• John Trasviña, President and General Counsel
• Gina Montoya, Chief Administrative Officer
• Araceli Simeón-Luna, National Parent School Partnership Director
• Ricardo Meza, Midwest Regional Counsel
• Nina Perales, Regional Counsel - San Antonio Office
• Cynthia A. Valenzuela, Director of Litigation - Los Angeles
• Etelvina De La Torre, National Director of Development
• Peter A. Zamora, Washington, D.C. Regional Counsel
• Nancy Ramirez, Western Regional Counsel
• Elise Shore, Atlanta Regional Counsel

Appointed MALDEF President and General Counsel in November 2006, Mr. Trasviña began his career at MALDEF in Washington, DC as a legislative attorney in 1985. He later worked for U.S. Senator Paul Simon as General Counsel & Staff Director for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution. In 1997, President Clinton appointed Mr. Trasviña as Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices. As Special Counsel, he led the only federal government office devoted solely to immigrant workplace rights. He was the highest ranking Latino attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice. After returning to California, he taught immigration law at Stanford Law School.

A highly sought after advocate, Mr. Trasviña testified in the last Congress before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in support of extension of the Voting Rights Act and before the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee against English Only legislation. In 2006, he was named Attorney of the Year by the Hispanic National Bar Association, as well as the San Francisco La Raza Lawyers Association. In 2007, Mr. Trasviña was named to Poder magazine's "The Poderosos 100," Latino Leaders magazine's "101 Top Leaders of the Hispanic Community," and Hispanic Trends identified him as a "Mover and Shaker."

A native of San Francisco, Mr. Trasviña is a graduate of Harvard University and Stanford Law School. Before coming to Los Angeles, he was a member of the San Francisco Elections Commission, president of the Harvard Club of San Francisco, and a board member of the La Raza Lawyers Association, CORO of Northern California, Lowell High School Alumni Association, League of Women Voters and Pacific Coast Immigration Museum. He serves on the boards of the Latino Issues Forum and Campaign for College Opportunity, is an elected member of the American Law Institute and was recently elected Chair of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda.

As Chief Administrative Officer, Gina Montoya is responsible for revamping MALDEF's communications, technology and human resource infrastructure. Gina brings nearly 20 years of experience in non profit management and legislative experience. She has served as the Chief of Staff for two mayors and a state senator. In those positions, she oversaw the operations of several offices with large staffs and varied constituencies.

In addition to managing the complexities of high constituency focused and high demand offices, she has extensive legislative experience, including policy advocacy. Gina has cultivated a vast network of invaluable contacts and community liaisons as well as corporate relationships. She has led and coordinated strategic planning, mobilized community advocacy outreach campaigns, coordinated multi-media communications and organized successful fundraisers.

Additionally, Gina was chief administrator for an internationally recognized Chicano arts non-profit organization and has served on several non-profit boards. She is a practicing artist and has exhibited her work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, UCLA's Wright Gallery and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Araceli Simeón-Luna is currently the National Director of the Parent School Partnership Program with MALDEF. She previously served as the Los Angeles Parent School Partnership Director, where she trained parents to become school and community leaders in order to ensure the educational success of their children.

Before joining MALDEF, Ms. Simeón-Luna worked for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO). There, she provided support to the Voces del Pueblo Program, a GOTV effort dedicated to increasing Latino voter turnout by targeting low propensity registered voters.

Ms. Simeón-Luna was born in Guadalajara, México and raised in Los Angeles. She received her undergraduate degree from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She will receive her Master's degree in Public Policy in December 2005 from the University of Southern California.

Ricardo Meza is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who began his legal career at MALDEF and has returned to lead the Midwest Regional Office. Based in Chicago, Meza is responsible for MALDEF litigation and public policy matters in 10 Midwestern states, focusing on education, employment, immigrants' rights and political access/voting rights issues for Latinos.

Meza brings over a dozen years of litigation experience in state and federal courts, primarily as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago and El Paso. In the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force and General Crimes Section, he prosecuted large scale narcotics trafficking, money laundering, health care fraud and other white collar fraud. His courtroom experience includes 31 federal criminal trials and numerous appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Meza was a MALDEF staff attorney in Chicago from 1991 to 1993.

Meza received his B.A. in Political Science from Illinois State University, and his law degree from John Marshall Law School, where he was President of the Hispanic Law Students Association. He is a board member of the Chicago Health Connection, Omni Youth Services and the Illinois State University Attorneys Advisory Council. He has received numerous awards, including the 2003 Merit Award from the Hispanic Illinois State Law Enforcement Association and the 2002 Distinguished Graduate Award for Community Service from Palatine High School.

Nina Perales is the Southwest Regional Counsel for MALDEF. In that role, she directs MALDEF's litigation, advocacy and public education in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and six additional southern and western states.

Ms. Perales specializes in voting rights litigation, including redistricting and vote dilution challenges. She served as lead counsel for Latino challengers to the Texas 2003 congressional redistricting plan and successfully argued that case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006.

Ms. Perales also served as lead counsel for Latino plaintiffs in the Texas 2001 redistricting litigation which secured a Texas House of Representatives plan containing an increase of four Latino-majority districts. Ms. Perales was lead counsel for Latino intervenors who successfully defended the Latino-majority Arizona Congressional District 4 against an attempt to dismantle it in 2003.

In addition to her own cases, Ms. Perales supervises the work of seven staff attorneys who conduct impact litigation and advocacy throughout the Southwest on behalf of Latinos in the areas of education, immigrant rights, employment discrimination and political access.

Prior to joining MALDEF, Ms. Perales served for five years as an Associate Counsel of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York City. In that capacity, Ms. Perales litigated federal cases in the area of government benefits and served as the Coordinator of MALDEF's Latina Rights Initiative.

Ms. Perales received a Bachelor's degree from Brown University in 1986 and earned her J.D. from Columbia University School of Law in 1990.

Cynthia A. Valenzuela is the Director of Litigation for MALDEF in the Los Angeles National Office. As Director of Litigation, she supervises the organization's 22 staff attorneys and coordinates litigation strategies nationwide.

Ms. Valenzuela was selected as one of California's "Top Women Litigators" in 2006, and as one of California's "Top 20 Attorneys Under Age 40" in 2008 by California's leading legal newspaper, the Daily Journal.

Prior to MALDEF, Ms. Valenzuela served for five years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California in the United States Attorney's Office's Public Corruption and Government Fraud Section. In 2003, the United States Attorney appointed Ms. Valenzuela as the Office's District Elections Officer. She has also served as a Trial Attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, where she enforced the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Ms. Valenzuela was formerly appointed as a Special Assistant to Cruz Reynoso when he was the Vice-Chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Ms. Valenzuela is a graduate of the University of Arizona and the UCLA School of Law. The daughter of a firefighter and a public school teacher, Ms. Valenzuela feels a deep commitment to public service and is proud to be a voice for her community as a MALDEF attorney.

Etelvina De La Torre is the National Director of Development for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF).

Ms. De La Torre has over 10 years experience in development. She has a proven track record in a variety of roles; managing, directing and building successful partnerships and relationships with foundations, corporations and high worth individuals to secure funding for non-profit organizations. Ms. De La Torre serves on the board of directors of Hispanic Americans for Fairness in the Media (HAFIM), La Familia Unida, Living with MS and the Mexican American Alumni Association (MAAA) at Loyola Marymount University.

Prior to joining MALDEF, Ms. De La Torre served as the director of development for Loyola Marymount University's Mexican American Alumni Association (MAAA) and Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles, where she developed and implemented a comprehensive development program to engage alumni, students, parents, business, and civic leaders in the mission and goals of the university. She successfully led MAAA and the Leavey Center in a capital campaign to position LMU as a university of national distinction by securing millions of dollars in funding.

During her tenure at LMU, Ms. De La Torre was instrumental in recruiting and mentoring Latino students to the Westchester Campus and Loyola Law School. Under her leadership, the MAAA program achieved national prominence. LMU was recognized by Kaplan/Newsweek as the University Hottest for Hispanics—due to the scholarship support the MAAA Program provides Latino students attending the university. In addition, through her diverse contacts in the Latino business community, she recruited key executives to serve on the Board of Trustees, Board of Regents and other advisory boards on campus.

As the Washington, D.C. Regional Counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), Peter Zamora develops, implements, and manages MALDEF’s federal legislative strategies regarding voting rights, federal education law and policy, immigration, and other matters. He serves as Co-Chair of the Hispanic Education Coalition, which unites 25 local and national organizations in support of improved educational opportunities for Latino students and families.

Mr. Zamora earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Berkeley, a teaching credential from the University of San Francisco, and a Juris Doctor from the Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to joining MALDEF, Mr. Zamora served as a bilingual-credentialed English teacher in California public schools, a legal consultant to the District of Columbia Public Schools, and an attorney in a private education law practice in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Zamora published "In Recognition of the Special Educational Needs of Low-Income Students: Ideological Discord and Its Effects upon the Elementary and Secondary Education Acts of 1965 through 2001" in the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy in 2003. In 2007, he published "English Language Learners and the No Child Left Behind Act: Implementation Failures Hinder Efforts to Eliminate Educational Disparities" in the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights’ publication, "The Erosion of Rights."

Nancy Ramirez is the Western Regional Counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the nation's leading Latino civil rights law firm. As Regional Counsel, she helps to determine the litigation and public policy priorities for the Western region, which includes California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Alaska and Hawaii. With a staff of four attorneys and five non-attorneys, the regional office represents Latinos in education, employment, voting rights, immigrants' rights and public resource equity cases. Ms. Ramirez also served as a voting rights staff attorney with MALDEF from 1991 - 1997.

From 2005 to 2007, Ms. Ramirez was the Executive Director of the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice (LACLJ), a nonprofit community law office in Boyle Heights that provides free legal services to indigent residents of Los Angeles County. She managed a staff of 17 and a budget of $1.1 million. From 2001 to 2005 she was the LACLJ's Managing Attorney for the Consumer Unit representing victims of consumer fraud. She also represented victims of domestic violence in their family law cases.

Ms. Ramirez was the Director of Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez's Orange County and Washington D.C. offices from 1997 to 1999 and Director of Outreach for California's 2000 Census Campaign. In addition, she taught legal writing at the University of Southern California Law School in 2003-2004.

She is a 1990 graduate of Harvard Law School and 1987 graduate of U.C. Berkeley.

Ms. Shore began her legal career as a law clerk to the Honorable Jaime Pieras, Jr. in the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. In 1995, Ms. Shore became a Fulbright Scholar and Professor of Law at La Universidad "Dr. José Matías Delgado" in El Salvador. As a Fulbright Professor, she lectured and presented seminars on oral advocacy and the United States legal system. Ms. Shore most recently served in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice investigating, litigating, and settling cases under a variety of civil rights statutes including the Fair Housing Act, Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act.

Ms. Shore received her Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan and her law degree from Georgetown University. She was a Dean Rusk Fellow at the University of Georgia Brussels Seminar on the Law and Institutions of the European Community. Ms. Shore is a member of the Board of D.C. Teatro de Danza Contemporánea de El Salvador.