Madhuri (Madhu) S. Grewal, Esq.

Madhuri (Madhu) Grewal is an attorney and public policy consultant with expertise in civil rights, immigration, and criminal justice. She is the founder of Grewal Strategies, a firm that works primarily with civil and human rights organizations to develop and execute innovative and impactful campaigns, strategic communications, and policy initiatives. She also provides executive coaching, leadership training, and guidance to facilitate inclusive workplaces—with a focus on the professional development of young women of color and working parents.

Prior to founding Grewal Strategies, she was a lobbyist in the political department of the ACLU, where she managed advocacy related to immigrants’ rights, including on appropriations, immigration detention, and the Trump administration’s family separation policy. She also worked at the intersection of immigrants’ rights and other civil rights and civil liberties issues, including reproductive health, criminal justice and mass incarceration, surveillance, and voting rights.

Grewal was previously a senior counsel at The Constitution Project, where she focused on criminal justice issues, including the right to counsel and funding for public defense, sentencing reform, policing, and the death penalty. In that role, she testified before President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, spearheaded amicus briefs filed before the Supreme Court, and staffed bipartisan commissions of prominent law enforcement and former elected officials and judges to study and issue reports on body-worn cameras, police use of force, and the death penalty.

She has appeared on BBC News and in major outlets, including The New York Times, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic. She has also authored op-eds in The Washington Post and The National Journal. She sits on the board of JusticeAid and was formerly on the board of the APABA-DC Educational Fund (AEF). Grewal is based in Washington, DC and holds a J.D. from the American University Washington College of Law and a bachelor’s degree in business and political science from the University of Michigan.

Sub-specialties:

Immigration: Criminal justice-to-deportation pipeline; immigration detention; family separation at the border; asylum; right to counsel in immigration court; solitary confinement in immigration detention

Criminal justice: right to counsel; prosecutorial misconduct; death penalty; policing (use of military equipment by law enforcement and body-worn cameras)

Politics: women of color and South Asians in office and/or running for office; politics and race

Race and ethnicity: Issues impacting Asian-Americans; affirmative action