Luisa Taveras

Luisa Taveras joined the Open Society Institute as a program officer with the Criminal Justice Fund in February 2010.  She has over 15 years of legal, program planning, advocacy and public policy experience in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. 

Prior to joining the Open Society Institute she was a project director at the Vera Institute of Justice’s Planning and Government Innovation Unit.  She also served as project director of the Bronx Juvenile Accountability Court, a project of the Center for Court Innovation, and the first alternative-to-incarceration problem-solving court model in Family Court.  From 1993 to 2003, she was a criminal defense attorney with Building Services 32 BJ and the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem in New York City.

Taveras is a Coro Leadership New York Fellow.  She is a former member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York’s Juvenile Justice Committee, and is a frequent guest speaker at local and national conferences on issues related to the evolving role of family court in the lives of juvenile offenders. 

Taveras holds a JD from Fordham University School of Law, and a BA in history and Latin American studies from Colgate University.