Joanna Martinson Jacobs has headed the Office of Dispute Resolution since 2007.

She brings to the position a background of more than twenty years of litigation experience, including over 40 jury trials, and an extensive background in all aspects of alternative dispute resolution.

Joanna attended St. Johns College (Annapolis, MD), graduated with Honors from the University of New Mexico and received her J.D. in 1978 from Catholic University School of Law. After a clerkship on the D.C. Court of Appeals, she joined the Department of Justice, where she gained extensive criminal and civil litigation experience at the U.S. Attorney’s Offices in the District of Columbia and in Philadelphia, and spent several years at the Organized Crime and Racketeering Strike Force in Newark, New Jersey where she supervised lengthy corruption investigations. She was successful, after a four-month trial, in obtaining labor racketeering convictions of eight high-ranking Teamster Union officials, for which she received the Criminal Division’s Special Commendation Award.

Ms. Jacobs' multi-faceted experience with ADR includes work as an advocate, a neutral, a teacher and an international consultant. After almost ten years of government service, Joanna entered private practice where she utilized ADR as a means to serve her clients’ needs for quicker and less costly resolution of complex business disputes. She has taught ADR as an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University Law School and Rutgers Law School, and has also lectured at the Attorney General’s Advocacy Institute. In 2005-06, she spent a year as a consultant to the government of Bulgaria, developing court referred mediation programs in anticipation of that country's entry into the European Union, lecturing and training attorneys and judges in mediation techniques.

She rejoined the Department of Justice in August, 2006, as the Deputy Director of the Office of Dispute Resolution where she has provided advice, training and consultation on ADR to government attorneys in the Department of Justice and throughout the Executive Branch.