Anna Kurien, senior legal counsel, was a public defender in Atlanta for the last eleven years. There she represented clients charged with complex felonies in Superior Court and also did appellate work for two years. She has taught young public defenders at Gideon’s Promise, of which she is a proud graduate, as well as through the statewide training program for young public defenders in Georgia. She is a member of the Indigent Defense Committee of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, and is on the board of the ACLU of Georgia and has long advocated for criminal justice reform in Atlanta through two organizations of which she was a founding member – BLOCS (Building Locally to Organize for Community Safety) and LUNA (Lawyers United for a New Atlanta). Anna grew up in India and studied English and French at Wellesley College before attending law school at Emory University in Atlanta.