Tess Joseph

Content Specialist

Tess has long been passionate about the intersections between sexual freedom, feminist anti-violence work, and alternative, non-punitive responses to harm. Throughout her career, she has worked with parents in legal aid and public defense organizations. Tess is delighted to explore her interests through her work at the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, an organization that recognizes the right to family as a central issue in the movement for sexual freedom.

In 2018, Tess’s interest in nonprofits’ capacity to address violence led her to intern at Woodhull. During her internship, she conducted a research project focused on over thirty anti-violence nonprofits’ programming and inclusivity. This project served as the inspiration for her undergraduate honors thesis, which critically engaged with “carceral feminism” and mainstream conceptions of punishment as justice. After defending her thesis, she obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Comparative American Studies and Hispanic Studies from Oberlin College.

Upon graduation, Tess moved to Chicago, where she advocated for survivors in divorce, custody, and restraining order cases as a paralegal at Legal Aid Chicago. Tess’s work at Legal Aid Chicago led her to apply to law school. In 2024, Tess obtained a Juris Doctorate from UCLA School of Law, with concentrations in the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy and Critical Race Studies Programs.

Presently, Tess works as a public defense attorney at Los Angeles Dependency Lawyers, where she represents parents whose families are embroiled in Los Angeles County’s racist and classist family regulation (“child welfare”) system. She advocates daily in court for her clients’ rights to retain or regain custody of their children.

Since 2018, Tess has continued her work at Woodhull as the author of the bi-weekly newsletter. In addition, she authors bi-weekly blog posts that ground the newsletter articles in Woodhull’s mission to affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right.