Joyce Vance served as a U.S. Attorney during the Obama Administration from 2009 to 2017. She resigned from the Justice Department after 25 years of service, including as both a criminal prosecutor and the office's appellate chief. Currently a Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law, she is the New York Times bestselling author of Giving Up is Unforgivable: A Manual For Keeping A Democracy. The book is an expert look at American democracy, and how our understanding of it today is informed by the sweep of legal history. Operating on the belief that being a citizen is the most important work each of us does in a democracy, she advocates for transforming civics education and informs readers about how government works and what it takes to preserve democracy. She also pens Civil Discourse, one of the leading Substack newsletters in the U.S. Politics category with 620,000+ subscribers. A highly regarded legal analyst for MSNBC and a cohost of the #SistersInLaw and Cafe's Insider podcasts, Vance makes complex legal issues accessible, engaging, and actionable for her audiences.

As a keynote speaker, Vance is an expert in voting rights, election law, and our democratic institutions. She delivers timely presentations that help audiences understand key issues at the intersection of law and politics—the headlines that keep people up at night. With deep legal expertise, clear-eyed analysis, and a healthy dose of realistic optimism, she separates fact from fiction and demystifies the court decisions, federal actions, and public response that affect life and business. In a time of heightened uncertainty, Joyce Vance moves corporations, civic organizations, college students, and community groups from overwhelmed paralysis to informed action.

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Joyce Vance was the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from August 2009 through January 2017. She was among the first U.S. Attorneys appointed by President Obama and was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. Before that, she served in the U.S. Attorney’s office as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Criminal and Appellate Divisions and later as the office’s senior litigation counsel and Appellate Chief. She got her start in the legal space as a litigator in private practice

Today, Vance educates the brilliant legal minds of tomorrow as Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and a proud alumna of the University of Virginia School of Law and Bates College, in Lewiston, Maine.

Maintaining the notion that the fight for our republic is everyone’s responsibility, Vance’s rallying cry remains, “We’ve got work to do. We’re in this together.”