficking, domestic violence, and sexual assault through direct legal representation, policy and legislative advocacy, and training and technical assistance for local and federal law enforcement agencies. She is a recognized policy and legislative expert in the areas of criminal justice, victims’ rights, violence prevention, human trafficking, and immigrant rights.

She most recently served as a mayoral policy advisor in the areas of public safety and victim rights in San Francisco where she developed the city’s first alternative to a police response known as the Street Crisis Response Team, multiracial street violence prevention teams, the Community Liaison Unit within the San Francisco Police Department for dedicated bilingual officers to respond to possible hate crimes, and expanded community-based victim services for vulnerable populations, including seniors and limited English-speaking survivors of crimes, and spearheaded the creation of the first program in the U.S. that provides free legal representation for survivors of gender-based violence.

Prior, Ivy served in several legislative offices where she led legislation such as the Fair Chance Act to remove unnecessary barriers to employment and housing for individuals with criminal convictions, Eviction Protections 2.0 to provide tenants with a chance to resolve nuisances with landlords prior to any eviction action, the Free City College program which established San Francisco’s City College as the first free institution of higher learning in the U.S., and legislation to fund early care and education for all San Francisco families, including wage increases for educators.

Previously, Ivy directed the Immigrant Rights & Human Trafficking Project at Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach in San Francisco. At APILO, she represented immigrant survivors of crime for legal relief; conducted legislative and policy advocacy at local, state, and federal levels including co-authoring California’s first anti-human trafficking law; provided technical assistance and training for federal and local law enforcement agencies; and chaired the Northern California Anti-Trafficking Task Force in partnership with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. She has also held positions as a staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus and as the Thurgood Marshall Fellow at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.

Ivy authored Representing Survivors of Human Trafficking: A Promising Practices Handbook, 1st and 2nd editions and is also published in the Journal of International Law and Policy at UC Davis School of Law and in the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy at Georgetown School of Law. She received her J.D. from New York University School of Law and currently serves as a member of the advisory board for the NYU Policing Project.