Vanita Gupta

Vanita Gupta has been the head of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice since 2014, where she advances criminal justice reform and constitutional policing. As the chief civil rights prosecutor for the United States, she also oversees a wide range of additional enforcement efforts, including prosecuting hate crimes and human trafficking, promoting disability rights, protecting the rights of LGBT individuals and combating discrimination in education, employment, housing, lending and voting. Before working at the DOJ, Vanita served as Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU, where she spearheaded the National Campaign to End Mass Incarceration. The Civil Rights Division has never been an easy job, and especially in a polarized America, it has been a difficult task. But Vanita’s husband, Chinh Q. Le, legal director of the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, has credited her ability to bring people together as one of her strengths: “Vanita’s really passionate and strong about the values she holds while also being able to collaborate in a way that feels non-adversarial.”