Biography
A child of counterculture, raised off the grid by back-to-the-land hippies on the Lost Coast in Northern California, Jenny Andrews (she/her/hers) is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Law School. She started her career as a public defender in Oakland, California in 1996, and has worked in the public defense offices in Alameda, Sonoma and Santa Barbara counties in California, and held a wide variety of positions, including: Forensic Resource Counsel, Felony Team Leader, Director of Training, and Senior Deputy. For 23 years, she consistently litigated cases, including misdemeanor, felony, juvenile, civil commitment (mentally disordered offender and sexually violent predator), mental competency, homicide, and multi-jurisdiction (and multi-jury) trials. She has carried specialized caseloads of complex, forensic and capital litigation. In 2022, she became the first Director of Training at the Indigent Defense Improvement Division of the Office of the State Public Defender, a new statewide effort to support and train indigent defenders in California. She teaches on the faculty of Gideon’s Promise, the National Association for Public Defense, the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, the National Criminal Defense College, the Trial Advocacy Workshop at Harvard Law School, and the California Public Defenders Association. She has taught in public defense training programs in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington, and in public defense offices throughout California. She created BeSustained.org to support the well-being of defenders.
