Joanna Plichta Boisen, JD

Woman of Courage

Joanna is a partner at Foster Pepper PLLC and chairwoman of the firm’s Nonprofit Organizations group. The Nonprofit Organizations group specifically focuses on the unique issues nonprofits face, including qualifying for and maintaining tax-exempt status, board governance, and compliance issues. Her clients include family and corporate private foundations, community foundations, social service, and arts organizations.

Joanna also directs the firm’s nationally recognized and award-winning Pro Bono Practice, which she founded in 2005. She created the firm’s first flagship program—the Domestic Violence Advocacy Project—which helps survivors attain protection orders. Joanna was instrumental in helping bring the Ghetto Reparations Project to Seattle and training attorneys in this complicated area of law; to date, the program has helped over 150 Holocaust survivors in Washington attain reparations from the German government. In addition to being responsible for the firm’s entrepreneurial pro bono initiatives and managing Foster Pepper’s wide-ranging pro bono cases and projects, she is also responsible for the firm’s corporate social responsibility initiatives.

Joanna was recently named to the Puget Sound Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 list and has been listed as a Rising Star by Washington Super Lawyers for five consecutive years. She has received numerous awards for her legal work and contributions to the community including receiving the Outstanding Young Lawyer Award from the King County Bar Association, Outstanding Alumni from Seattle University, and the Light a Fire Award from Seattle Met Magazine. She graduated from the University of Washington in 2002 and Seattle University Law School in 2006.