Minouche Kandel is a Senior Staff Attorney in the LGBTQ, Gender & Reproductive Justice Project at the ACLU of Southern California. She focuses on gender equity issues that intersect with sexual harassment and sexual violence, including advocacy around sex worker rights and safety.
Minouche was previously the Women's Policy Director at the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women (DOSW), where she helped to coordinate San Francisco's response to domestic violence and human trafficking. Minouche staffed the San Francisco Mayor's Task Force on Anti-Human Trafficking and the Family Violence Council. She helped craft human trafficking and domestic violence policies for San Francisco city departments.
Prior to working at DOSW, Minouche worked in the area of domestic violence for over twenty years, most of that time as a staff attorney in the San Francisco office of Bay Area Legal Aid, a legal services agency providing free legal assistance to low income persons in the Bay Area. Minouche represented domestic violence survivors in family law in the trial courts and the court of appeal. Minouche also assisted domestic violence survivors with immigration, public benefits, public housing, and other legal issues. Minouche worked on legislation, policies and protocols focused on the intersection of welfare and domestic violence. She presented extensively at trainings on domestic violence for lawyers, probation officers, family court staff, welfare workers, public health workers, and children's advocates.
Minouche has been published in Clearinghouse Review, Ms., Discover, and the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism. Minouche is a recipient of the 2008 California Lawyer Attorney of the Year (Public Interest Law category), 2009 Legal Aid Association of California’s Family Law Award for Direct Representation, the Daily Journal's 2009 Top 100 Lawyers in California, the 2012 San Francisco District Attorney's Women's History Month Honoree, and the 2012 Tanya Neiman Award from the San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium. Minouche got her B.A. from Yale University and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
