Board of Directors

MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) is the leading civil rights voice of the Latino community.

Irma Rodriguez Moisa

Board Chair

Partner
Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Rudd, & Romo
(Cerritos, CA)

Irma Rodríguez Moisa is a partner with Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo, a California full-service law firm and serves as the Partner in Charge of the Firm’s headquarters office in Cerritos. Ms. Rodríguez Moisa is an experienced litigator and accomplished trial attorney. Ms. Rodríguez Moisa is also an accomplished labor negotiator and has negotiated hundreds of agreements with the full cross-section of public sector unions. She has received statewide recognition for the outstanding results she helped obtain on behalf of clients in their most complex and sensitive matters. She has been named to the Daily Journal’s lists of Top Women Lawyers, Top Women Litigators, Top Labor & Employment Attorneys, and Top 25 Municipal Lawyers in California. Every year since 2004, Ms. Rodríguez Moisa has been recognized as a Super Lawyer by Southern California Super Lawyers magazine. In 2021, Ms. Rodríguez Moisa was the proud recipient of the Madge M. Blakey Award of Excellence, awarded by the CALPELRA's Board of Directors.

Ms. Rodríguez Moisa earned two degrees from U.C. Berkeley: a B.S. in business administration from the Haas School of Business and J.D. from the Berkeley Law School.   Ms. Rodriguez Moisa also holds a M.P.P. degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.  Ms. Rodriguez Moisa also previously served as a Staff Attorney at MALDEF upon her graduation from law school.

1st Vice Chair

Regina Montoya
Attorney
City of Dallas
(Dallas, TX)

2nd Vice Chair

Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
Senator
New Mexico State Senate
(Albuquerque, NM)

3rd Vice Chair

Maria Gabriela “Gaby” Pacheco
Program Director
TheDream.US
(Miami, FL)

Secretary / Treasurer
Fiscal & Investment Committee Chair

Jeffrey Garcia
Vice President
Capital Group
(Los Angeles, CA)

Governance & Nominations Chair

Jorge A. Herrera
Attorney
The Herrera Law Firm
(San Antonio, TX)

Audit Committee Chair

Michael Wampold
Partner
Peterson Wampold Rosato Feldman Luna
(Seattle, WA)

Development Committee Chair

Emilio Gonzalez
Executive Director, Public Policy & Strategic Alliances
Verizon
(Washington, DC)

Program & Planning Chair

Anna Maria Chavez
President & CEO
Arizona Community Foundation
(Phoenix, AZ)

MPMC Chair

Hector Cuellar
President,
Gassó Capital Markets​
(Newport Coast, CA)

President & General Counsel

Thomas A. Saenz
(Los Angeles, CA)

Members

Maria Blanco
Executive Director
University of California Davis Law School, Immigrant Legal Services Center
(Davis, CA)

Yolanda Camarena
Board Member
Kansas Hispanic Education and Development Foundation;
Chair of the Schools and Scholarship Committee of Harvard College
(Wichita, KS)

Norma Cantú
Professor of Law and Education
University of Texas at Austin
(Austin, TX)

Anna Maria Chavez
President & CEO
Arizona Community Foundation
(Phoenix, AZ)

Elisa de la Vara
Former Chief Community Officer
Arizona Community Foundation
(Phoenix, AZ)

Stella M. Flores
Associate Professor Departmentof Educational Leadership and Policy
University of Texas at Austin College of Education
(Austin, TX)

Luis Ricardo Fraga
Rev. Donald P. McNeill, C.S.C.,
Professor of Transformative Latino Leadership
Director, Institute for Latino Studies at University of Notre Dame
(Notre Dame, IN)

Phil Fuentes
Owner and Operator
McDonald’s 
(Chicago, IL)

Joe Garcia
Chancellor
Colorado Community College System
(Denver, CO)

Laura E. Gomez
Rachel F. Moran Endowed Chair in Law,
UCLA Department pf Sociology;
Department of Chicano & Central American Studies
(Los Angeles, CA)

Emilio Gonzalez
Executive Director, Public Policy & Strategic Alliances
Verizon
(Washington, DC)

Jorge A. Herrera
Attorney
The Herrera Law Firm
(San Antonio, TX)

Bill Lann Lee
Senior Counsel
Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center (CREEC)
(Berkeley, CA)

Raul Lomeli-Azoubel
Executive Chairman & Co-Founder
SABEResPODER
(San Antonio, TX)

Elizabeth V. Lopez
Chief of Staff to the President & Senior Managing Counsel
Global Competition and Alliances
United Airlines, Inc.
(Chicago, IL)

R. Omar Riojas
Partner
Goldfarb & Huck, Roth, Riojas, PLLC
(Seattle, WA)

Irma Rodriguez Moisa
Partner
Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud, & Romo
(Cerritos, CA)

Jose Sanchez
Senior Managing Director
Deloitte Global
(Los Angeles, CA)

Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
Senator
New Mexico State Senate
(Albuquerque, NM)

Carlos R. Soltero
Partner
Soltero Sapire Murrell PLLC
(Austin, TX)

Michael Wampold
Partner
Peterson Wampold Rosato Feldman Luna
(Seattle, WA)

Ronald W. Wong
President/CEO
Imprenta Communications Group
(Los Angeles, CA)

As Donald Trump passed 500 days in the White House earlier in June, the parameters of the administration’s approach to critical issues of concern to the Latino community have become even clearer. After 500 days, Trump has failed to nominate a single Latino to a federal court of appeals vacancy. After 500 days, Trump has continued regularly to demonize, with false facts and vile rhetoric, all immigrants, particularly Latino immigrants. After 500 days, Trump has embarked on a federal policy of violently separating minor children from their refuge-seeking parents in the name of “zero tolerance.” After 500 days, Trump seeks to expand family detention, an inhumane abomination, and continues to demand that United States taxpayers pay for an ineffective and unnecessary wall at the southern border. After 500 days, Trump still champions a discriminatory Muslim ban, securing a bare-majority Supreme Court ruling allowing the continued influence of bigotry in immigration policy, which has historically harmed Latinos more than anyone else. After 500 days, the Trump administration has proven to be the most anti-Latino presidential administration in our history.

After 500 days under this administration of our own work to forge a different path for our nation, MALDEF continues to strive, in court and out, to promote civil rights and constitutional values. To resist and to lead. Below, we highlight just a few of our activities to promote the right to vote and to defend our national principles of fairness and equity in treatment of all immigrants. Work like that described below will continue and expand as MALDEF fulfills its unique role – to be the legal voice that helps to enable the Latino community, despite efforts of the Trump administration to prevent many of us from even being counted in the decennial Census, to lead our nation to a more promising future of inclusion and equity.