Planning Committee

President & CEO
Opportunity Institute

Maria Echaveste is the President and CEO of the Opportunity Institute, where she oversees executive and administrative duties, including day- to-day activities, development, and budgets, and directs programmatic work. She has built a distinguished career working as a consultant, lecturer, senior White House official, long-time community leader, and corporate attorney.

Echaveste has been affiliated with UC Berkeley in various capacities since 2004 including: lecturing at the School of Law and in the undergraduate division on immigration and education; serving as program and policy director of the Law School’s Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy from 2008 -2012; as a Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Center for Latin American Studies since 2008; and with the Berkeley Food Institute, focused on transforming our nation’s food system.

Prior to co-founding the D.C.-based strategic and policy consulting group NVG, LLC, in 2002, Echaveste served as Assistant to the President and Deputy White House Chief of Staff for President Clinton from 1998 to 2001. In that position, in addition to general White House management, she focused on several policy and political issues, including immigration, civil rights, education, finance, Mexico, and Latin America. She also served as Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division at the U.S. Department of Labor from 1993 to 1997.

In 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appointed her as a special representative to Bolivia. Echaveste later served on the board of the U.S.-Mexico Foundation, where she initially focused on the foundation’s Mexican-American Leadership Initiative launched in 2010. 2010. In 2013, President Obama nominated her to be ambassador to Mexico; she withdrew eight months later having been denied a confirmation hearing.

Currently, Echaveste serves on the board of directors of UCSF-Benioff Oakland Children’s Hospital, Mi Familia Vota, and Level Playing Field Institute.

Echaveste received a B.A. in anthropology from Stanford University in 1976, and a J.D. from U.C. Berkeley in 1980.

Chief Judge
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

Judge Murguia is the first Latina to serve as chief judge of a federal appellate court. She is the Ninth Circuit’s 12th chief judge and the second woman to hold the position on the court.

Nominated by President William J. Clinton for a new judgeship for the U. S. District of Arizona and confirmed in October 2000, Judge Murguia was the first Latina to serve on the District of Arizona. She served in that capacity until she was elevated to the circuit court after nomination by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate on December 22, 2010.

A native of Kansas City, Kansas, Judge Murguia received bachelor’s degrees in both art and science from the University of Kansas in 1982, and her Juris Doctor from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1985. Prior to coming onto the federal bench, Judge Murguia was an Assistant District Attorney for Wyandotte County, Kansas, from 1985 to 1990, and an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Arizona, where she served as criminal deputy chief. She served in

the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., from 1998 to 2000, and was the director of that office beginning in 1999.

She maintains chambers in Phoenix but travels extensively for oral arguments and other court business. In addition to hearing cases, as chief judge, Judge Murguia’s responsibilities include a variety of administrative duties. She chairs two judicial policy-making bodies, the Executive Committee of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit. She also represents the Ninth Circuit at biannual meetings of the Judicial Conference of the United States (JCUS), the judiciary’s national governing body. As chief judge she presides when an 11-judge en banc court is convened to resolve cases posing intra-circuit legal conflicts or to consider other matters deemed to be of exceptional importance.

Founding Executive Director
UCLA Latino Policy &
Politics Institute

Sonja Diaz is a practicing civil rights attorney and policy advisor. She is the Co-Founder of the Latina Futures, 2050 Lab, a pioneering initiative that envisions a society where Latinas have an equal opportunity to lead, and where everyone thrives. For seven years, Diaz directed all aspects of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute, a comprehensive think tank that addresses the domestic policy challenges facing communities of color in the U.S. Prior to UCLA, Diaz served as policy counsel to Vice President Kamala D. Harris during her first and second terms as California Attorney General and directed voter protection programs in Virginia during the 2016 election. Diaz routinely briefs state legislators and local elected officials from across the U.S. on evidence-based governance and emerging trends in domestic policy. Her research and commentary have been mentioned in major news outlets, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, and NPR.

In 2021, Diaz was appointed to the Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Commission and served as Vice Chair of data and mapping. Diaz received her J.D. from UC Berkeley’s School of Law, holds a M.P.P. from UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs, and a B.A. in politics from UC Santa Cruz.

Former President and General Counsel
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund

Ambassador Vilma Martínez is the first woman to represent the United States in Buenos Aires, Argentina as Ambassador and was previously a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson, where she specialized in federal and state court commercial litigation, advising companies on steps to enhance their equal employment opportunity policies and build diversity and inclusion initiatives into their business plans.

Prior to Munger, Tolles & Olson, Ambassador Martínez served as president and general counsel of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF). Martinez’s previous professional endeavors also include work as litigation associate at Cahill, Gordon & Reindel in New York, and as a staff attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Enriching Ambassador Martínez’s experience is a history of continued public service on numerous nonprofit boards. She served as chairman of the Board of Regents of the University of California from 1984 to 1986, and was a regent from 1976 to 1990. She previously served as a board member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She chaired the Pacific Council’s Study Group on Mexico and served on the advisory boards of Columbia Law School and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California.

Ambassador Martínez was appointed by President William Clinton to serve on his Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations from 1994 to 1996. She was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as the United States Ambassador to Argentina from 2009 to 2013. In 2013, she was awarded the Order of May (the highest honor awarded by Argentina to a foreign national) in recognition for her tenure and for her work on behalf of improving mutual cooperation and understanding. Currently, she serves on the Board of Trustees of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library.

Supervising Attorney, Criminal Defense Practice
The Bronx Defenders

Alicia is a trial attorney at the Bronx Defenders, a public defender nonprofit that uses the holistic defense model to represent Bronx residents in criminal, civil, child welfare, and immigration cases. Alicia represents Bronx residents charged with criminal offenses, handling their matters from arraignments throughout dismissal, plea, or trial. She is also a part of the Bronx Defenders’ Homicide Practice Group (HPG); earlier this year, she tried the first homicide trial since HPG was created in 2019. As a supervising attorney, Alicia advises a group of staff attorneys on their practice, including client counseling, litigation, mitigation, and negotiation.

In 2020, the pandemic halted most proceedings in Bronx criminal and supreme courts. However, immigration proceedings continued – people held in ICE custody had their matters litigated over the phone. For 16 months, Alicia joined the Bronx Defenders’ New York Immigrant Family Unification Project (NYIFUP), representing non-citizen clients in bond redetermination hearings and removal proceedings.

Alicia received her J.D. from Yale Law School. She was a student attorney with the Criminal Justice Clinic, representing clients in criminal proceedings in New Haven. She was also a member of the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, where she focused on human rights violations in the United States: she investigated prison conditions at Northern Correctional Facility’s death row and researched a report on the criminalization of homelessness, for review by the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee.

Alicia holds a B.A. in English with a Creative Writing concentration from the University of Chicago, where she was Student Marshal and Phi Beta Kappa. She is originally from Mexico and a native Spanish speaker.

State Senator
California Senate District 26

María Elena was born the seventh child in a family of eleven children to migrant worker parents. Growing up, María Elena traveled with her family, following the crops throughout California and Oregon, and experiencing the exploitative conditions and hardships that migrant laborers suffer.

In spite of these obstacles, María Elena attended St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California, and graduated in 1975. In college, she became involved in the Chicano Movement at the urging of her older brother. Then she entered the labor movement as an organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (later called UNITE, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees).

While working as a union organizer, she pursued an education in law at the People’s College of Law and earned her degree in 1985.

By 1987, María Elena was ready to lead a drive by the rank and file of HERE Local 11 to make the union more responsive to its majority-Latino membership. The organizing drive successfully instituted a shop steward system that educated the rank and file on their rights, workers were now able to participate in negotiating their union contracts and all meetings and publications were from then on bilingual.

In 2004, she became the Executive Vice President of UNITE-HERE International, the organization made up of the UNITE and HERE unions which had merged.

In 2008, María Elena Durazo served as the Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee and as National Co-Chair of the Barack Obama Presidential Campaign.

From 2006 through 2014, she was the first woman Secretary-Treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, the second largest labor council in the country and served on the National AFL-CIO Executive Council.

Besides her union work, María Elena has served on many civic commissions and boards. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley appointed her to the Los Angeles Commission on Airports, Mayor Richard Riordan appointed her to the Los Angeles Parks and Recreation Committee, and she has also served on the California State Coastal Commission.

María Elena was married to the late union leader Miguel Contreras, who served as Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Los Angeles Federation of Labor from 1996 until his untimely death on May 6, 2005. She has two children with Miguel Contreras, Mario and Michael Contreras.

President and CEO
UnidosUS

Since 2005, Janet Murguía has served as President and CEO of UnidosUS (formerly known as National Council of La Raza)—the nation’s largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization. In that role, Murguía has sought to strengthen UnidosUS’s work and enhance its record of impact as a vital American institution. Murguía has also worked to amplify the Latino voice on issues affecting the Hispanic community such as education, health care, immigration, civil rights, and the economy.

Murguía began her career in Washington, DC as legislative counsel to former Congressman Jim Slattery from her home state, Kansas. She worked with Congressman Slattery for seven years before joining the Clinton administration, where she served for six years as a deputy assistant to President Clinton, including deputy director of legislative affairs.

After serving in the Clinton administration, Murguía went on to serve as deputy campaign manager and director of constituency outreach for the Gore/Lieberman presidential campaign where she was the primary liaison between former Vice President Gore and national constituency groups.

In 2001, Murguía joined the University of Kansas (KU) as Executive Vice Chancellor for University Relations, where she oversaw KU’s internal and external relations with the public. She is credited for coordinating the university’s strategic planning and marketing efforts at the four KU campuses.

Over the course of her career, Murguía has been featured in various magazines and newspapers for her work and leadership. This includes being one of USA Today’s 2022 National Women of the Year, highlighted on Hispanic Business Magazines’ “100 Top Latinas” and “100 Most Influential Hispanics” lists, Washingtonian magazine’s “100 Most Powerful Women in Washington,” The NonProfit Times’s list of top 50 leaders of “Power and Influence,” People En Español’s “100 Most Influential Hispanics,” Newsweek’s Third Annual Women and Leadership issue, Poder magazine’s “The Poderosos 100,” Latino Leaders magazine’s “101 Top Leaders of the Hispanic Community,” and Hispanic magazine’s “Powerful Latinos.” Murguía was also the first Hispanic to give the keynote speech at the annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Unity Breakfast in Birmingham, Alabama. Murguía also received Alpha Phi’s Frances E. Willard Award in 2018. In 2019 Murguía was inducted into the Starr Women’s Hall of Fame which recognizes Kansas City women who have made significant and enduring contributions to their fields of endeavor and helped open new frontiers for women.

Murguía is currently a Board member of the Clinton Foundation, the United States-Spain Council, the Raza Development Fund, and the Hispanic Association for Corporate Responsibility. She also serves as a member of Diversity Advisory Councils for Bank of America, Charter Communications, Comcast/NBC Universal, T-Mobile, and Wells Fargo.

She received three degrees from KU: a B.S. degree in journalism, a B.A. degree in Spanish, and a J.D. degree from the KU School of Law. She has also received several honorary degrees—a Doctor of Humane Letters from California State University, Dominguez Hills, an honorary Doctor of Laws from Wake Forest University, and an honorary Doctor of Laws from Williams College.

California Chief Justice
California Supreme Court

Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero is the 29th Chief Justice of California. She was sworn into office on January 2, 2023, making history as the first Latina to serve as California’s Chief Justice.

Chief Justice Guerrero was nominated to office by Governor Gavin Newsom in August 2022. When she first joined the California Supreme Court as an associate justice in March 2022, Chief Justice Guerrero was also the first Latina to serve on the state’s high court.

In her first State of the Judiciary address, Chief Justice Guerrero highlighted her commitment to a more diverse and inclusive judicial branch, as well as technology that helped preserve access to justice for Californians during the pandemic.

Chief Justice Guerrero also adopted the Power of Democracy Civic Learning Initiative and has been active in the “Judges in the Classroom” civics program, which engages schools and encourages students to learn about the role of the judiciary.

Prior to being elevated to the California Supreme Court, Chief Justice Guerrero served as an associate justice at the Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division One since December 2017. Before her appellate appointment, she served as a judge at the Superior Court of San Diego County from 2013 to 2017, and was the supervising judge of its Family Law Division in 2017.

Chief Justice Guerrero is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and was born and raised in California’s Imperial Valley. She attended the University of California, Berkeley as an undergraduate and earned a Juris Doctor degree from Stanford Law School.

Executive Director
Pro-Choice Arizona and the Abortion Fund of Arizona

Eloisa Lopez is a first-generation daughter of Mexican immigrants. She serves as the executive director for Pro-Choice Arizona, the Abortion Fund of Arizona, and PCAZ Action Fund, having held various leadership roles within the organization since 2018. Her work is focused on merging the narrative of maternal healthcare with abortion care while increasing access to both. Under her leadership, Eloisa has guided Pro-Choice Arizona’s internal redesign, moving away from the abortion rights-only model towards pregnancy and reproductive justice with abolition values, centering community experiences and those who are most impacted while utilizing the RJ framework. She first entered the organization in 2017 as a helpline volunteer for the abortion fund.

Eloisa stepped into reproductive justice work because of her lived experiences which have also fortified her commitment to justice. Her first abortion opened her up to the possibility of parenthood. Now, a single parent of two and a doula and birth nerd at her core, she openly shares how becoming involved in movement work truly saved her life. Her experiences of living through domestic violence as a pregnant person and fighting the family court system keep her grounded on the bigger vision of autonomy, abolition, and liberation. She is also grateful for her three abortions which have supported her on her life path.

In 2021, Eloisa was nominated for the Rockwood Leadership Institute’s Fellowship for Leaders in Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice. In Arizona, she co-launched a Judicial Bypass Coalition for young people’s access to abortion care and co-led the development of the Arizona Reproductive Justice Coalition during 2020-2021. Presently, Eloisa serves on the AZ Working Families Party Organizing Committee, is a member of the Arizona Department of Health Services’ Maternal Mortality Review Committee, and is an active member of various reproductive health coalitions in Arizona and across the country.

Professor of Law
University of Illinois Chicago School of Law

Alicia Alvarez’s areas of expertise are clinical legal education and community economic development. At UIC Law, she teaches Professional Responsibility and in the Community Enterprise & Solidarity Economy Clinic. Alicia served as Associate Dean for Experiential Education from 2019-2022. Prior to joining UIC Law in 2019, she was a Clinical Professor of Law and director of the Community & Economic Development Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School. She represented nonprofit and community organizations, cooperatives, and social enterprises in Detroit. She also taught in the Civil-Criminal Litigation Clinic, focusing on employment law. Prior to Michigan, Alicia taught in the Community Development Clinic, Asylum & Immigration Clinic, and Civil Litigation Clinic at DePaul University College of Law. She was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of El Salvador in 2000-2001. Alicia currently serves on the Council of the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. From 2016-2019, she served on the Executive Committee of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). She also served on the AALS Membership Review Committee from 2012 through 2014, and chaired the committee in 2013 and 2014. Before teaching, she was a staff attorney at Legal Aid Chicago Impact for Equity. Alicia received her BA from Loyola University Chicago, and her JD from Boston College Law School.

Assemblywoman
NY State Assembly 39th District

Catalina Cruz has the privilege of representing New York State Assembly District 39, one of the most diverse districts in the nation, encompassing the neighborhoods of Corona, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights, as well as parts of Middle Village and Rego Park.

Catalina was born in Colombia and came to Queens at the age of 9. She grew up as a DREAMer, living in the United States for more than 10 years as an undocumented American. Catalina was raised by a single mother who, like many immigrants, had to work multiple and menial jobs to support her family. As a single mother of four children, she worked long hours during the week as a nanny, cleaned offices at night and sold tamales and empanadas at the soccer fields on the weekends. Inspired by her mother’s perseverance, Catalina has committed her career to fighting for our community to ensure our workers, neighbors and families not only survive but thrive.

Catalina is an experienced attorney and a leader in tenant protection, immigration reform, and workers’ rights. Prior to becoming the Assemblywoman for the 39th District, she practiced housing law and served in various positions in city and state government, including Chief of Staff to former Council Member Julissa Ferreras-Copeland, Counsel to the City Council’s Committee on Immigration and Director of the Governor’s Exploited Workers Task Force, among others. In these positions, she represented tenants in housing court, drafted legislation, and implemented initiatives to support women, protect workers and champion small businesses.

Since taking office in 2019, Catalina has passed more than 20 new laws to combat food insecurity, curtail the high cost of healthcare, protect aging New Yorkers, and so much more. Catalina helped secure billions of dollars for schools, hospitals, and libraries within her district through historic state budgets. This funding helped with renovations and the purchase of equipment, as well as to provide services for seniors, families and children throughout her community. Catalina’s district office places a strong emphasis on constituent services. Her hardworking staff is proud to have helped thousands of constituents access legal services, small business support, obtain unemployment insurance, health insurance, pandemic assistance, as well as help with mortgage, rent, and utility payments. In the community, Catalina and her team address quality of life issues such as garbage, graffiti and snow removal through close cooperation with community boards and city and state agencies. Catalina also conducts dozens of community events yearly, including back-to-school/backpack parties, community cleanups, health and legal clinics, and so much more.

Catalina lives in Jackson Heights, Queens. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a Juris Doctor from the City University of New York’s School of Law. She is admitted to practice law in the State of New York.

Congresswoman
California’s 44th Congressional District

Congresswoman Nanette Barragán was elected to Congress in 2016 to represent California’s 44th Congressional District and elected by her peers to serve as Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus for the 118th Congress. She serves on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and its Subcommittees on Health; and Environment, Manufacturing, & Critical Minerals.

The youngest of 11 children, Barragán attended UCLA and USC Gould School of Law, interned at the White House under the Clinton Administration, was a lawyer active with the NAACP, and served as the Mayor of Hermosa Beach before being elected to Congress. She was elected to Congress on a platform of environmental justice and increased access to affordable healthcare. In Congress, she advocates for her majority-Latino district in Southern California and has secured funding for zero-emission port equipment programs, parks and green spaces to combat climate change, and community health clinics.

As Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congresswoman Barragán is working to increase Latino representation across all industries and the federal government and to ensure the federal government improves the lives of Latinos and Latino communities in America. She created a new initiative as Chair to engage Latinos across the country year-round and let them know what the Biden-Harris Administration and Democrats in Congress have done to improve their communities.

Through CHC’s “On the Road” initiative, Chairwoman Barragan has brought Biden Administration officials, CHC members, and Democratic Congressional leaders to Los Angeles; Austin, TX; Las Vegas, NV; Las Cruces, NM; Phoenix, AZ; Orlando, FL; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Houston, TX. The initiative has led conversations in large or growing Latino communities on Latino youth mental health, student loans, small business development, Veterans issues, housing equity and accessibility, infrastructure, reproductive rights, and several other issues critical to Latinos and Latino communities across the country.

Senator
New Mexico Senate

Antoinette is a longtime community leader focused on the critical social, economic, environmental, and civil rights issues affecting the lives of all New Mexicans. After serving as Law Professor at UNM for more than twenty-five years—including eight years as Associate Dean—she became the executive director of a non-profit serving victims of domestic violence in the Latino immigrant community of Central New Mexico. Her years of community involvement and legal expertise exceptionally qualify her to serve her district while at the state capital.

A native New Mexican with deep roots in the area, Antoinette grew up in the small New Mexico farming village of Los Chavez. She went to UNM and then UCLA School of Law. In 1986, she found her passion for teaching when she became a law professor at UNM School of Law. She soon became the first Latina to earn tenure at the School of Law. She later went on to become the Director and Associate Dean of UNM’s legal clinic, where law students practiced law in a pro-bono clinic, helping people in our community with their legal needs. Throughout her career as a law professor, she published books, articles, and poems; she organized and presented at many important legal education conferences; and, she earned several awards for excellence, service, and leadership.

After a 27 year career of teaching, legal service and scholarship, Antoinette left the Law School in 2014 to head up Enlace Communitario, an anti-domestic violence advocacy and service non-profit organization. In 2017, she was recruited to run for Congress in New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District. Throughout that campaign she developed strong policy positions as she listened to and learned from thousands of people along the campaign trail.

Although she did not win her first race, In 2019, an opportunity opened when Senator Cisco McSorely resigned to join the Lujan Grisham administration. She applied for the vacancy and was selected by the Bernalillo County Commission and appointed by Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. She won her race to keep the senate seat in the general election, November 3, 2020, with 78% of the vote, becoming the first woman, and the first Hispanic to represent District 16.

Senator Antoinette Sedillo Lopez is dedicated to passing effective laws and policies that benefit all New Mexicans and reflect the will of her district in SE Albuquerque. She is responsive to New Mexicans who want to discuss issues and needs with her. She diligently participates in interim legislative hearings, serving on the Water and Natural Resources Committee, Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee, Legislative Health and Human Services Committee, the Investment, Pensions and Oversight Committee and Legislative Council. On standing committees, she serves as Vice-Chair of the Water and Natural Resources Committee, and as a member of the Health and Public Affairs Committee.

Rachel F. Moran Endowed Chair in Law
UCLA

Laura E. Gómez is the Rachel F. Moran Endowed Chair in Law at UCLA, where she is also a member of the Departments of Sociology and Chicana/Chicano & Central American Studies. After graduating from Harvard College in 1986 (where she was a Truman Scholar), she worked as a legislative aide on Capitol Hill for Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM). She received her J.D. and Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford in the early 1990s, becoming the first Mexican American woman in the U.S. to earn both terminal degrees. She clerked on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for Judge Dorothy Wright Nelson. Gómez is a nationally recognized expert on anti-Latino racism, Latinx people and the law, law and society, critical race theory, and the sociology of race. She serves on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino scholarly advisory committee. Her books include Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism; Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race; Mapping Race: Critical Research on Health Disparities; and Misconceiving Mothers: Legislators, Prosecutors, and the Politics of Prenatal Drug Exposure. Inventing Latinos appeared on NPR’s best books of 2020 list. Gómez received the Outstanding Scholar Award in 2021 from the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation and has held fellowships at the Stanford Humanities Center and the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe. Gómez co-founded UCLA Law’s Critical Race Studies Program and has twice served as faculty director. She has served as president of the Law and Society Association, interim dean of UCLA’s Division of Social Sciences, and vice dean of the UCLA Law School. Over the course of three decades, Gómez has taught a variety of courses, including criminal law, civil procedure, constitutional law, critical race theory, Latinos and the law, and law and society.

Director of the Chicano Studies
Research Center

Dr. Veronica Terriquez is the Director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. She holds faculty appointments in the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and the Urban Planning Department. Trained as a sociologist, her research focuses on social inequality, civic engagement, immigrant integration, gender, and youth transitions to adulthood. Her research has been published in the American Sociological Review, Social Problems, Gender & Society, Feminist Studies, Social Science & Medicine, and other academic journals. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology at UCLA, her Master’s degree in Education at UC Berkeley, and her B.A. in Sociology at Harvard University. Informed by over two decades of connections to social justice movements in California, much of her research has implications for local and regional policies affecting Latina/o/x, immigrant, and other low-income communities of color.

Curator of Latinx History and Culture;
Chair of the Division of Home and Community Life

Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History

Margaret Salazar-Porzio, Ph.D., is the Curator of Latinx History and Culture and Chair of the Division of Home and Community Life at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. She co-curated Many Voices, One Nation (2017) and produced the exhibition book, Many Voices, One Nation: Material Culture Reflections on Race and Migration in the United States. Salazar-Porzio is the project director of the bilingual exhibition and book, ¡Pleibol! In the Barrios and the Big Leagues / En los barrios y las grandes ligas, which is on a SITES national tour through 2025. An artifact-rich version was on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC (2021-2022). Dedicated to public history and community-driven projects, Salazar-Porzio works closely with partners to co-curate exhibitions and build archives and collections. Her most recent projects-in-motion include the award-winning “Collective Care in Puerto Rico” in collaboration with the Hurricane Maria Archive and the University of Puerto Rico to document the recent overlapping crises that have affected Puerto Ricans on the island and the diaspora, as well as a highly acclaimed project about “Chicanas Changing History,” which chronicles the lives and careers of Chicanas in academia over 50 years to demonstrate the importance of their contributions to the field of History. Her much-anticipated next exhibition on Latinx Movements (forthcoming 2027) will demonstrate how Latinos have changed the world through civic engagement and political action. While continuing to oversee collections and exhibitions, Salazar-Porzio also practices people-first leadership to guide staff to realize their career goals as the current Chair of the Division of Home and Community Life. Originally from East Los Angeles, Salazar-Porzio now lives in Virginia with her husband, son, and their two cats

Stephen C. O’Connell Chair & Professor
University of Florida Levin College of Law

Berta Esperanza Hernández-Truyol holds the Stephen C. O’Connell Chair at the University of Florida Fredric G. Levin College of Law. She is a human rights scholar whose initiatives seek to develop, expand, and transform the human rights discourse. She utilizes an interdisciplinary and international framework to promote human well-being and social justice around the globe. Hernández-Truyol focuses on issues of gender, race, ethnicity, culture, sexuality, language, and other margin abilities as well as their interconnections, spotlighting multidimensionality. Often centering on Latinas and la Cultura Latina, her body of work includes over 100 articles and chapters that critically examine equality, privacy, and dignity through a human rights lens. Currently, she is developing an innovative, justice-seeking theory “awakening the law” utilizing the concept of “awakening” embraced by myriad disciplines to foster the attaining of a deep consciousness about and connection with the human condition. Awakening in the law will serve to unveil locations of unconsciousness that exist as foundations of personal and structural biases. These predispositions are embedded in perceptual playbooks – cognitive scripts created and passed down by families, religious traditions, cultures, society, the law and legal systems and rooted in all persons’ thinking.

Attaining a deep consciousness facilitates a profound understanding of the sources of inequalities and will open the way to achieving justice. She is engaged in developing a series of works that will develop the Awakening model with the goal of deconstructing unjust established hierarchies.

Clinical Instructor
Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society

An ardent advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, Alejandra Caraballo is a shining star within the legal profession and abroad. Currently, Caraballo is a Clinical Instructor for the Cyberlaw Clinic situated in Harvard Law School’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Her focus is on the intersection of gender and technology, working with students on cases related to copyright infringement and providing legal advice to nonprofit organizations. She prides herself on being a mentor for her students, particularly her LGBTQ+ students, as she recognizes the impact representation has on students seeking guidance and support for their career.

Caraballo has always had a passion for law and policy. In college, she committed her free time to working on various political campaigns. Despite this, it wasn’t until her chemistry professor proposed she pursue a career in the law and apply to law school when she seriously took the prospect of working in the legal field under consideration. After her undergraduate studies, she attended and graduated from Brooklyn Law School, where she found her love for public interest work. While in law school she worked for a variety of clinics including the Elder Law Clinic, representing low income seniors facing eviction and housing discrimination; and the Safe Harbor Clinic, assisting asylum seekers with their cases.

Assemblywoman
CA State Assembly 18th District

Mia Bonta was elected to serve California’s 18th Assembly District of the East Bay, including Alameda, Emeryville, and Oakland.

Before being elected to the State Assembly, Mia served as the CEO of Oakland Promise and the School Board President in the City of Alameda.

Mia has seen firsthand the cracks in the systems that keep the community disadvantaged and lacking in resources. In the State Assembly, her focus is to uplift the most vulnerable in the community, she is committed to fighting homelessness, building more affordable housing, passing transformative criminal justice reform legislation, and combating the threat of climate change and is passionate about reproductive justice for all. Assemblymember Bonta’s priority is to make California a more affordable, inclusive, and equitable place for all.

Staff Attorney
ACLU Southern California

Ana Graciela Nájera Mendoza is a Staff Attorney with the ACLU’s Education Equity Team, where she litigates and advocates to protect the rights of California’s students.

A native Spanish speaker, a community organizer, and a litigator, Ana has worked with clients from diverse backgrounds and is committed to working with communities to promote racial and economic justice.

Prior to joining the ACLU in 2017, Ana was an Associate at Alexander Krakow + Glick LLP, a plaintiff-side employment and civil rights firm, where she worked on cases involving wage theft, housing discrimination, and employment discrimination, harassment, and retaliation under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act. She represented employees across a broad spectrum of industries in vindicating their employment claims, including restaurant workers, nurses, police officers, hotel workers, professors, factory workers, and human resources executives.

Prior to law school, Ana was a youth organizer with Inner City Struggle, a community-based organization in the east side of Los Angeles that promotes safe, healthy, and non-violent communities by focusing on educational justice. While at ICS, Ana trained student leaders to create digital stories on the state of their LAUSD schools and oversaw the data analysis that led to the policy report, “The Movement Continues: The State of Equity and Access in Eastside Public Schools.” Prior to ICS, Ana worked at the Main Street Project in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she worked on a rural Latino capacity-building initiative called The Raíces Project and developed Jóvenes Latin@s Cuentan, a rural Latin@ youth program in rural communities in Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, and Oregon. Ana used popular education, digital storytelling, and culturally-centered practices to build youth power and give Latino youth the tools to create a path to college.

Ana is a graduate of Macalester College (St. Paul, MN) and the UCLA School of Law, where she specialized in Critical Race Studies. During law school, Ana volunteered with A New Way of Life and clerked with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the ACLU of Southern California, and UNITE HERE Local 11. She has worked on impact litigation involving voting rights, First Amendment issues, education policy, and immigrants’ rights. Ana was the recipient of scholarships from the Beverly Hills Bar Association, Mexican American Bar Foundation, Latina Lawyers Bar Association, and the 2014 MALDEF Hernandez-Stern Scholarship.

An active leader within the Mexican American Bar Association (MABA) since 2015, Ana currently serves as MABA’s Treasurer, Chair of the MABA High School Scholarship Program, and Chair of the MABA Student Outreach Program. The Student Outreach Program coordinates visits between MABA members and local schools and community-based organizations to share personal, academic, and professional stories and inspire the next generation of diverse lawyers

President & CEO
Latino Policy Forum

Sylvia Puente is a public policy expert and civic and Latino community leader. Sylvia serves as the President and CEO of the Latino Policy Forum. The Forum is a nonprofit that works for equity, justice, and economic prosperity on behalf of Latinos in Chicago and Illinois. The Forum conducts public policy analysis and advocacy on issues including education, housing, and immigration. Nearly 15 years at the Forum, Puente has grown the organization into a central voice on Latino issues and has established herself as a thought leader in the arena.

Puente is frequently cited as an expert on Latino issues and has published numerous reports and articles that articulate the vital role they play in society. She is a recipient of the Ohtli Award, Mexico’s highest recognition of those serving the Mexican community outside of Mexico, and received an honorary Ph.D. for her social justice work from Governor State University in 2023 and Roosevelt University in 2021. Sylvia has also received the 2023 Career Achievement Award from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, highlighting alums who have served as significant leaders in the public, private, or nonprofit sectors, creating meaningful positive change within their institution and society. Recognized by Hispanic Business Magazine as one of the “100 Most Influential Hispanics in the U.S.”

Director, Policy & Government Affairs, Border & Immigration
American Civil Liberties Union

Maribel Hernández Rivera is Director of Policy and Government Affairs for Border and Immigration at the American Civil Liberties Union. She previously served as District Director for Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Executive Director of Legal Initiatives for the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. Maribel has also served as Supervising Attorney at Immigrant Justice Corps and as a Fried Frank/ MALDEF fellow. Maribel received her J.D. from New York University School of Law, her Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, and her A.B. from Harvard University. Upon law school graduation, Maribel served as law clerk to the Honorable Mary M. Schroeder in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Bruce Tyson Mitchell Professor of Law
Stanford Law School

Jennifer M. Chacón is the Bruce Tyson Mitchell Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. Her research focuses on the nexus of immigration law, constitutional law, and criminal law and procedure. She is the co-author of the immigration law textbook Immigration Law and Social Justice, now in its second edition, and the co-author of Legal Phantoms: Executive Action and The Haunting Failures of Immigration Law (forthcoming 2024) which traces the impact of shifting immigration policies on immigrant communities and organizations in Southern California from 2012 through 2022. She has written numerous articles, book chapters, and essays exploring how legal frameworks on immigration and law enforcement shape individual and collective understandings of racial and ethnic identity, citizenship, civic engagement, and social belonging. Her research has been funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the University of California.

Professor Chacón is a past Chair of the American Association of Law School’s Section on Immigration, and of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Rules Committee. She is a member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation (ABF). She served on the ABF Board of Directors, and serves on the board of the National Immigration Law Center. She has served on the Advisory Board of the ABF’s “Future of Latinos in the U.S.” project, the Advisory Group for the University of Oxford Border Criminologies network, and the Advisory Board of the Latina Lawyers Bar Association. She was a co-convenor of the Immigration Policy Advisory Committee to then-Senator Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign, and an outside advisor to his Immigration Transition Team from 2008 to 2009.

Professor Chacόn was an associate at Davis Polk and Wardwell, and a law clerk for the Honorable Sidney R. Thomas of the Ninth Circuit. She holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and an A.B. in International Relations from Stanford University.

Law Professor and Board Member
Santa Clara University School of Law and U.S. Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board

Catherine J.K. Sandoval is a tenured Law Professor at Santa Clara University who teaches and conducts research on Communications, Energy, Antitrust, and Contract law. Her scholarship analyzes legal and policy drivers of energy, communications and water infrastructure safety, reliability, access and equity gaps, and climate change. She served a six-year term as a Commissioner of the California Public Utilities Commission, appointed by Governor Brown. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Jose Mercury News and many other publications have cited her regulatory, infrastructure, communications and antitrust law expertise. The D.C. Circuit’s 2019 Mozilla v. FCC decision cited Professor Sandoval’s comments to remand the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality repeal for failure to analyze the link between net neutrality and public safety.

Professor Sandoval hails from a trailer park, the barrio of East Los Angeles, and became the first in her family to earn a B.A. degree. She was the first Latina selected as a Rhodes Scholar, the first tenured Latina Law Professor at SCU Law, and the first Latinx CPUC Commissioner.

She earned a B.A. from Yale University, a Master of Letters from Oxford University, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Faculty Development and Research Co-Director
Professor of Law
UC Berkeley

Professor Sonia Katyal’s work focuses on the intersection of technology, intellectual property, and civil rights (including antidiscrimination, privacy, and freedom of speech).

Professor Katyal’s current projects focus on artificial intelligence and intellectual property; trademark law, branding and advertising; the intersection between the right to information and human rights; and a variety of projects on the intersection between art law, cultural heritage and new media. As a member of the university-wide Haas LGBTQ Citizenship Cluster, Professor Katyal also works on matters regarding law, gender and sexuality.

Professor Katyal’s recent publications include Technoheritage, in the California Law Review; Rethinking Private Accountability in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, in the UCLA Law Review; The Paradox of Source Code Secrecy, in the Cornell Law Review; Transparenthood in the Michigan Law Review (with Ilona Turner); Trademarks, Artificial Intelligence, and the Role of the Private Sector, also in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal (with Aniket Kesari); The Gender Panopticon in the UCLA Law Review (with Jessica Jung); and From Trade Secrecy to Seclusion in Georgetown Law Journal (with Charles Tait Graves). She has also previously published shorter pieces with the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Boston Globe’s Ideas section, Hyperallergic, Los Angeles Times, Slate, the National Law Journal, and has also been cited by the Supreme Court.

Professor Katyal has won several awards for her work, including an honorable mention in the American Association of Law Schools Scholarly Papers Competition, a Yale Cybercrime Award, and is a three-time winner of a Dukeminier Award from the Williams Project at UCLA for her writing on gender and sexuality. Her recent articles, The Paradox of Source Code Secrecy, was selected for inclusion in the Best Intellectual Property articles of 2019; and From Trade Secrecy to Seclusion (with Tait Graves) won the Law, Science and Innovation/Intellectual Property Prize from the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law in 2022.

During the Obama administration, Katyal was selected by U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker to be part of the inaugural U.S. Commerce Department’s Digital Economy Board of Advisors.

Education: A.B., Brown University (1993) and J.D., University of Chicago Law School (1998)

Assistant Professor
University of Kentucky, School of Information Science

Fatima Espinoza Vasquez, an Assistant Professor at the School of Information Science at the University of Kentucky, holds a Ph.D. in Information Science and Technology from Syracuse University. Originally from Honduras, she is a Latinx scholar known for her transformative research approach. This approach melds community-based methods that extend beyond academia, actively involving stakeholders such as government officials, civil society groups, and marginalized community members to enhance their capabilities. Central to her research is the maintenance of meaningful community relationships, fostering mutual trust and understanding.

Her research agenda aims to tackle intricate issues concerning Latinx populations’ use of ICTs and social institutions within crises and political participation. This is achieved by embracing transdisciplinary perspectives, involving stakeholders, and considering social, technological, and environmental contexts.

Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Equity, Justice & Engagement
Boston University

Jasmine Gonzales Rose is a Professor and the Associate Dean for Equity, Justice, and Engagement at Boston University School of Law. She is a founding faculty member of the BU Center for Antiracist Research, where she served as Associate Director of Policy, Deputy Director of Research & Policy, Policy Chair, and an Acting Co-Director.

Her scholarship examines the intersections of racism and linguicism with juries and evidence, and she is a leading criticalist voice on Evidence Law and juror language disenfranchisement. She has written on racialized police violence and was appointed by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to serve on a police commissioner search committee. She is an award-wining teacher having taught Evidence Law; Criminal Law; Civil Procedure; Complex Litigation; Race, Racism, & the Law; LatinXs & the Law; and Civil Rights Law. Prior to joining the faculty of Boston University in 2020, she was a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law for nearly a decade. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where she served as an editor-in-chief of the Harvard Latinx Law Review and a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau.

She clerked for Judge Héctor M. Laffitte of the U.S. District Court for Puerto Rico and Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She has worked for a variety of nonprofit and governmental organizations on issues of civil and human rights, including serving on the founding board of directors of the Abolitionist Law Center which was started by her former students. She is a member of the Supreme Judicial Court Advisory Committee on Massachusetts Evidence Law and was elected into the American Law Institute in 2023.

Advocacy Campaign Strategist
Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

Celina Avalos Jaramillo serves as the Advocacy Campaign Strategist in the Elections and Government program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, where she focuses on issues related to election administration and money in politics.

Before joining the Brennan Center, Celina served as a policy consultant for the UC Berkeley School of Law Policy Advocacy Clinic on the impacts fees and fines have on adults in the criminal legal system in Oregon. She also served as the first voting rights trainer for the Prepared to Vote and Voting Rights Defender program at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

She previously served as a Voting Section intern at the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of U.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris, and was the first Policy Fellow at the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute.

Celina earned her Master of Public Policy (MPP) from the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy with a certificate in Security Policy. She holds a BA in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Supervising Counsel, Voting Rights
LatinoJustice PRLDEF

Miranda Galindo is a civil rights litigator who joined the LatinoJustice, PRLDEF Southeast Regional Office in 2020. Her democracy reform work is tied to movement leaders who are building power for Latinx communities and winning structural change at the state and local level.

Miranda was previously an attorney at Demos where she took on voting rights issues with a racial equity lens, including language discrimination in Florida election materials, failures to provide voter registration opportunities to Native American communities in South Dakota, and other voter suppression tactics that disproportionately disenfranchise BIPOC and low-income communities. At the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) she fought for the civil rights of the Latinx community through impact litigation and policy reforms that targeted access to health care, unfair debt collection practices, parental participation rights in public schools, employment discrimination, and unlawful seizures of vehicles by law enforcement. She developed a bill that became law in 2018, which amended the California Vehicle Code to ensure that law enforcement upholds the constitutional property rights of vehicle owners against unreasonable government seizures. Miranda was a Fried Frank/MALDEF Fellow, Council President of the Stein Scholars Program in Public Interest Law and Ethics, and a New York City Coro Fellow. She advocated for the rights of day care and home care workers through her policy work at the labor union District Council 1707.

Miranda holds a J.D. from Fordham Law School and a B.A. in Public Policy and American Institutions from Brown University.

Director and Professor
Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois Chicago

Teresa Córdova is the Director of the Great Cities Institute (GCI) at the University of Illinois Chicago. She is also Professor of Urban Planning and Policy in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs (CUPPA). Professor Córdova received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1986.

As an applied theorist, political economist, and community-based planner, Professor Córdova approaches her work as a scholarship of engagement in which research, pedagogy, and service are integrated. Throughout her career, Teresa has engaged with communities in and outside the university and is an expert in community/university partnerships and methodologies of engaged research. In addition to strategies for community and economic development, her work focuses on global/local dynamics and the impacts of global economic restructuring on local communities, including impacts of resource extraction.

Professor Córdova has been an elected and appointed member and/or chair of national, regional and local boards, commissions and steering committees of federal, regional, county and city governments, foundations, community development corporations, grassroots organizations, editorial boards, research centers, professional associations, planning organizations, policy groups, civic and advisory councils, coalitions, and campus committees. She has been instrumental in affecting economic development policy and projects, the provision and design of infrastructure, local governance, and neighborhood change.

Dr. Córdova sits on the Cook County Economic Development Advisory Committee (EDAC) and The Cook County Small Business Advisory Committee. She recently sat on Mayor Brandon Johnson’ Transition Subcommittee on Economic Vitality and Equity. She was Chair of the Chicago Plan Commission from 2019-2022 and served on the transition committee for Governor J.B. Pritzker on Job Creation and Economic Opportunity. Professor Córdova is a member of the Board of Directors of the Grand Victoria Foundation. She is a member of The Board of Directors of the Illinois Humanities Council; The Kennedy-King College Community Advisory Committee (CAC) and the Advisory Board of Chicago Community Trust’s We Rise Together. She recently stepped down from the Boards of Directors of Manufacturing Renaissance and Children’s Advocates for Change. From April 2020 through early 2023, she has worked closely with Illinois Unidos: Illinois Latino COVID-19 Initiative and served as co-chair of its Workplace Safety Committee. She is an Associate Editor for Economic Development Quarterly and sits on the inaugural editorial boards of Local Development and Society and The Journal of Right Wing Studies. She is an affiliate faculty of UIC’s Departments of Sociology; Gender and Women Studies; and Latino and Latin American Studies. She is also a member of the Executive Committee of UIC’s Institute for the Study of Research on Race and Public Policy (IRRPP). She provides extensive service in academic reviews of departments and tenure and promotion cases and peer-reviewed articles and books for publications.

Since the mid 1970s, Dr. Córdova has tracked the dynamics of global economic restructuring, paying particular attention to impacts on local communities.

State Representative – Texas

Lulu Flores is a longtime champion of equality and social justice. She rose through the grassroots ranks to serve as President and CEO of the National Women’s Political Caucus, the longest serving institution committed to increasing women’s participation throughout the political process. Likewise, Lulu’s leadership can be seen at all levels, from being elected a National Delegate for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, to Chairing the Austin Arts Commission, to serving as Chief of Staff to the first Mexican American woman elected to the Texas House, Representative Irma Rangel.

Growing up along the border as the youngest of nine children, Lulu’s commitment to civil rights was instilled by her father, an attorney and one of the founding members of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). But she also saw how little would be accomplished were it not for the behind the scenes work of strong women like her mother.

Thanks to her parents’ strong belief in education, Lulu moved to Austin to study at the University of Texas, where she also graduated from law school. She began her career in the state legislature working for Rep. Irma Rangel, a pioneer who rose to serve as Chair of the Higher Education Committee. Lulu continued her career in public service working as Director of Legislative Programs for the State Bar of Texas, and Assistant Director for Alternative Fuels Policy and Legislation/Governmental Affairs at the Texas Railroad Commission, before joining her husband, Scott, as partner in their law firm, Hendler Flores Law, PLLC

Deputy Director
Equality Illinois

Mony Ruiz-Velasco is a human rights advocate, an attorney, and the Deputy Director at Equality Illinois where she works to advance a more equitable Illinois for all LGBTQ+ communities. She is a proud, queer Latina, mother, and wife. For nearly three decades, Mony worked to advance immigrant justice combining organizing, advocacy, and legal efforts. Before joining Equality Illinois, Mony was the Associate Director for Network Power at Alianza Americas, a transnational human rights organization. She was also Executive Director of the West Suburban Action Project where she advocated for local and statewide policy change, provided legal services, and organized local communities for systemic change. Mony also worked at the National Immigrant Justice Center for nearly thirteen years, where she became the legal director and provided legal counsel and representation to thousands of immigrants and their families focusing on women, LGBTQ immigrants, survivors of crimes and other vulnerable populations. She advises and assists legislators and their staff regarding policy and legislation at the federal, state, and local levels. She believes it is just as important to show up in the streets, in the voting booth, and at all places of power. She currently serves on the board at NIJC and the Unitarian Universalist Advocacy Network of Illinois. Previously she served as the Board President at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant & Refugee Rights and was on the board of Equality Illinois. She has a J.D. from St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas and a B.A. in English from Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi. She lives with her wife, Denise, and is the proud mother of Christopher, Emma and Liam.

Counsel and Health Care Strategist
Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc.

Omar Gonzalez-Pagan is Counsel and the Health Care Strategist at Lambda Legal, where he advocates for the civil rights of LGBTQ people and people living with HIV. Gonzalez-Pagan was instrumental in achieving two pivotal victories for LGBTQ people before the U.S. Supreme Court—Obergefell v. Hodges and Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia. As a member of the legal team in Obergefell, he helped secure marriage equality nationwide. He also co-authored Lambda Legal’s amicus briefs in Bostock and EEOC and Aimee Stephens v. R.G. G.R Harris Funeral Homes, in which the Supreme Court held discrimination based on sexual orientation and transgender status is unlawful under the federal Civil Rights Act.

As Health Care Strategist, Gonzalez-Pagan has been a leading advocate for the Affordable Care Act, particularly as it applies to LGBTQ people, and access to gender-affirming medical care for transgender people. In Doe v. Abbott and PFLAG v. Abbott, Gonzalez-Pagan put a stop to efforts by Texas to redefine “child abuse” to encompass the provision of necessary gender-affirming medical care to transgender youth. He has also challenged bans on the provision of gender-affirming medical care for trans youth in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas in Noe v. Parson, Poe v. Drummond, and Loe v. Texas. In Dekker v. Weida, Gonzalez-Pagan led the legal team that successfully challenged Florida’s ban on Medicaid coverage of gender-affirming medical care after a two-week trial.

One of the architects of Lambda Legal’s efforts to secure the ability of transgender people to obtain accurate identity documents, Gonzalez-Pagan has served as lead counsel in cases where he secured the right of transgender people born in Puerto Rico, Kansas, New York, and North Carolina to obtain accurate birth certificates consistent with their gender identity.

Gonzalez-Pagan is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Cornell University.

CEO/President
The TransLatin@ Coaltion

Bamby Salcedo is a prominent and celebrated transgender Latina activist, known all over the world for her passionate and productive social, political, and economic influence. As the President and CEO of the TransLatin@ Coalition, Bamby steadily leads this nationally recognized organization that advocates for and addresses the issues of transgender Latinas throughout the United States. Bamby received her Master’s Degree in Mexican and Latin@ Studies from California State University, Los Angeles, and also developed the Center for Violence Prevention & Transgender Wellness, a multimillion, multipurpose, multiservice space for Trans people in Los Angeles.

Bamby’s wide-ranging activist work has brought visibility and given a voice to not only the trans community, but to countless others whose efforts focus on critical topics that include immigration, HIV, at-risk youth, LGBTQIA+ issues, incarceration, and more. Through her dynamic leadership, Bamby has developed several organizations that have created networks and connections where there were none, and she, to this day, tirelessly advocates for the rights, dignity, and humanity of those who are often silenced. Determined to affect change at every level, Bamby actively engages and supports many local, national, and international organizations and planning groups.

Professor
The Georgetown University Law Center

Llezlie Green is a Professor of Law and Director of the Civil Justice Clinic. Professor Green was previously the Associate Dean for Experiential Education, Professor of Law, and Director of the Civil Advocacy Clinic at the American University Washington College of Law, where she also taught Critical Race Theory, Employment & Labor Law, and Advanced Civil Procedure. Her areas of expertise and scholarly interest include employment law, the intersection of workplace exploitation and immigration, critical race theory, critical race feminism, civil rights, and complex litigation in civil and human rights. Her most recent work considers the intersection of race, wage theft, and employment discrimination in low-wage worker communities. Her article, Wage Theft in Lawless Courts, was published in the California Law Review and won the American University Washington College of Law’s Pauline Ruyle Moore Scholar Award (2021). Her most recent article, Outsourcing Discrimination, appeared in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. Her articles have also appeared in the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Harvard Latino Law Review, and the Howard Law Journal.

After receiving her undergraduate education at Dartmouth College with an A.B. in Government with honors, Professor Green obtained a Juris Doctorate from Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and worked with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Following her graduation, she was a litigator at Wilmer Cutler and Pickering (now WilmerHale) and a law clerk for the Honorable Alexander Williams, Jr., United States District Judge for the District of Maryland. She then joined the Civil Rights and Employment Practice at Cohen Milstein Sellers and Toll, where she spent six years representing plaintiffs in class actions alleging employment, fair housing, and credit discrimination, as well as federal and state wage and hour law violations.

Regional Engagement Director
SEAP Organization

Genny Castillo is Regional Engagement Director for SEAP. Genny is focused on bridging the gaps for community members and policy impact. Genny is responsible for coordinating local programming to bring SEAP to the people. Her professional experience includes being COO of BLUE Institute, the premier training program to prepare more young people of color for the leadership of electoral campaigns in the South and Southwest. During the 2018 campaign cycle, Genny served as the Latinx Constituency Director through the Democratic Party of Georgia’s Coordinated Campaign. Genny served as the Director of Caucus Services and developed one of the nation’s most successful state legislative caucus internship programs from 2011-2017 for the Georgia House Democratic Caucus. Genny received her B.S. in Sociology from Berry College and her A.M. in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago. Genny is a graduate of the GALEO Institute for Leadership, LEAD Atlanta Class of 2016 and the GPEE Education Policy Fellowship Program. Genny is a mentor with the Latin American Association and a facilitator for the GALEO Institute for Leadership. In 2023, Genny was selected as a recipient of Georgia Trend Magazine’s “Forty Under 40” Honor.

President
Latina Lawyers Bar Association

Cinthia Flores is a Board Member of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board.

Currently, Cinthia serves as President of the Latina Lawyers Bar Association, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Latinas in the legal profession. Cinthia also serves as Vice President of Latinas Lead California, a Political Action Committee dedicated to electing Latinas. Cinthia serves on the UCLA Alumni Association. Cinthia is a graduate of the University of California, Irvine School of Law. During law school, Cinthia served as a Regent on the University of California Board of Regents. Cinthia is a graduate of UCLA. While at UCLA, she served as the first Latina Student Body President.

Director
Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs for the County of San Diego

Lucero Chávez Basilio is the Director of the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs for the County of San Diego, Health and Human Services Agency, Department of Homeless Solutions and Equitable Communities. The focus of the Office is to build on existing refugee programs and establish a priority of devoting County resources to immigrants and refugees, regardless of immigration status. Prior to being hired to lead the inaugural office, Ms. Chavez Basilio was a Staff Attorney with the UC Immigrant Legal Services Center and based at UCI, working with students and their families on their immigration needs and supporting pro bono attorneys with DACA work. Ms. Chávez Basilio was previously a senior staff attorney at Public Counsel in the Immigrant Rights Project, spending over five years representing unaccompanied children in immigration, asylum, family, delinquency, dependency, and probate proceedings, providing support to a robust pro bono program and co-authoring a manual on seeking Special Immigrant Juvenile findings in state court. Prior to Public Counsel, Ms. Chávez Basilio was an Immigrants Rights attorney at the ACLU of Southern California where she focused on impact litigation around immigration enforcement.

Ms. Chávez Basilio received her J.D. from UC Berkeley Law School in 2010 and obtained a B.A. in American Literature & Culture and Chicana/o Studies from UCLA in 2007. Ms. Chávez Basilio has also taught administrative law at Western State College of law, and Immigration Law & Policy at UCI. She is a proud native of Los Angeles from a working-class immigrant family who considers herself an OC transplant and an excellent multitasking wife and mommy.

Director of Office of Federal Affairs
Drug Policy Alliance

Maritza Perez Medina is the Director of Federal Affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) in Washington, DC. DPA is the leading organization in the U.S. promoting alternatives to the war on drugs. In this role, Maritza manages the organization’s federal legislative agenda and advocacy strategy in Congress as well as DPA’s general engagement with the federal government on its policy priorities.

Previously, Maritza was a Senior Policy Analyst for Criminal Justice Reform at the Center for American Progress (CAP) where she worked on marijuana policy, policing, and sentencing reform. Prior to joining CAP, Maritza was a Legislative Staff Attorney at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) where she advocated on a range of civil rights issues impacting Latino communities.

Originally from Nevada, Maritza obtained her B.A. from the University of Nevada, Reno with academic honors, graduating with double majors in journalism and Spanish and double minors in political science and economic policy. She earned her J.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, receiving the highest distinction for her pro bono work. She is licensed to practice law in the District of Columbia and in the state of California.

A criminal justice and drug policy expert, Maritza has been featured in various media outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Roll Call, The Boston Globe, CNN, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, NBC News, C-SPAN, Vox, Latino USA, and more.

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UCLA LPPI Policy Fellow

Nicole is a senior, double majoring in Sociology and Education & Social Transformation with a minor in Public Affairs. As an incoming Policy Fellow within the LLPI Research Department, she is passionate about education equity and social justice.

As an undergraduate at UCLA, she is the Co-Executive director of Latinas Guiding Latinas for the second consecutive year. She recently finished a year-long internship with United Ways of California, a nonprofit organization focusing on Education, Finance, and Health, where she worked with the policy team. She is also a 2023 Public Policy and International Affairs Program (PPIA) fellow, where she completed the Junior Summer Institute (JSI) Program at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

Nicole identifies as a first-generation college student and is an only child raised by a single mother.

Assistant Professor
UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o & Central American Studies

Dr. Laura C. Chávez-Moreno is an interdisciplinary scholar and assistant professor at UCLA’s César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o & Central American Studies.

Professor Chávez-Moreno researches, writes, and teaches about Chicanx/Latinx education. Her scholarship examines how schooling teaches about race and makes Latinidad. She connects these theorizations with questions about educational equity, particularly in the areas of teaching, literacy, language, and racialization. Her work critiques systems of oppression in schooling and works toward using education for self-determination.

Dr. Chávez-Moreno is a 2022 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, one of the most prestigious early-career research awards for education researchers. The research fellowship supports early-career scholars who, according to the National Academy of Education, are working in critical areas of education research. The fellowship will sponsor her forthcoming book, under contract with the Harvard Education Press Series Race & Education. The monograph presents how a school district’s bilingual-education program and its teachers engage in racialization (that is, demarcate racialized groups) and construct ideas about race and Latinidad.

Dr. Chávez-Moreno’s research has been recognized with multiple awards, including from: American Educational Research Association (AERA) Division G Social Contexts in Education; AERA Latinx Research Issues Special Interest Group (SIG); AERA Bilingual Education Research SIG; American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education; and National Association of Bilingual Education.

Dr. Chávez-Moreno served as a teacher in the Philadelphia Public School District for five years, wrote district curriculum, and served on boards of community organizations. She has taught in all schooling levels, including elementary, secondary, tertiary, and older-adult education. Her undergraduate and graduate course topics include critical race studies in education. Among her many service activities, she has mentored undergraduate and graduate students through several organizations, including the Hispanic Scholarship Fund. Professor Chávez-Moreno grew up in Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora, México.

Professor
UC Berkeley School of Law

Khiara M. Bridges is a professor of law at UC Berkeley School of Law. She has written many articles concerning race, class, reproductive rights, and the intersection of the three. Her scholarship has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the California Law Review, the NYU Law Review, and the Virginia Law Review, among others. She is also the author of three books: Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization(2011), The Poverty of Privacy Rights (2017), and Critical Race Theory: A Primer (2019). She is a coeditor of a reproductive justice book series that is published under the imprint of the University of California Press.

She graduated as valedictorian from Spelman College, receiving her degree in three years. She received her J.D. from Columbia Law School and her Ph.D., with distinction, from Columbia University’s Department of Anthropology. While in law school, she was a teaching assistant for the former dean, David Leebron (Torts), as well as for the late E. Allan Farnsworth (Contracts). She was a member of the Columbia Law Review and a Kent Scholar. She speaks fluent Spanish and basic Arabic, and she is a classically trained ballet dancer.

Director of Reproductive and Sexual Health
National Health Law Program

Fabiola Carrión is the Director of Reproductive and Sexual Health at the National Health Law Program’s (NHeLP) Los Angeles office, where she works to promote coverage for all reproductive and sexual health services in California and across the country. Fabiola also coordinates NHeLP’s groundbreaking work on telehealth by ensuring that Medicaid enrollees are centered in emerging telehealth policies.

Before joining NHeLP, Fabiola was an Advocacy Program Officer at Planned Parenthood Global, where she designed, developed, and oversaw projects on sexual and reproductive rights in Latin America that have resulted in some of the most progressive policies in the region. She also previously served as the Director of Government Relations at Planned Parenthood of New York City and as a Policy Advisor for a network of progressive state legislators and state-based advocates from across the United States. In these roles, she provided technical assistance in the form of legal analysis, legislative tracking, and policy trainings.

Fabiola began her legal career as a law clerk for Judge Joseph Maltese in New York’s Supreme Court and worked for various national and international human rights organizations before and during law school. After completing her undergraduate studies, she was selected as a Public Policy Fellow with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. Fabiola graduated with High Honors (magna cum laude) from U.C. Berkeley in Latin American Studies and Political Science and has law degrees from American University in Washington, D.C. and La Universidad Alfonso X in Madrid, Spain.

Fabiola serves on various boards of reproductive freedom organizations, including the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, the California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom, and the California Abortion Alliance. She was also a 2008 Rockwood Institute Fellow for Leaders in Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice.

Propel Postdoctoral Scholar
Stanford University School of Medicine

Dr. Josefina Flores Morales (she/her/ella) is a Propel Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. As a social demographer and sociologist, her research examines health and socioeconomic inequities across the life course. Her research agenda uses a structural determinants of health lens to understand the health of immigrant populations, with a focus on Latinx persons in the United States. She earned her B.A. in psychology with a public health minor from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She earned her doctorate in sociology at UCLA as well. Her research has been supported by the Health Policy Research Scholars program, a program by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

President
Texas Civil Rights Project

Rochelle Garza is an attorney from the Rio Grande Valley currently serving as President of the Texas Civil Rights Project, one of the most influential legal organizations dedicated to empowering Texas communities and creating policy changes in the state.

Rochelle has the honor to be appointed to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights by President Biden where she will serve as commissioner until 2028. The USCCR is the oldest independent and bipartisan commission in the U.S. created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Rochelle is the daughter of two public school teachers. Together, they taught Rochelle to have faith, work hard, and that every person is deserving of dignity and respect. At a young age, Rochelle learned firsthand how broken our healthcare system is. Her oldest brother, Robby, suffered a brain injury during childbirth and grew up with disabilities. Rochelle watched her parents work tirelessly to ensure Robby had the care he needed. Like so many families, Rochelle knows what it’s like to make sacrifices for the health of her family.

So she became a lawyer for the people –– fighting for the civil rights of children, immigrants and families. Rochelle has expertise in immigration, family, criminal, and constitutional law. She has fought for reproductive rights for immigrant teens in detention, including the Garza v. Hargan case in which Rochelle was the guardian for Jane Doe, a pregnant 17-year-old denied the right to choose. Her work on that case resulted in the “Garza Notice,” a federal requirement that ensures teens in immigration detention control their reproductive health care choices, which is still in effect till this day.

Rochelle graduated from the University of Houston Law Center and from Brown University with honors. She lives with her husband, Adam, their toddler, and their dog, Ramses, in Brownsville, Texas.

Assistant Professor of Law
Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law

Evelyn Marcelina Rangel-Medina is an Assistant Professor of Law at Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law, where she teaches Criminal Procedure, Employment Law, Latinxs & the Law, and Citizenism: Race & Immigration. She was the inaugural Visiting Assistant Professor of the Center for Racial and Economic Justice at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. The current focus of her work investigates racial subordination and its various iterations, including identifying the myriad ways documentation status enforcement and national security policies discriminatorily impact citizens of color. More generally, her research and teaching interests lie primarily in the areas of constitutional law, race and the law, employment discrimination, and criminal procedure.

Professor Rangel-Medina graduated from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where she was named an inaugural University of California Presidential Public Interest Law Fellow. She is an honors graduate from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she attained three Bachelor of Arts degrees magna cum laude with Departmental Honors in English Literature, Women’s Studies, and Political Science: Public Policy & International Relations. She previously worked as a managing director at United for Respect and Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United) advancing labor and employment advocacy campaigns and providing resources to low-wage workers.

Executive Director
Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles

Silvia Argueta has been the Executive Director at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA) since 2008. LAFLA is the frontline law firm for low-income individuals in Los Angeles County. LAFLA is committed to promoting access to justice, strengthening communities, fighting discrimination, and effecting systemic change through representation, advocacy, and community education. Silvia leads a 190 plus staff non-profit law firm with five offices, four self-help centers, and three courthouse domestic violence clinics. She oversees an annual budget of over $32 million and all aspects of strategy, legal advocacy, finance, fund development, and technology. She recently oversaw an $18 million capital campaign and construction of LAFLA’s new headquarters, a cornerstone of justice that brings respect and dignity to both clients and staff. Silvia’s career has been devoted to achieving equal justice using direct representation, civil litigation and policy to effect change.

Prior to her appointment as executive director, Silvia was a senior attorney with LAFLA’s Government Benefits Unit, where she handled legal issues involving access to health care, Medi- Cal, Medicare, Social Security Retirement, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and California Work Opportunities and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs)–a program of the California Department of Social Services.

Silvia served as lead counsel in Harris, et al v. Board of Supervisors, et al, a federal court case that prevented the closure of Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center and the closure of 100 beds at Los Angeles County USC Medical Center. Argueta also was counsel on APALC et al., v. Los Angeles County, et al., an OCR complaint filed on behalf of Limited English Proficient (LEP) CalWORKs participants against the County of Los Angeles, which allegedly unequal access in the provision of services to LEP participants in the CalWORKs program.

Prior to joining LAFLA in 1999, Silvia was a staff attorney at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF). There she handled education, employment and immigration issues, including all aspects of civil rights litigation. Before joining MALDEF, she was a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and was involved in civil rights litigation and policy matters including challenges to Proposition 187 and Proposition 227 and monitored the conditions of confinement for the LA County jail population based on a consent decree Block v. Rutherford.

Silvia obtained her B.A in Political Science and French from UCLA, and her law degree from UC Hastings College of the Law. She is a member of the American Bar Association, Los Angeles County Bar, the National Hispanic Bar Association, Latina Lawyers Bar Association, and the Mexican American Bar Association. Silvia was born in Guatemala and immigrated to Southern California at the age of 6. She was the first in her family to go to college and she credits her mother for empowering her and for being a wonderful model of strength, love and perseverance. Her father’s legacy to her was instilling values of hard work, fairness, and a belief that one should always question authority.

Professor of Law
Associate Dean for Experiential Education
Texas A&M University School of Law

Luz E. Herrera is a Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Experiential Education at Texas A&M School of Law. Dean Herrera promotes entrepreneurial efforts to address the access to civil justice gap.

Before entering academia, Prof. Herrera ran her own practice and founded Community Lawyers, Inc., a non-profit organization that encourages access to affordable legal services and develops innovative opportunities for legal professionals in underserved communities. These experiences have influenced her scholarship that promotes legal “low bono” service delivery models and post-graduate support programs for lawyers starting their own law firms.

Dean Herrera currently serves as a special advisor for the American Bar Association’s Commission on Hispanic Legal Rights and Responsibilities.

Prior to her current position, Dean Herrera was the Assistant Dean for Clinical Education, Experiential Learning and Public Service at UCLA School of Law. She has also taught as a visiting a visiting clinical professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, an assistant professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, a visiting professor at Chapman University School of Law and a Senior Clinical Fellow at Harvard Law School. In her various academic positions, Dean Herrera encouraged innovation and promoted access to justice through experiential learning.

Dean Herrera is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School.

Executive Director
Texas Access to Justice Foundation

Betty has dedicated her professional career to public interest work serving as an advocate for civil legal services for the poor. She has served as the Executive Director of the Texas Access to Justice Foundation, the largest funding source for legal services to the poor in Texas, since 2001. Betty started as a staff attorney at Legal Aid of Central Texas after graduating from the University of Texas School of Law.

Betty has served on many local, statewide and national committees, boards and task forces related to access to justice. She is a Past President of the National Association of IOLTA Programs, Past Co-chair of the Board of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees and Past-Chair of the Hispanic Issues Section of the State Bar of Texas. She serves as Co-Chair of the ABA’s Working Group on Unaccompanied Minors and serves on the boards of Management Information Exchange (MIE) and ProBonoNet and is a member of the Texas Human Trafficking Prevention Task Force. She has been appointed to serve as the Chair of the American Bar Association (ABA) Commission on Hispanic Legal Rights and Responsibilities, Special Advisor to the ABA Commission on Immigration and as a member of the ABA Center for Diversity and Inclusion.

Betty is a recipient of the Distinguished Lawyer Award (Austin Bar Association), Tower of Justice Award (Texas Legal Services Center), Outstanding Public Interest Attorney Award (Travis County Women Lawyers Association), the Regina Rogoff Award (Austin Bar Association) , the “Nonny” Award for Outstanding Nonprofit Leadership in Austin, the “Star of Justice” Award (Texas Access to Justice Commission) , the prestigious Harold Kleinman Award, the Community Service Award and Chair ‘ s Award (Hispanic Issues Section-State Bar of Texas) and the ABA’ s Grassroots Advocacy Award.

Associate Professor of Law
George Washington University Law School

Tania N. Valdez is a law professor and lawyer dedicated to the study and practice of immigration law. Her research highlights the inadequacies of protections for noncitizens in removal proceedings, particularly in the current era of aggressive immigration enforcement.

Immediately prior to joining the GW Law faculty, Professor Valdez served as a Visiting Assistant Professor and Director of the Immigration Law and Policy Clinic (ILPC) at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. She supervised law students appearing before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, and the immigration agencies. From 2019-2021, Professor Valdez served as the ILPC’s Christopher N. Lasch Clinical Fellow.

Professor Valdez began her legal career as a clinical instructor in the Immigration Unit at Berkeley Law’s East Bay Community Law Center, representing immigrants living with HIV/AIDS and through a Medical-Legal Partnership with Children’s Hospital Oakland. She then served as a staff attorney for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, clerked for the Honorable Magistrate Judge Kristen L. Mix at the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, and litigated civil rights cases in federal and state courts at a boutique law firm in Denver, Colorado.

Attorney
Legal Aid Chicago

Nubia most recently served in Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot’s administration where she led community engagement and immigration policy for Chicago, the third largest city in the country.

Nubia is a licensed attorney. She represented survivors of gender-based violence and precarious workers at Legal Aid Chicago. She earned her JD from Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

Nubia’s career includes nine years as a digital content creator and thought leader discussing professional development, gender equity, and racial justice. She is the founder and editor of an online community, Latinas Uprising, reaching over 27,000 young professionals committed to social justice and increasing diversity within the legal profession.

Senior Counsel and Director
Digital Justice and Civil Rights Free Press

Nora Benavidez is the Senior Counsel and Director of Digital Justice and Civil Rights Free Press. She leads the organization’s democracy and digital civil rights initiatives, including its policy, legal, grassroots, and private sector efforts. She develops winning reform solutions that blunt disinformation, hate, and other manipulation online while protecting digital civil rights, privacy, and equitable speech. Previously, Nora served as Director of U.S. Free Expression Programs at PEN America, guiding its national advocacy agenda on First Amendment and free expression issues. Nora launched and led PEN America’s media literacy and disinformation defense program. She also led the organization’s victorious and groundbreaking First Amendment lawsuit, PEN America v. Donald Trump, to hold the former president accountable for his retaliation and censorship of speech he disliked. Her writing and commentary has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, CNN, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and other publications. She previously also worked in private practice and at the ACLU, litigating significant cases representing victims of voting rights violations, unconstitutional police practices, and other First Amendment infringements.

Investigative Reporter
Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley

Gisela Pérez de Acha reports on extremism, disinformation and environmental issues for UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program with a focus on digital forensics and network analysis. She is also a human rights lawyer and an open source researcher at the Human Rights Center Investigations Lab. Gisela has a master’s degree from Berkeley Journalism, where she now teaches cybersecurity and open-source investigations for upcoming journalists in a class that she helped create. She recently won a team Polk Award for her work in Frontline’s film American Insurrection and was also part of an Emmy award-winning team at the New York Times for a story about The Siege of Culiacán. Gisela is a cybersecurity expert and a digital safety trainer with PEN America. Born and raised in Mexico, she speaks fluent Spanish, English, French and Portuguese.

Professor from Practice
Georgetown Law

Christy E. Lopez is a Professor from Practice at Georgetown Law in Washington D.C. She teaches courses on policing, criminal procedure, and civil rights litigation, and is the faculty co-director of Georgetown’s Center for Innovations in Community Safety. In 2020-21, she co-chaired the Washington D.C. Police Reform Commission. She was a Fellow on the American Law Institute (ALI) Principles of Law, Policing, Project, and is a contributing columnist to the Washington Post opinions page.

From 2010 to 2017, Professor Lopez served as a Deputy Chief in the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. She led the Division’s group conducting pattern-or-practice investigations of police departments and other law enforcement agencies, including litigating, negotiating, and implementing consent decrees. Professor Lopez led the investigations of several law enforcement agencies, including those in New Orleans, Chicago, and Ferguson, Missouri. Professor Lopez also helped coordinate the Department’s broader efforts to ensure constitutional policing. From 2003 to 2010, Professor Lopez served as a federal court monitor of the Oakland (California) Police Department for Senior District Judge Thelton E. Henderson of the Northern District of California. Lopez was a Senior Trial Attorney in the Civil Rights Division from 1995 to 2000.

Professor Lopez is the 2023 recipient of the University of California at Riverside Distinguished Alumni Award. She is also the 2016 Recipient of the Flame Award from the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. She was a 2015 team recipient of the United States Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service, the Department of Justice’s highest award for any employee.

Professor Lopez graduated from the University of California at Riverside with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1990, and received her juris doctor from the Yale Law School in 1994. In 1994-95 she clerked for the Honorable Robert L. Eastaugh on the Supreme Court of Alaska.

Criminal District Court Judge
Texas state Courts

Natalia Cornelio (Nata) is the presiding judge of the 351st District Court in Harris County, Texas. The court handles felony cases. Prior to becoming a judge, she served as a staff attorney for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in Houston, and as the Director of Criminal Justice Reform at the Texas Civil Rights Project, where she led a team responsible for litigation and advocacy to further justice reform in Texas. She is a first generation Mexican American, is bilingual, and is an Aztec dancer.

Executive Secretary-Treasurer
California Labor Federation

Lorena is the first woman and first person of color to serve as Chief Officer of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO. She was sworn in on July 27, 2022.

Lorena’s first summer job was with the San Diego Labor Council’s Labor Participation non-profit, handing out food bags to striking workers. She would later go on to become the Political Director and eventually be elected Secretary-Treasurer and Chief Officer of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, AFL-CIO.

In 2013, Lorena was elected to the State Assembly promising to fight for California’s working and middle classes. The Atlantic Magazine labeled her “The California Democrat setting the National Agenda” for her practical, progressive legislation aimed at alleviating real issues in people’s lives.

In 2014, she passed historic legislation to allow every single Californian the ability to earn paid sick leave, creating a model for the nation to follow. In 2016, she went on to author a law making California the first state in the nation to require farmworkers to be paid overtime after 8 hours of work in a day. Lorena also authored legislation to protect janitorial workers against sexual assault and provide professional cheerleaders basic labor protections, both of which became subjects of national PBS documentaries. In 2019, Lorena passed Assembly Bill 5, the strongest law in the country protecting workers against misclassification and wage theft. In 2021, Lorena passed legislation to ensure employers in California can be criminally prosecuted and sent to prison for engaging in intentional wage theft, and she authored the nation’s first law establishing worker protections against Amazon’s dangerous warehouse production quotas.

Lorena was the first Latina to serve as Chairwoman of a legislative Appropriations Committee, and was the longest serving Chair in history. She also served as Chairwoman of the California Latino Legislative Caucus from 2019 to 2020.

A graduate of Stanford University, Lorena also holds a master’s degree from Georgetown University and a law degree from UCLA.

Director
Racial Economic Justice Program at Legal Aid at Work

Stacy Villalobos (she/her/ella) is the Director of the Racial Economic Justice Program at Legal Aid at Work (LAAW). She advises and represents workers fighting race discrimination in employment. Stacy also co-spearheads LAAW’s advocacy and representation of job seekers with criminal histories. Stacy has experience litigating a wide range of employment issues, including discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and wage theft. Most recently, Stacy was involved in briefing two important victories in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In the first case, Arias v. Raimondo, which we co-counseled with California Rural Legal Assistance, the court broke new legal ground when it held that an employer’s attorney violated the law when he contacted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in an attempt to have his client’s former employee deported after he sued for his unpaid wages.

In the other case, Guerrero v. California Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a precedent-setting U.S. District Court trial judgment that an employer violated federal civil rights law when it disqualified a job applicant solely because he had used an invalid Social Security number to obtain work while he was undocumented. Stacy started her career as a Skadden Fellow, representing immigrant women workers in the Central Valley and beyond. After law school, Stacy completed a federal district court clerkship with the Honorable Fernando Olguín. She is a graduate of Stanford University and Stanford Law School. At Stanford Law, she was a Senior Editor of the Stanford Law Review, Co-Chair of the Stanford Latinx Law Students Association, and student in the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. She is the first in her family to obtain a high school diploma and a native Spanish speaker. Stacy also serves as an Abogada Consultora for the Consulado General de Mexico de San Francisco.

Executive Director
The Worker Institute at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University

Dr. Campos-Medina is a researcher and labor educator focusing on the intersection of race, immigration status and worker’s rights. She currently serves as a Senior Extension Associate and the Executive Director of the Worker Institute at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University where she leads research, policy innovation and leadership training to advance worker justice, collective bargaining rights and the interest of workers in today’s economy and society.

She is a political scientist and expert on workplace and labor issues, women rights, voting rights, immigrant worker justice and US trade relations. She holds a PhD from Rutgers University and a BS and MPA from Cornell University. She is a member of the Diverse Solidarity Economies (DISE), a collective of Black and Brown Feminist Scholars focused on research that decolonizes and diversifies the field of political economy. She is a Visiting Fellow at the Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

Prior to joining the Worker Institute at ILR Cornell, Dr. Campos Medina spent 20 years leading labor organizing and collective bargaining campaigns on behalf of American workers and unions such as UNITE, UNITEHERE, Workers United and SEIU. She served in many public policy positions including working for NJ Governor Jon Corzine, a member of the Labor Committee for the United States Office of Trade (USTR), and later in the Transition Team for USTR under President Barack Obama.

Dr. Campos-Medina is recognized as an influential labor and community leader. She is the President of Latina Civic Action, and an Advisory Committee Member for ELLA Wins, a program of the Center for American Women in Politics, Rutgers University. She is the host of the podcast #ActivistaRiseUp. You follow her work on social media @DrCamposMedina

Professor
University of Texas at Austin

Liliana M. Garces is the W.K. Kellogg Professor in Community College Leadership at the University of Texas at Austin, with courtesy appointments at the School of Law and the Center for Mexican American Studies. Her scholarship examines how legal and education systems shape educational opportunity and create inequality for historically marginalized student populations. Her projects examine race-conscious policies in postsecondary admissions, freedom of expression and racial equity on college campuses, and the use and influence of research in law. Her research has been funded by the Spencer Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the W.E. Upjohn Institute.

Her award-winning scholarship has been published in a variety of top peer-reviewed education journals, as well as law journals, policy reports, and books. She is co-editor of Racial Equity on College Campuses: Connecting Research and Practice (SUNY Press, 2022), Affirmative Action and Racial Equity: Considering the Fisher Case to Forge the Path Ahead (Routledge, 2015) and School Integration Matters: Research-Based Strategies to Advance Racial Equity (Teachers College Press, 2016). Over the years, her work has been featured in National Public Radio, The New York Times, and numerous other media outlets, and at briefings at the National Press Club.

Combining her expertise in law and education, Dr. Garces has represented the education community in the filing of legal briefs in U.S. Supreme Court cases that have played consequential roles in interpreting law around race-conscious policies in education. Most recently, she served as counsel and co-authored an amicus brief filed by 1,241 social scientists in support of Harvard’s defense of its race-conscious policies in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023). Dr. Garces holds a doctorate in education from Harvard University, a juris doctor from the University of Southern California School of Law, and a bachelor of arts from Brown University.

Director, Racial Justice Strategies
LatinoJustice PRLDEF

An ardent advocate for lawyering at the intersection of structural racialization and poverty, Fran is the Director of Racial Justice Strategy at LatinoJustice PRLDEF. She has decades of experience advancing racial equity and litigating employment, housing, education and other civil rights cases. Fran has successfully pursued impact cases in federal and state courts, including Caban Gonzalez, et al. v. Moore, et al., requiring Georgia’s Department of Driver Services to afford reciprocity to holders of driver’s license from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands; LatinoJustice PRLDEF v. HUD, challenging the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s failure to timely produce records regarding undocumented households—disproportionately Latinx—impacted by a proposed ban on mixed status families; and Brinson v. Winchendon Housing Authority, holding a housing authority accountable for condoning a racially hostile housing environment endured by the first Black family to integrate a public housing complex.

Fran actively engages in federal appellate advocacy. She led LatinoJustice’s SCOTUS amicus brief in the Harvard/UNC affirmative action cases, arguing that the original meaning of the Equal Protection Clause belies a colorblind paradigm. She is also part of a team of civil rights lawyers defending K-12 school districts’ use of race neutral measures to equalize educational opportunity for Latinx, Black and low-income Asian American students. Fran has authored leading articles promoting race-based lawyering, and has successfully pursued a range of policy reforms, including overhauling Massachusetts’ criminal offender record keeping statute. Fran relishes her immigrant roots. She holds an LL.M. from Boston College Law School, and is a J.D. graduate of Suffolk University Law School.

Director of the Educational Opportunities Project
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

David is recognized as a national leading litigator, advocate and thought leader in civil rights, specializing in educational impact litigation and policy. At the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, he spearheads the organization’s cutting-edge racial justice litigation, policy, and advocacy work in k-12 and higher education.

Presently, David serves as lead counsel for multiracial students and alumni defending affirmative action in SFFA v. UNC and SFFA v. Harvard, where he argued the UNC case in the Supreme Court. David also steers the organization’s counterattacks to classroom censorship laws and is co-lead counsel in the first federal lawsuit challenging such state laws, B.E.R.T. v. Drummond (Okla.). He further helped lead a successful challenge on behalf of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP Branch in the historic school funding case, Leandro v. State of North Carolina.

Previously at MALDEF, his litigation and policy work assisted in desegregating schools, improving state school finance systems, cultivating English Learner programs, preserving the Texas DREAM Act, securing driver’s licenses for immigrants, and enforcing immigrant rights. He has argued cases before the First and Fifth Circuits, and the Supreme Courts of Colorado and Texas.

David is well-published with several book chapters and articles on education civil rights, including “Rodriguez v. San Antonio Independent School District, Forty Years and Counting” in The Enduring Legal of Rodriguez (Harvard Education Press 2015); and “The Absurd Reach of a Colorblind Constitution,” 72 Am. U. L. Rev. 1731 (2023).

A graduate of Edgewood High School in San Antonio, David earned his B.A. from New Mexico State University and his J.D. from University of Texas at Austin School of Law.

dhinojosa@lawyerscommittee.org

Professor of Law
Texas A&M University

Rachel F. Moran is Professor of Law at Texas A&M University. Previously, she was Distinguished and Chancellor’s Professor of Law at UC Irvine; Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law and Dean Emerita at UCLA; and Robert D. and Leslie-Kay Raven Professor of Law at Berkeley. Moran has published over 100 articles, book chapters, and short commentaries. She co-authored Educational Policy and the Law, co-edited Race Law Stories, and wrote Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance. As inaugural Neukom Fellows Research Chair, she and Robert Nelson launched “The Future of Latinos in the United States: Law, Opportunity, and Mobility.”

CLLR Co-Chief
Articles Editor
UCLA Law School,
Chicanx-Latinx Law Review

Luz Murillo is an incoming third-year law student at UCLA Law. She is the Co-Chief Articles Editor of the UCLA Chicanx/Latinx Law Review. Currently, she serves as a Graduate Student Researcher with LPPI to assist in creating the Latina Future: Transforming the Nation Through Law & Policy symposium. Prior to law school, Luz worked as a Capital Defense Investigator for the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, serving indigent clients on death row. She hopes to become a public defense attorney after graduation.

President & General Counsel
Latino Justice PRLDEF

Lourdes M. Rosado is the President and General Counsel of LatinoJustice PRLDEF. Ms. Rosado has a 25-plus year record as a social justice champion, working to advance the very rights and opportunities that are at the core of LJP’s mission. A skilled litigator and appellate attorney, Ms. Rosado has successfully led and directed targeted advocacy efforts on a wide variety of civil rights issues, including challenging the rescission of DACA and the enactment of the Muslim travel ban; fighting dangerous conditions of confinement for youth in correctional and child welfare facilities; going after employers who expose employees to sexual harassment and a hostile work place; defeating efforts to prevent immigrant children from enrolling in public schools; holding school districts accountable for disciplinary practices that discriminate against students based on their race, ethnicity, or disability status.

Prior to joining LatinoJustice, Ms. Rosado served as the Program Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, where she oversaw the litigation, policy advocacy, and field organizing departments, and chapters. was the inaugural Program Director. Ms. Rosado also has served as the Chief of the Civil Rights Bureau in the New York State Office of the Attorney General, and as Associate Director of the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center.

Ms. Rosado is a graduate of Swarthmore College, holds a M.A. in Latin American Studies from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, a J.D. from New York University School of Law, and a LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center. Ms. Rosado has received many honors, including being named the 2009 Citizen of the Year by the Philadelphia Inquirer for her role in successfully advocating that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacate the juvenile delinquency adjudications of thousands of youth who were victims of the infamous Kids for Cash scandal.

CLLR Editor in Chief
UCLA Law School,

Evelyn Sanchez Gonzalez is a third-year law student at UCLA School of Law. As the Editor-in-Chief of the Chicanx-Latinx Law Review and a LPPI-CLLR liaison, she has been spearheading the publication of a special Symposium issue dedicated to uplifting Latina voices. Evelyn’s social justice passion is rooted in her first-generation, Mexican American identity. After law school, she hopes to continue serving her community as a litigator and policymaker.

Professor of Law
Yale Law School

Cristina M. Rodríguez is the Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law at Yale Law School and a scholar of administrative, constitutional, and immigration law. In 2021, she was appointed by President Biden to co-chair the Commission on the Supreme Court. Her recent writings include the 2020 Foreword to the Harvard Law Review, Regime Change, and the book, The President and Immigration Law.

Rodríguez has also served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council of the American Law Institute. She earned her B.A. and J.D. degrees from Yale and attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She clerked for Judge David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court.

UCLA LPPI Policy Fellow

CELESTE R. FIGUEROA (she/her/hers) is a recent graduate from UCLA, with a degree in Political Science and a minor in Public Affairs. As a Policy Fellow and Project & Policy Analyst within the UCLA LPPI Programs Department, she is dedicated to expanding access to education for Latinas and improving workers’ rights for immigrants in and around Los Angeles county.

At UCLA, Celeste was an active member of the Pre-Law Society and Latinx Pre-Law Association as an individual seeking to enter the legal world. She also completed an internship at the League of United Latin American Citizens’ headquarters—the nation’s oldest and largest Hispanic civil rights organization—in Washington D.C. as a Policy and Legislation intern. It was here that Celeste headed matters on ‘Immigration & Foreign Affairs’ and ‘Energy, Environment, Science, & Technology’.

Celeste is a first-generation college and prospective law student who grew up in Ventura County to proud parents of Puerto Rican, Nicaraguan, Mexican, and Colombian descent.

UCLA LPPI Policy Fellow

ARIANAH I. RIZZO (she/her/hers) is a senior from Pasadena, CA studying Political Science with a minor in Community Engagement and Social Change at UCLA. She is a Fellow in the UCLA LPPI Programs Department.

At UCLA, Arianah has worked with organizations that prioritize the empowerment of underserved communities. As a JusticeCorps student member, she saw how complex and difficult the legal system is for self-represented litigants. She joined the Judicial Council of the California Governmental Affairs Office in Sacramento as a summer intern, where she contributed to legislative research and gained insight on how to effectively enact policy that advances access to justice for all. Arianah currently holds an ongoing role with Freedom For Immigrants, as a hotline volunteer and Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Complaint writer documenting reported abuse within immigrant detention facilities. Previously, Arianah served as a Civic Engagement intern for Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE), where she helped execute major events to connect professional and student leaders with elected officials and advocate for public policy reforms affecting Latinas.

Through the UCLA LPPI Policy Fellowship, Arianah is committed to serving as a champion of accessible and equitable systems of government and policies by expanding her knowledge on various issues and tools to conduct well-founded research.

Executive Assistant/Admin Analyst
UCLA Latino Policy &
Politics Institute

Lorena Uriarte joined as the Administrative Analyst/Executive Assistant at LPPI in September 2022. She is responsible for managing the day-to-day operations for executive-level staff. Lorena will also be working with the Operations team at LPPI to establish structured internal processes for this growing organization.

Lorena is currently serving as the Co-Project Manager for the Latina Futures: Transforming the Nation Through Law and Policy Symposium.

Previously, Lorena worked at the UCLA Police Department from 2018 – 2022 where she was the sole Crime Analyst. She was responsible for tracking crime trends and patterns for the UCLA jurisdiction, as well as providing crime statistics and analysis to various stakeholders.

Lorena has a strong interest in organizational development and process implementation. Lorena holds her M.S in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania and her B.A in Criminology from The College of New Jersey.

Project Policy Analyst,
UCLA Latino Policy &
Politics Institute

Belen Flores joined LPPI in December 2022 as a Project Policy Analyst in the Programs Department and serves as the Co-Project Manager for the Latina Futures: Transforming the Nation Through Law & Policy. She is responsible for executing leadership strategy and designing leadership training programs that improve data-driven governance to enhance the quality of life for Latinx and other communities of color. Belen will support the LPPI Policy Fellowship, a historic project of the Programs Department, which serves internal campus constituents. Belen will also assist the design and implementation of new initiatives the Programs Department is designing to serve external stakeholders as part of the launch of the U.S. Latino Data Hub and the Latina Futures 2050 Lab.

Previously, Belen served as a community organizer with Community Coalition in South Los Angeles where she contributed to strategy development, stakeholder engagement, leadership training, and direct action organizing to empower those who are most proximate to the policy challenges. She has also participated in national public service fellowships with the CA Capital Fellowship Program and the NYC Urban Fellowship Program. Through the CA Capital Fellowship, as a Judicial Fellow, Belen collaborated with Judicial Officers in the LA County Superior Court, Community Relations Office to execute community outreach and diversity programming. As a NYC Urban Fellow, she worked in the Division of Youth and Family Justice to research best practices in youth justice across system points including detention, placement, and aftercare.

Belen has strong interest in organizing at the grassroots and grasstops level to shift power and create policy change that centers the equitable redistribution of resources to acutely disinvested communities. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Justice Law and Mathematics, with a Certificate in Advanced Leadership Studies from American University. Additionally, Belen holds a Certificate in Applied Policy and Government from CSU Sacramento and is a proud Law Fellow alumna of the Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Program at U.C. Berkeley.

Director of Programs
UCLA Latino Policy &
Politics Institute

Juana (Hernandez) Sanchez serves as the Director of Programs, overseeing the design of leadership programs that advance data-informed governance to improve the quality of life for Latinos and other communities of color. Previously, she supported senior leaders across education, government, philanthropy, business and the nonprofit sectors in advancing policies to increase postsecondary attainment and equity as a Senior Associate at HCM Strategists and as Director of Postsecondary Initiatives at UNITE-LA.

In addition to her work in consulting and collective impact, Sanchez brings over a decade of experience in leadership training for the fields of public policy and administration. This includes managing the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) National Internship Program, coordinating the Public Policy Leadership Conference at Harvard University, and helping to launch diversity outreach initiatives for Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Program graduate school consortium members, including UCLA Luskin, USC Sol Price, and the Pepperdine School of Public Policy. She has further built a diverse leadership pipeline with Latinas Lead California, the only political action committee in the state dedicated to electing Latinas up and down the ballot.

A UCLA alumna, Sanchez volunteers with various campus groups to support first-generation college students and students of color, including the UCLA Latino/a Alumni Association and the Academic Advancement Program. She graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in American Literature and Culture and minors in Chicano/a Studies, Education Studies and Political Science and earned her MPP at the Harvard Kennedy School. Sanchez has been recognized as the UCLA Rising Advocate of the Year, as a “40 Under 40” civic leader in Los Angeles County, and as an Aspen Institute Ricardo Salinas Scholar.

Associate Director of the Chicano Studies
Research Center

Celia Lacayo earned her PhD in ethnic studies at UC Berkeley. She previously served as associate director of community engagement for the UCLA Division of Social Sciences, where she was the associate editor of LA Social Science e-Forum. She is a former adjunct faculty in the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and the Department of African American Studies.

Lacayo’s research and teaching expertise include topics in race, ethnicity, and immigration studies. Her article “Perpetual Inferiority: Whites’ Racial Ideology toward Latinos,” published in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity (vol. 3, no. 4, October 2017), interrogates how external racial ascription affects the racial group formation process for Latinos. The article won the Distinguished Contribution to Research Article Award from the American Sociological Association Latina/os Section. Her article “Latinos Need to Stay in Their Place: Differential Segregation in a Multi-Ethnic Suburb” in Societies (vol. 6, no. 3, 2016) contributed to the literature on Latino segregation in the US and was cited in The Guardian, OC Weekly, CityLab Latino, and the blog ImmigrationProf. Lacayo was a contributor to the PBS documentary 187: The Rise of the Latino Vote (2020) and she regularly receives inquiries from Spanish- and English-language news outlets. Future research will focus on Latinx racial socialization and political behavior, as well as examining Afro-Latinx experience and relations between African Americans and Latinos.

In her administrative capacity at the CSRC, Lacayo will oversee staff operations and academic and public programs. She will also contribute to the campus-wide Latinx Infrastructure Initiative as UCLA pursues federal designation as a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), and will collaborate on the state-funded research project Latina Futures, 2050 Lab, led by the CSRC and Latino Policy and Politics Institute (LPPI).

Additionally, Lacayo is pursuing institutional support for youth participatory-action research in the University of California, and as part of CSRC research projects, she is coordinating a network of junior scholars from low-income BIPOC communities to work with grassroots youth organizing groups across California.

Deputy Director
UCLA Latino Policy &
Politics Institute

Lila Burgos is the Deputy Director of the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute. She comes to LPPI with over a decade of experience in applied research as well as measurement, learning and evaluation consulting focusing on systemic change and social determinants of health. Her expertise also includes leading strategic planning and facilitation processes.

She has worked extensively with nonprofit and municipal clients in LA County, and with foundations across the country to understand the impact their projects are having and what they can do to better serve their communities. At LPPI, her focus has been on building organizational infrastructure to increase LPPI’s capacity.

Previously, Lila was a Senior Consultant at Harder+Company Community Research. In that role, she worked with clients such as the LA County Department of Mental Health and Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. She holds a BA in International Studies from the University of Arizona and a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning with a focus on Community Economic Development from UCLA.
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UCLA
Latino Policy &
Politics Institute

About

Latina Futures, 2050 Lab envisions a society where Latinas lead and everyone thrives. The 2050 Lab aims to accelerate full inclusion through rigorous research, community partnerships, and leadership development.

Contact

3250 Public Affairs Building
Los Angeles, CA 90065
310-592-1063

latino@luskin.ucla.edu

© 2024 Latino Policy & Politics Institute, All rights reserved

Privacy Policy & Terms of Use

UCLA
Latino Policy &
Politics Institute

About

Latina Futures, 2050 Lab envisions a society where Latinas lead and everyone thrives. The 2050 Lab aims to accelerate full inclusion through rigorous research, community partnerships, and leadership development.

Contact

3250 Public Affairs Building
Los Angeles, CA 90065
310-592-1063

latino@luskin.ucla.edu

Media Inquiries

Ippipress@luskin.ucla.edu

© 2024 Latino Policy & Politics Institute, All rights reserved

Privacy Policy & Terms of Use

Photo of graduate courtesy of UCLA Law La Raza

UCLA
Latino Policy &
Politics Institute

About

Latina Futures, 2050 Lab envisions a society where Latinas lead and everyone thrives. The 2050 Lab aims to accelerate full inclusion through rigorous research, community partnerships, and leadership development.

Contact

3250 Public Affairs Building
Los Angeles, CA 90065
310-592-1063

latino@luskin.ucla.edu

Media Inquiries

Ippipress@luskin.ucla.edu

Privacy Policy & Terms of Use

Photo of graduate courtesy of UCLA Law La Raza

© 2023 Latino Policy & Politics Institute, All rights reserved

© 2024 Latino Policy & Politics Institute, All rights reserved

Privacy Policy & Terms of Use

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