Nisha Vyas is Vice President and Chief Legal Officer at Public Counsel. A dedicated public interest lawyer and advocate, Nisha brings over two decades of experience advancing housing justice, economic equity, and access to legal representation.
Nisha previously led Public Counsel’s Homelessness Prevention Law Project, overseeing eviction defense and public benefits advocacy for individuals experiencing or at risk of homelessness. Earlier, as a senior attorney in Public Counsel’s Community Development Project, she counseled nonprofit affordable housing providers and enforced policies to promote housing affordability and prevent displacement. With two Public Counsel colleagues, she was a fellow in the 2017 class of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law’s Racial Justice Training Institute, a national leadership program that equips anti-poverty advocates to address the role that racism plays in causing and perpetuating poverty.
Before returning to Public Counsel in her current role, Nisha joined Western Center on Law & Poverty as a senior attorney on its housing team and was later appointed Deputy Director. She led the litigation teams and supported Western Center’s advocacy in the areas of housing, health, public benefits, and access to justice.
Nisha began her legal career at the Southern California Housing Rights Center, where she represented tenants and homeowners in federal and state court to challenge housing discrimination. In 2010, she was selected as the Jay M. Spears Clinical Teaching Fellow at Stanford Law School. As a Clinical Lecturer with the Community Law Clinic, she trained and supervised law students representing low-income clients while developing curriculum on eviction defense, client counseling, and cross-cultural lawyering.
Nisha earned her undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley and her J.D. from UCLA School of Law, where she completed the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy. From 2021 to 2024, she returned to UCLA as a Lecturer-in-Law, co-designing and teaching courses on public interest problem-solving and Los Angeles housing law and policy.
