Board of Trustees

Abriendo Caminos.

Sylvia Torres-Guillén
President

Sylvia Torres-Guillén, a native of East Los Angeles (Boyle Heights), and the daughter of Mexican immigrant parents, believes that personal success consists of both private accomplishment and public service. She has dedicated her educational and legal career to achieving that success.

Through a private educational program called A Better Chance, Ms. Torres-Guillen, at 15 years old, left home to attend and graduate, in 1984, from a boarding school, The Cate School. She earned the first college degree in her family, graduating from Harvard University in 1988 with an A.B. in Government. After Harvard, she worked at the Center for Law in the Public Interest in Los Angeles. In 1992, she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. While in law school, she worked at the Berkeley Community Law Center, the Contra Costa County Public Defender’s Office and Morrison & Foerster, LLP.

Ms. Torres-Guillén has worked with the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Central District of California in Los Angeles for over sixteen years and specializes in federal criminal defense, including complex white collar fraud, drug trafficking, bank robbery, immigration, and computer crimes. Ms. Torres-Guillén has served as counsel in 35 federal criminal trials, including the first internet hate crime case prosecuted by the federal government in the country, and she has also argued before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She recently successfully defended Ms. Debra Hoffman in the public corruption and witness tampering trial against Ms. Hoffman and former Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona. She served as Acting Director of the office’s Orange County branch, which she supervised for six months. Ms. Torres-Guillén has taught trial advocacy at Loyola Law School and traveled to Venezuela to train lawyers and judges during the country’s transformation to an adversarial judicial system. She serves as a temporary judge for the Los Angeles Superior Court of California. She has served for over ten years on the Board of the Mexican-American Bar Foundation, and she is also a member of the Hispanic National Bar Association, the Mexican American Bar Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice.

She is married to Victor R. Cannon and they have two young daughters, Chloe Magdalena and Gabriela Joelle.

Elizabeth Camacho

Elizabeth A. Camacho is Of Counsel at Greenberg Traurig LLP where she practices in the area of land use permitting and related litigation. Ms. Camacho graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Oberlin College in 1989 and received her J.D. in 1994 from UC Berkeley School of Law, where she was Co-Editor in Chief of La Raza Law Journal. Prior to attending law school, Ms. Camacho was a California State Senate Fellow and a legislative assistant for the California Select Committee on Courthouse Construction and Financing. Ms. Camacho provides pro bono assistance with the Alliance for Children’s Rights and is a member of the Board of Trustees and chair of the Diversity Committee for Sequoyah School in Pasadena.

Courtney Chavez

Courtney Chavez is an associate with Jones Day, where she focuses on white collar criminal defense. She received her J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2007, graduating with honors. Ms. Chavez attended Pomona College in Claremont, California and obtained her B.A. degree in Science, Technology and Society/Public Policy Analysis in 2002. Ms. Chavez was born and raised in Austin, TX before moving to Los Angeles. She credits the women she tutored at a community based prison for starting her on a path to law school.

Erika J. Diaz

Erika J. Diaz graduated from UCLA in 1999 with a B.A. in Political Science and J.D. from Southwestern University School of Law in 2005. Ms. Diaz has worked as a law clerk at Bet Tzedek Legal Services, in their Workers Rights Clinic, as an intern for Judge Teresa Sanchez-Gordon of the Los Angeles Superior Court and worked as a staff attorney at Holguin, Garfield, & Martinez, APLC, a Labor Law firm. She also volunteers with Neighborhood Legal Services.

Christine Diaz-Herrera

Christine Diaz-Herrera is an Associate with the law firm Sidley Austin LLP, where she practices complex civil litigation and white collar criminal defense. She received her J.D. from UC Berkeley Law School in 2008. Ms. Diaz-Herrera obtained her B.A. from UC Santa Cruz in 2000 in Politics and Legal Studies. She is the former Managing Editor of the Berkeley Law Raza Law Journal and Co-Chair of the Berkeley Law Raza Law Students Association. Ms. Diaz-Herrera is a native of Los Angeles, and grew up in Whittier.

Elisa Fernandez

Elisa Fernandez has been an Assistant United States Attorney since 2000. She has worked at Quinn, Emanuel and was a Skadden Public Interest Attorney with MALDEF. She has served as an Adjunct Professor teaching trial advocacy at Loyola Law School and will teach at Southwestern Law School in the Spring of 2010. Ms. Fernandez received her A.B., magna cum laude, from Harvard University in 1988 and her J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law in 1994. Ms. Fernandez served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Richard A. Paez, then of the United States District Court, and the Honorable Harry Pregerson of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Her parents are from Coahuila and Baja California, Mexico.

Ivette Peña

Ivette Peña is Court Counsel for the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles. In that capacity, she is primarily responsible for advising the Court on employment, labor and personnel matters involving the Court’s 5,500 employees. Prior to joining the Court, Ms. Peña worked with the San Francisco-based school law firm of Miller, Brown & Dannis where she represented school districts and community colleges. She received her law degree from Harvard Law School and her undergraduate degrees in Economics and Urban Studies from Brown University.

Josephine A. Sanchez

Josephine A. Sanchez attended UCLA where she received her B.A. in History and Political Science. She received her J.D. from the UCLA School of Law. Ms. Sanchez is currently Staff Counsel for State Compensation Insurance Fund where she practices in the area of insurance defense. She is the recipient of the 2006 State Compensation Insurance Fund Award for Corporate Excellence. She is a mentor with the Los Angeles County Bar Association High School Mentoring Program for the Wilson High School Law Magnet program. Ms. Sanchez served as a trustee with the Mexican American Bar Association from 1999 through 2000.

Marina A. Torres

Marina A. Torres is a litigation associate at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP. She joined the firm in 2008 after graduating from Stanford Law School. While at Stanford, she was on the Executive Board of the Stanford Law Review and served as Co-President of the Stanford Latino Law Students Association. Ms. Torres externed for Judge Dale Fischer of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and the Immigrants'Rights Project of the Northern California ACLU. She has published two articles on human rights. Before attending law school, she worked as an AmeriCorps volunteer for the Illinois Migrant Assistance Project at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago. She graduated with honors from UC Berkeley, majoring in Political Science, Rhetoric and Ethnic Studies. She spent a summer as a Presidential Support Analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, and was also a research assistant specializing in Latin American affairs at the Berkeley Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Study Center. Ms. Torres is a first-generation, native Spanish speaker with family roots in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico.

Gladdys J. Uribe

Gladdys J. Uribe practices immigration law as an associate with the Law Office of Enrique Arevalo. She graduated cum laude from Occidental College in 2002 with a B.A. in Sociology. She graduated from the UCLA School of Law in 2006. While at UCLA, Gladdys served as the co-chair of the La Raza Law Student Association and as an Articles Editor for the Chicano-Latino Law Review. Gladdys currently serves on the boards of the Mexican American Bar Association and the Marco Antonio Firebaugh Dream Fund.

Yvette Verastegui

Irma Rodriguez

To contact us:
P.O. Box 86488, Los Angeles, CA 90086
Phone: 323-683-6875, E-mail: llbalosangeles@aol.com