Anamaria Loya - Executive Director

Anamaria is a graduate from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Halls School of Law. At Boalt Hall, she was active with the La Raza Law Students Association, the La Raza Law Journal, the Coalition for a Diversified Faculty, and student government. Upon graduation, she joined the law firm of O’Melveny and Myers in Los Angeles where she focused on youth and immigrant rights. While at O’Melveny and Myers, Anamaria worked with a program providing mentorship and guidance to incarcerated youth. She participated as a lead delegate of a Human Rights Delegation investigating human rights abuses on the San Diego/Tijuana border.

Anamaria returned to the Bay Area to work with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, specializing in bilingual education, affirmative action, racial and gender equality, and disability rights. During this time, Anamaria also founded a Saturday school staffed and operated by volunteer attorneys who worked with African American and Latino youth struggling within the Oakland public schools. She also was a founding editor of a Latino youth magazine called Fuerza created by and for Latino junior high and high school students. Through these efforts, Anamaria worked with youth to develop strategies for achieving social justice grounded in grassroots community activism.

In 1995, Anamaria joined the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) as an education civil rights attorney. At MALDEF, she worked with her colleagues to challenge the implementation of Proposition 187 and also provided legal guidance and education regarding affirmative action programs and policies in the state. In 1996, she was recruited to join La Raza Centro Legal and direct the Youth Law Project. Soon thereafter, she became La Raza Centro Legal’s first woman Executive Director.

Anamaria focuses on developing and implementing strategies to achieve social change, which extend beyond traditional methods of legal representation. She believes in incorporating community-based leadership and grassroots organizing into all aspects of social justice lawyering.

She is a board member of the Institute for Multi-racial Justice, Good Samaritan Family Resource Center, and the Mission Asset Fund. She is a Leaderspring Fellow and a Women’s Leadership Circle Fellow.