Transformative leader Alegría De La Cruz
joins DRLC as Director of Litigation

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 11, 2025 — The Disability Rights Legal Center (DRLC) is honored to welcome Alegría De La Cruz as the new head of our Civil Rights Litigation Program. Alegría brings to this role decades of personal and professional experience, as a thoughtful and strategic public servant, a creative legal scholar, and a lifelong advocate raised in the heart of the farmworker justice movement.

Before her education at Yale University and at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, she was introduced to the fight for social justice and equity through her family’s own leadership in the movement for farmworker justice. Born in Delano, California, Alegría has lived and worked across the country and in South East Asia. Her education, career, and personal life have developed her unique perspective, as she has led and learned from both grassroots organizing and board rooms.

“Alegría has a strong commitment to both defending people’s civil rights and cultivating a more equitable and just future,” Sylvia Torres-Guillén, DRLC President and CEO, said. “She represents the deepest core values on which DRLC was built at its founding in 1975, as well as the zeal, prowess, and wisdom that our team brings into our 50th year. We are honored to have Alegría at the forefront of our mission for transformative, lasting change for people with disabilities nationwide.”

Alegría’s deeply rooted commitment to social justice has led her to take on transformative roles at the Dolores Huerta Foundation, to enforce farmworker labor rights at the State of California, Agricultural Labor Relations Board and California Rural Legal Assistance, and to fight environmental injustice at the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. Prior to joining the team at DRLC this month, Alegría served as the founding Director of the Sonoma County Office of Equity, addressing racial disparities in health, wealth, and wellbeing in the County.

“We are incredibly fortunate to welcome Alegría to the team as Director of Litigation,” said Michael McDonough, Chair of DRLC’s Board of Directors. “Alegría’s decades-long commitment to social justice speaks for itself, in the excellence and fierceness that she brings to her work. On behalf of DRLC’s Board of Directors, we are excited to work alongside such an exceptional leader at the helm of our Civil Rights Litigation Program.”