Simone Marstiller

Simone Marstiller is the secretary of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. Prior to being appointed secretary in January 2019 by Governor Ron DeSantis, Simone was Of Counsel with Gunster, Yoakley, Stewart, P.A., in the firm’s Tallahassee and Tampa offices, where her practice areas included appellate consulting and litigation, government affairs, procurement, and ethics and elections.  She joined Gunster in 2017 after retiring from the First District Court of Appeal, where she served as a judge for six years.

In 2001, Simone served as Assistant General Counsel to Governor Jeb Bush.  In that position, she assisted the Governor’s General Counsel in overseeing the legal operations of the Governor’s agencies and advising the Governor on a wide variety of legal and policy issues.

Simone was selected in 2002 to serve as General Counsel for the Department of Management Services (DMS), the administrative agency for state government.  There, she managed all legal affairs for the agency, including matters related to government procurement, outsourcing, state facility management, and collective bargaining. While serving in this capacity, Governor Bush appointed her Interim Secretary of the agency.

From DMS, Simone returned to the Governor’s Office in 2003 to serve as Deputy Chief of Staff.  In 2004, Governor Bush appointed her State Chief Information Officer to head state government’s central technology planning and policy organization, and in 2005 she became Secretary of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, the state’s largest regulatory agency.

In 2007, Attorney General Bill McCollum appointed Simone Associate Deputy Attorney General for the State of Florida.  In addition to serving on the executive management team for the Office of the Attorney General, she was the agency’s General Counsel and was responsible for overseeing four agency divisions, including the Civil Rights and Opinions Divisions.  When appointed to the appellate court in 2010, Simone was serving as Executive Director for the Florida Elections Commission.

Simone was born in Monrovia, Liberia, and grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida.  She earned her Bachelor of Business Administration degree in 1988 from Stetson University in DeLand, Florida and her Juris Doctor, cum laude, in 1996 from Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Florida.