Our Team

I'm passionate about helping hardworking employees heal from the trauma of toxic and abusive workplaces. It changes your body and mind--I know from my own personal experience. I spent the first 18 years of my life in Indiana. At Swarthmore College, I focused on creative writing and literature--storytelling. I sold a creative piece for $10 my junior year. Tearing open that envelope and holding that check, I realized I could use my creative skills to make a difference and earn a living.

When I was growing up, I remember seeing relatives and friends constantly out of work or, when lucky enough to have work, getting treated like dirt. I could see on their faces how much it hurt not to have a job and provide for their families, and the pain and confusion of having a boss who acted like you never do anything right when you're working hard.

I come from a long line of hard workers. I grew up on Air Force bases across the Midwest, the South, and overseas in Iceland and Germany. My dad worked his way up the ranks of the U.S. Military and taught himself as he went. He did it without a wealthy family or a formal education. My mom was a stay-at-home mom who raised me and my five siblings. She was an amazing chef, and I have many fond memories of her milling her own wheat and baking loaves of bread from scratch. My grandparents worked in oil fields in southern Illinois, in the snow and rain for the U.S. Post Office, in various blue-collar jobs, and for big insurance companies.

I always wanted to be a plaintiff's side employment attorney. It all started when my father, a criminal defense lawyer for indigent New Yorkers, came to my second-grade classroom for "Career Day" to put on a mock trial: Cookie Monster stood wrongfully accused of stealing cookies from the cookie jar. I helped give the closing argument on why the jury (my fellow second graders) could not rely on harmful stereotypes and assumptions. Cookie Monster was cleared of all charges, and I was hooked - I knew I had to be a lawyer too.

I grew up in the woods in the Southwest Missouri Ozarks. My parents were public school teachers. They cared most about influencing the world of each child for the better. I have benefitted from their well-intended belief that they could make a small, but positive change in the world - a step hopefully in the direction of progress. That's part of why I became a lawyer. I wanted to help folks too - particularly those who are up against the odds through no fault of their own.

Hannah Pinto graduated from Wesleyan University and received her law degree from the University of California at Berkeley. She has spent her career serving the public, first as a criminal defense lawyer at Legal Aid, and then as a Hearing Officer at the City's Office of Administrative Hearings and Trials.

I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, in a close-knit Bengali community. My family regularly visited my grandmother in India, who served as the principal of a school for children living in low-income settlements. On our trips, I would often sit and learn alongside the other students, both from the instructors and one another.