Dinah Manning proudly hails from South Central Los Angeles, California and has spent her career fighting for people who are marginalized, oppressed, and subjugated by the criminal injustice system.

Dinah’s commitment to client-centered zealous advocacy was her guiding principle as a supervising attorney in the trial division at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (PDS) and a Deputy Federal Public Defender in the Office of the Federal Public Defender Central District of California’s trial division.

As a public defender, Dinah analyzed the bedrock inequities in the criminal system, held prosecuting agencies to their constitutional burden, and interrogated practices of police misconduct, which made her uniquely suited for her current role as Chief of Strategic Initiatives & Senior Advisor to the Los Angeles City Controller. In this capacity, she leads assessments and audits of the City’s most complex and largest agencies, provides accountability and oversight focused on policing within the city, and helps manage the citywide fraud, waste, and abuse investigations.

A core tenet of Dinah’s career is to help improve the quality of indigent defense practice. With the goal of empowering lawyers to push themselves to new heights in trial advocacy and vindicate their clients’ rights, Dinah trains public defenders, private practitioners, and students on every aspect of trial practice nationwide. She proudly serves as faculty with the National Criminal Defense College.