Attorney Biography
Selwyn D. Whitehead is a San Francisco Bay Area bankruptcy, business and tax attorney whose practice focuses on helping her clients manage their wealth through effective estate and tax planning and/or manage their debt through debt restructuring or bankruptcy. Selwyn also helps her clients facing foreclosure and represents clients with emotionally and financially “taxing” issues before the Franchise Tax Board, the IRS and the U.S. Tax Court. Selwyn also seeks to vindicate the rights of seniors who find themselves victims of financial elder abuse.
Prior to going into private practice, Selwyn managed a group of attorneys and paraprofessionals in Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company’s Claims Department, where she was responsible for auditing the claims and case handling practices, performance, fees, and expenses of outside defense counsel.
Before joining Fireman’s Fund, Selwyn spent the preceding 17 years as a financial services industry consumer advocate. She held leadership positions at the Law Offices of Public Advocates and The Greenlining Coalition, focusing on banking and insurance public policy issues; was a consumer representative to the California Automobile Assigned Risk Plan, the California automobile insurer of last result; and, founded the non-profit Economic Empowerment Foundation, whose mission was to educate urban center dwellers, small business owners, and women about their rights and responsibilities as financial services industry consumers, while advocating on their behalf before regulatory and governmental bodies, including the Untied States Congress and the California Legislature.
Between 1993 through 1998, Selwyn was selected by the Officers of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to represent the interests of California insurance consumers before that body as one of only 12 Consumer Representatives from around the country. In that role she helped provide the consumer’s perspective to the Commissioners and their staff during their deliberations on model insurance laws and regulations.
In the fall of 1998, nearly two decades after receiving her undergraduate degree in Business Administration, Selwyn entered law school and obtained her J.D. from New College of California, School of Law. She then went on to Golden Gate University, School of Law to obtain two legal masters degrees; one, a Master of the Laws of Taxation Laws, with honors, and the other, a Master of the Laws of Intellectual Property Laws.
Selwyn is admitted to practice in California has demonstrated a life-long commitment to helping people solve their financial problems and lead more economically empowered lives.
Between 2010 and 2019, Selwyn produced and hosted her weekly talk show, SELWYN’S LAW, airing Saturday mornings at 9:30 AM and 11:00 AM on the Christian Radio Stations KDIA and KDYA, whose broadcast footprint includes the San Francisco Bay Area and the Sacramento Valley. The show provided its listeners with practical, down-to-earth and legal-jargon-free information about finance, taxation, real estate, trusts and estates, and bankruptcy law and the public policy basis for each area of the law.
Beginning in the fall of 2018, Selwyn began the production of SELWYN’S LAW, airing Saturday mornings at 10:00 AM on the Christian Radio Station KFAX, whose broadcast footprint includes the San Francisco Bay Area and nationwide on the Internet. And beginning in April 2020, Selwyn expanded the reach of SELWYN’S LAW when her show was picked up by World-Wide Christian Radio, WWCR, which rebroadcasts her shows world-wide over short-wave.
In 2011, the Alameda County Bar Association’s Volunteer Legal Services Corporation awarded Selwyn the prestigious Volunteer of the Year Award for her pro bono bankruptcy and tax work for low-income residence in Alameda County. And since April 1, 2013, Selwyn has maintained the designation of Certified Specialist in Bankruptcy Law, from the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization.
