Margarita Guzmán

Margarita Guzmán

Executive Director

Born in El Paso, Texas, Margarita Guzmán is a queer Chicana and survivor of intimate partner violence. She received her bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and her law degree from George Washington University School of Law. Upon graduating from law school, Margarita established a legal clinic for indigent Spanish-speaking mental health consumers in New York City. Her legal practice later focused on representing primarily Latinx immigrant survivors of domestic violence in housing, family and immigration legal matters, as well as teen and young adult survivors. In 2013, she entered civil service at the Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence, where she ran the Bronx Family Justice Center until joining the Violence Intervention Program (VIP) in 2017. She currently serves as Executive Director at VIP, working with largely immigrant and low-income Latinx survivors of domestic and sexual violence. As a survivor and a lawyer, Margarita has lived the limits of criminal and civil legal responses to violence and seeks to increase restorative and transformative justice practices to support survivors and change abusive behaviors.