NWLC Staff

Vice Chair & General Counsel, Legal, Regulatory, and Compliance, KPMG

Tonya Robinson serves as KPMG LLP’s Vice Chair and General Counsel – Legal, Regulatory and Compliance. As a member of the Firm’s executive Management Committee, she reports to the Chairman/CEO and oversees the Office of General Counsel, Office of the Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, and Office of Government Affairs and Public Policy. She also serves as Secretary to the US Firm’s Board of Directors and as Head of Legal and Compliance for the Americas Region, which includes member firms in North, South and Central America.

At KPMG, Tonya has led transformations of the legal and compliance functions, better aligning those operations with the needs of the business while reinforcing her team’s important gatekeeper and risk mitigation role. Before joining KPMG, Tonya served as the Acting General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), serving as legal advisor to the Secretary and principal-in-charge of a legal office of nearly 600 professionals. Prior to her federal agency service, Tonya worked in the White House as Special Assistant to the President for Justice and Regulatory Policy and focused on a broad range of civil and criminal justice policy matters. She also managed several interagency processes, including convening the President’s National Equal Pay Task Force and co-chairing an interagency roundtable designed to leverage civil legal services to enable access to critical services for low-income individuals and families.

Prior to her service at the White House, Tonya was a partner at a global law firm. Her practice centered primarily on complex civil litigation and investigations, including Congressional investigations, as well as discrete civil rights matters. Tonya also worked as counsel to then-Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, where she focused on a mix of legal and policy issues, including corporate governance matters. Her work for the Judiciary Subcommittee marked Tonya’s fourth stint on Capitol Hill, having earlier worked as a legislative aide in both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.

Tonya received her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Public Policy Studies and a Certificate in Women’s Studies from Duke University, where she also served as president of the undergraduate student body. She obtained a post-graduate degree in African Studies from the University of Cape Town in South Africa as a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholar and her Juris Doctor Degree from Harvard Law School. After law school, Tonya served as a  judicial clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Among her community and philanthropic activities, Tonya serves on the boards of directors for both the National Women’s Law Center and the Ethics Research Center, the leading provider of independent research on workplace integrity, ethical standards, and compliance processes and practices. She also serves on the Board of Advisors for the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy.