Aviva Gilbert represents individuals and companies in federal and state government enforcement, investigation, and criminal justice matters. She co-chairs the firm’s white-collar defense and corporate investigations practice and is a leader of its healthcare industry work. Aviva has extensive experience appearing before and negotiating with agencies like the United States Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Health and Human Services, FINRA, and the California Attorney General’s office. Aviva shepherds witnesses and defendants through all stages of government proceedings, and focuses primarily on the healthcare and technology sectors.

Aviva also represents public and private company board directors, trustees, and committees both in conducting internal investigations and in managing challenging cultural and corporate governance issues. She has led multiple corporate culture reviews, and often counsels board members, committees, and apex executives as an advisor. Her exposure to varied companies and a broad range of corporate dynamics helps her serve as counsel, strategist, and sounding board to her director and executive clients.

Her internal investigation experience involves high-profile technology, healthcare, biotech, and consumer goods companies, as well as financial services entities, educational institutions, and large public organizations. She has twice (2019 and 2022) served as temporary in-house counsel for her clients, once to a Fortune 10 technology company and once to a public life sciences company. In each of those roles she conducted internal investigations and addressed challenges in laboratory, sales, and engineering aspects of the companies. Aviva also has experience as “pool counsel,” working with groups of employees in the internal investigation stage and then in any follow-on governmental investigations and proceedings. This role allows her to learn the details of a particular issue under investigation, and then apply this knowledge efficiently to the needs of corporate and individual clients.

Aviva also focuses on emergent issues in the securities and healthcare arenas. She has clients in the cryptocurrency wing of the financial sector, and clients facing government inquiries relating to novel bio- and medical technologies. Aviva also works with colleagues in the firm’s cannabis industry practice, where she focuses on risk analysis for companies in or interested in entering the cannabis industry.

Aviva is a skillful advocate and counselor to people who find themselves in challenging, unfamiliar situations and is an expert in demystifying the often-complex landscape of litigation, governmental proceedings, or corporate investigations. Her practice requires balancing complex factual learning, negotiation expertise, and careful attention to the difficulties inherent in high-stakes inquiries into professional or personal conduct. Aviva is uncommonly effective at managing this balance.

Between law school and joining Farella, Aviva clerked for the Hon. Wilma A. Lewis, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Virgin Islands. She was a founding member and global chair of the Women’s White Collar Defense Association Young Lawyers Committee and currently serves on the association's Alumni Committee. Aviva is a member of the Board of Trustees of The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and a Commissioner for the City of Berkeley.

Prior to becoming a lawyer, she worked in Google’s Public Affairs division, where she handled government and education sector issues, and was a J. William Fulbright Fellow from 2007-2008 in Mexico City and Cuernavaca, Mexico, working at the Mexican National Institute of Public Health (INSP).