Tashena A. Fannin

Tashena joined the MER team with eleven years of professional legal experience serving the U.S. Navy and Department of Justice. Her admirable service began as an Officer in the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps where she was called to represent a wide variety of military clients and interests. She was a trial attorney for the Region Legal Service Office at Naval Base San Diego, the busiest criminal trial shop in the Department of Defense. In the special victims unit with the RLSO she prosecuted sexual assault, sexual harassment, arson, and fraud crimes. Intertwined in her first four years of active duty, she served in the legal assistance department. There she was decorated for her outstanding leadership as Divisional Officer for overseeing hundreds of military testamentary affairs (wills, estates, and powers of attorney) and advising on countless contractual issues including financial loans, landlord-tenant disputes, and stressful family law concerns of Navy and Marine Corps servicemembers of all rates and brass. Notably, she also provided sage direction as Staff Counsel to U.S. Navy sea and air Commanders on ethics and compliance, fiscal law, military justice, FOIA, and administrative and employment law issues and disputes. Tashena continues to serve in the U.S. Navy's Reserve Component, initially as a criminal Prosecutor just off of active duty and now as a Senior Defense Counsel in a small but globally nimble Unit of JAGs and Legalmen who defend servicemembers throughout the eastern United States and Europe against adverse allegations that threaten their military livelihoods.

Tashena transitioned out of active Naval service to engage with the U.S. Attorney's office here in Lexington, Kentucky as a federal prosecutor in the white-collar fraud unit in 2019. In her five and a half years of federal litigation practice she secured numerous felony convictions in over thirty contested cases, and recouped millions of dollars for the United States in restitution from bad actors. Her experience serving the U.S. Department of Justice in the Eastern District of Kentucky reaches across a wide variety of federal and state statutes and regulatory frameworks and includes the winning prosecution of complex environmental crimes, tax fraud, bank fraud, child exploitation crimes, CARES Act fraud, elder fraud and abuse, cybercrime, federal and state grant fraud, consumer protection drug and device crimes, and complex civil rights issues. She has earned an excellent reputation with federal and state agency partners across the Bluegrass and beyond having worked alongside at least twenty different federal and state agencies, private businesses, general counsel teams of universities, and assorted law enforcement officials to achieve just outcomes through contested litigation. Likewise, she is versed in tough - but always respectful - negotiation with opposing counsel. A Kentucky native, she graduated with a triple major in Government, Spanish, and Philosophy from Morehead State University and is a 2013 graduate of Boston University School of Law.

In her free time, she loves cooking with her family, dancing around the kitchen with her kiddos, and visiting anywhere new.