It seemed predestined that Drita Tonuzi, who immigrated to the United States from France as an 8-year-old, would become a lawyer.

“Because I was the advocate for everybody, people would say, 'You should be a lawyer.' I decided on that early on,” said Tonuzi, the Internal Revenue Service's deputy chief counsel for operations. Tonuzi, who spoke no English when she arrived in this country, said she moved to Brooklyn, New York, in 1966. She spent her first summer with her uncle, aunt and two cousins in Buffalo, New York, where she became fluent in English. “Here I was learning how to be a total American,” she said.

Tonuzi began her legal career as a student clerk at Baden Kramer & Huffman while attending Brooklyn Law School and continued as an associate at the firm after she graduated in 1981. She had her first jury trial shortly after being admitted to practice in January 1982. “Literally, I was admitted and walked into court to try my first case,” she said.

Tonuzi said she left Baden in the summer of 1982 to take a trip to Paris before she began working on her LL.M in taxation at New York University School of Law.

In 1987, Tonuzi began her career in the IRS Office of Chief Counsel in the Manhattan Office, where she litigated cases before the United States Tax Court. She said she left there in mid-2000 to go to Deloitte, to help start the company's New York tax controversy practice but returned to the reorganized IRS and Chief Counsel office in mid-2001. At that time, she worked in the Large and Mid-Size Business Division Counsel office in one of the towers of the World Trade Center destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.

“I remember the day vividly,” she wrote in an email. “It was a perfect summer day. I recall looking back at New York skyline as we crossed to New Jersey on the Secaucus Ferry and seeing a plume of smoke rise from the ground where the towers once stood.”

Tonuzi worked her way up the career ladder, becoming the deputy chief counsel for operations in April 2017. In that position, she has responsibility for all litigation in the U.S. Tax Court as well as for the management of personnel in 50 fifty field offices across the country and in the Washington, D.C. headquarters operations. She has strived to include all attorneys in critical litigation pertaining to the administration of tax law, breaking down barriers and making the office one cohesive law firm where gender and race are no longer a factor. “I hire men and I hire women,” Tonuzi said. “My perspective is I'm going to hire the best person.” The IRS historically has had a large percentage of female employees. According to the IRS Data Book for 2017, the Chief Counsel's office had 1,138 female employees in that fiscal year, compared to 872 male employees.

Robert J. Fitzpatrick, special counsel in the office of finance and management, said Tonuzi has a “no-nonsense attitude” and works well not only with women and minorities but with everyone. If she asks someone to go above and beyond, she is working hard herself, he said. “She inspires people by example rather than with words,” Fitzpatrick said.

Fitzpatrick also said Tonuzi rewards staff members' good results. When Hurricane Harvey hit Texas in August 2017, Tonuzi tracked the storm and the whereabouts of IRS employees in the Houston office to make sure all were safe, and she visited the office the week after the hurricane. Tonuzi said she learned during a group discussion with the employees that one of the attorneys, Lewis Booth, had used a cell phone app to reach out to the other employees in the office and help management account for all of them. She said she was so impressed that she gave Booth, the office manager and other managers involved in the aftermath of Harvey “quick hit” awards and a recognition on the Chief Counsel intranet. ”It was a small gesture of gratitude for incredible leadership,” Tonuzi said.