Bio
Natasha Minsker is the Center Director for the ACLU of California Center for Advocacy & Policy, which is responsible for advancing the ACLU’s civil liberties and civil rights policy goals in the State Capitol.
The office advocates on a broad range of issues including criminal justice, education, freedom of expression, immigrants’ rights, LGBT rights, privacy, racial justice, reproductive justice, and voting rights. The ACLU of California is a collaboration of all the ACLU affiliates in California, with more than 100,000 members and supporters.
Before coming to Sacramento, Minsker served as the ACLU of California’s Death Penalty Policy Director for nine years and as the Associate Director of the ACLU of Northern California for one year.
As the Death Penalty Policy Director, Minsker led a statewide multi-disciplinary campaign to promote the goal of ending executions and replacing the death penalty. She served as the Campaign Manager for the Yes on 34-SAFE California Campaign, a 2012 ballot initiative to replace the death penalty with life in prison without parole.
Before joining the ACLU in 2005, Minsker spent five years as an attorney at the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office where she represented adults and juveniles facing criminal charges ranging from petty theft to homicide. She also served as a staff attorney for the Judicial Council committee that drafted jury instructions for criminal cases, and clerked for Federal District Court Judge Martha Vázquez in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
She is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Cornell University. She grew up in Washington, D.C.
