Sarah Garvey,Diversity Director in Los Angeles

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Diversity Director Sarah L. Garvey places diverse candidates at all levels in law firms throughout the country and also works with firms to help meet diversity and inclusion goals. Ms. Garvey approaches her position from an ideological and practical perspective—as a firm believer in the principles that underlie the diversity and inclusion movement and as a former BigLaw attorney who knows what it takes to succeed.

Ms. Garvey was born and raised in Princeton, New Jersey, where her father was a political science professor and her mother was head of one of Princeton University’s residential colleges. The family spent every summer in the small town in Northern Minnesota where her mother grew up. She recalls sailing with her father on the local lake, gardening with her grandmother, and visiting the White Earth Indian Reservation with her mother and grandfather, a small-town lawyer who did free legal work for the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.
 
She returned to Minnesota during college, through an honors program in which she was given a grant to pursue a project of her choosing. She used the money to buy a camera and build a darkroom, and begin a documentary photography and journalistic journey that began with carnival workers at the local county fair and continued for years through small town America and beyond. She has photographed street fairs, demolition derbies, bikers, factory workers, ice fishermen, Micronesian traditional navigators, sacred spaces, and rural and urban landscapes. She has made documentary films about rodeo cowboys, wrongful convictions, sustainable economic development, and a high school mock trial program. She has written articles about remote veterinary relief efforts, drug court programs, and top women litigators. She is drawn to meeting people of all kinds and backgrounds and helping them tell their unique stories.
 
Ms. Garvey earned her B.A. in History summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard College, Columbia University. While in college, she was a clerk for the Legal Aid Society and Milbank, Tweed. She went to Harvard Law School, where she graduated cum laude and worked as a community organizer in low-income housing projects and on prisoner’s rights litigation. She also earned an International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance in Nairobi, Kenya, at an intensive immersion program sponsored in part by the United Nations System Staff College and attended by aid workers from conflict zones around the world. While there, she wrote a paper about the importance of justice and human rights in humanitarian aid efforts.
 
An attorney admitted to the bars of New York and California, Ms. Garvey was an associate in the finance departments of both Milbank, Tweed in New York and Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco. She also has been a staff writer for the Los Angeles Daily Journal. Recently, she has been litigating Section 1983 civil rights cases in federal and state courts throughout California.
 
In her free time, Ms. Garvey enjoys yoga, reading, and cultural exploration. Some of her favorite books are Gilead, Peace Like a River, The Poisonwood Bible, Moby Dick, The Goldfinch, The Emperor’s Children, Wild, A Fine Balance, Coyotes, Random Family, No Matter How Loud I Shout, and Run. Some of her most memorable trips were traveling by “night train” around India, going on safari in Kenya’s Masi Mara National Reserve, and scuba diving with whale sharks off the coast of Honduras.