Pallavi Dhawan
Director of Domestic Violence Policy
Pallavi Dhawan is the Director of Domestic Violence Policy for the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office, where she works on developing best practices at the intersection of domestic violence law and policy. She has trained prosecutors, law enforcement, and victim advocates in best practices in DV prosecutions. Ms. Dhawan helped draft SB 1141, a bill sponsored by her office that added the definition of coercive control to the Family Code definition of domestic abuse. Ms. Dhawan received her BA and J.D. from UCLA. Before joining the City Attorney's Office, she spent 13 years in the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, where she specialized in domestic violence and child abuse cases. While in the DA's Office, Ms. Dhawan worked on legislation to broaden the scope of pretrial criminal protective orders for child abuse victims. In 2019, she received the LACBA Prosecutor of the Year award for her work prosecuting medically complex child abuse cases. Ms. Dhawan is a Fulbright Specialist in domestic violence and child abuse. She has contributed trainings to CEB and has participated in local, state, and national convenings on domestic violence, including as faculty for the National District Attorneys Association. Ms. Dhawan is the Associate Editor of the Domestic Violence Report, and has published articles on domestic violence for the California District Attorneys Association, Family Law News, and the Asian American Policy Review. She is on the advisory board for Saahas for Cause, an organization devoted to uplifting members of the South Asian diaspora.
