About Ann

Ann has been serving as the Seattle City Attorney since January 1, 2022, having been elected in 2021. She is the first woman, and mom, to hold the office and the tenth city attorney in the history of Seattle.

Taking office in 2022, Ann inherited a backlog of more than 5,000 criminal cases waiting for a charging decision, and a near gutted criminal division with no criminal chief. Ann has made large strides in revamping and restoring the criminal division, now having a near 30-year veteran prosecutor as her criminal division chief. Ann cleared the 5,000 case backlog and instituted a “close-in-time” filing policy to help restore real time accountability in Seattle’s misdemeanor criminal justice system. Ann has focused on recentering victims in the public safety conversation, making sure they are not lost in the discussions about public safety overall nor in the procedures of the criminal justice system.

Importantly during Ann’s first year as Seattle City Attorney, she developed the first data analytics to come out of the office. With unprecedented data transparency for the public to understand the operations of the criminal division, and to guide decision-making, Ann developed a data informed office and brings it to community to make it accessible and understandable for the public. This approach is cutting-edge for prosecutor offices across the country. Because of this, Ann has spoken at several conferences, including the only two data summits by the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.

In addition to focusing on accountability to help be a positive impact on public safety, Ann has expanded diversion alternatives in the criminal division. She has expanded eligibility and broadened community partners providing alternatives to typical prosecution. This creates the spectrum of responses for misdemeanor criminal activity in Seattle: from pre-charge diversion, alternative and therapeutic courts to traditional prosecution, all are necessary depending on the frequency and repetition of criminal activity by a person. Ann’s criminal division has therapeutic courts also such as Mental Health Court and Veterans Court.

For the civil division, Ann has created more accessible and streamlined legal services for her municipal clients: the mayor, city council, municipal court, and all city departments.

In important affirmative litigation, Ann successfully mediated the Monsanto litigation—bringing the highest municipal settlement in the country—at 160 million dollars to the City of Seattle to help in the clean up of PCBs in the lower Duwamish river. Ann also was the first in the country to sue Kia/Hyundai for their choice to exclude near universal anti-theft technology into their least expensive cars over a decade’s span, leaving them extremely susceptible to theft. Over a dozen other governmental entities have joined this lawsuit because they also saw a rash of thefts of those cars. This was one strategic way to help improve public safety—in addition to, but not instead of, prosecuting those who commit the crimes.

Ann also serves as the Ninth Circuit North, Regional Vice President for the International Municipal Lawyers Association and has spoken on pro sports and a variety of topics for large cities at its conferences for municipal civil lawyers.

Ann came to Seattle in 1996 to work in basketball operations for the Seattle SuperSonics’ front office, culminating in a decade in the business of pro sports after her pro sports representation work in DC. She holds a J.D. from Willamette University College of Law and a B.A. degree from Baylor University. She established her own practice out of law school, becoming one of Seattle’s many small business owners. After building a book of business, she took it to a small downtown law firm where her practice areas included civil litigation, immigration, sports, contracts and business transactions. She has practiced law in Seattle since 2005, while navigating the balance of becoming a mother. Ann was also an arbitrator over her legal career prior to becoming the elected Seattle City Attorney.

An avid member of her community, Ann currently serves on the executive board for the Seattle Youth Soccer Association, after volunteer coaching for years. Starting in 2020 and currently she serves on the Board of Directors for a nonprofit that assists clients who have mental illness to help them as they re-enter community after psychiatric care or addiction treatment. Ann’s other volunteer work included serving as co-chair of a volunteer committee for a public elementary school fundraiser, a volunteer tutor through CAYA (Central Area Youth Association), helping refugee and immigrant students.

Ann’s service to her community has been a part of her life wherever she has lived. She has spent time volunteering with people recently released from incarceration, with people experiencing homelessness, and led an event known as Hunger Awareness Week. Ann has spent time working in Australia helping at-risk youth, immigrants and refugees and also served in the UN Border Relief Operation in a Cambodian refugee camp along the Thai/Cambodian border in eastern Thailand.

Ann also spent some of her career as a teacher. She taught conversational English to Thai college students in Lampang, Thailand and taught International Business Law in the Global Business Program to international students at the University of Washington Continuum College for many years. She also worked as a caseworker in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D. C., assisting constituents in matters regarding their military service, medicare, medicaid and social security.

Ann was a political newcomer when she ran for office, driven by conversations for years with her young kids about the obvious plight of people alongside the roadways of Seattle, with elected people doing nothing meaningful about it and allowing the suffering of people, entrenched addiction, and harm to public safety and the degradation of the environment to continue. 

Ann is tireless: she stays active with CrossFit, Brazilian jujitsu, volunteering, skiing, scuba diving, piano, soccer, and running the many beautiful trails Washington has to offer.