Ms. Gitanjali S. Gutierrez graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bucknell University (Pennsylvania, USA), with a double major in African-American history and social change movements. She later graduated magna cum laude with a Juris Doctorate with a concentration in public law from Cornell Law School (New York, USA) and was inducted into the Order of the Coif.  She then served as a judicial clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She was called to the bar in the State of New York (USA) in 2002.

Ms. Gutierrez is an internationally recognised human rights lawyer with nearly two decades of experience with public access to information laws. Following her clerkship, she taught international human rights law at Cornell Law School and then received the Gibbons Fellowship in Public Interest and Constitutional Law from 2003-2005. She was an attorney from 2005-2011 with the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based international human rights organisation. In the course of her work, she was granted secret-level security clearance from the USA Department of Justice from 2004-2015.

She has practised before all levels of courts in the United States and provided investigative, legal and factual research to support human rights litigation in several European countries and international tribunals. Ms. Gutierrez has also conducted trainings for the general public and legal professionals on public access to information laws. Throughout her career, Ms. Gutierrez has mentored students, paralegals and junior lawyers in their academic and professional development.