About
Tanya Pierce, MBA founded Life Unbolted in 2018, a New York City advocacy and reentry organization working to dismantle the barriers to programs, housing and employment that people impacted by the federal system run into after release. She spent more than two decades in real estate development beforehand, and is now a JD candidate focused on restitution reform.
She chairs the legislative committee of the RemissionNow campaign, which took the little-known clemency remedy of remission to the Office of the Pardon Attorney and worked with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers on the Fairness in Restitution Act. She led the support group's town hall on restitution and remission, and presented on the same subject at the 2026 conference.
Elsewhere on this story
- Tanya Pierce on Nightmare Success Nightmare Success episode: Tanya Pierce, From Indictment to Advocacy
- The RemissionNow town hall she led for the support group Tuesday Speaker Series: Fairness in Restitution, a RemissionNow town hall
At the White Collar Conference
Tanya Pierce marked 30 years since the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act and described people leaving federal prison into what many call a modern-day debtor's prison, owing restitution that was never proven at an evidentiary hearing. She said that at a summit at John Jay earlier in the year, more than 100 people stood when asked if they had a restitution obligation and only one had received an evidentiary hearing. She argued the question should shift from whether a person can pay to whether they owe the money, then introduced a video on the restitution report from The Ladies of Hope Ministries and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
“The first question should be, do you owe the money?”
Watch at 1:37
“No one should be serving a life sentence for ghost money.”
Watch at 1:41
“Restitution should mean compensation for actual provable loss, nothing more, nothing less.”
Watch at 2:03
Join us in fall 2027.
The fourth annual White Collar Conference is planned for fall 2027, virtual on Zoom and open to all.