Contact:
Shivani Sutaria
Equal Rights Advocates
415-575-2395

Equal Rights Advocates’ Executive Director Receives ABA Margaret Brent Award

ERA’s executive director, Irma D. Herrera, has been chosen as a recipient of the prestigious Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award by the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Commission on Women in the Profession. Ms. Herrera will be presented with the Margaret Brent Award on August 5, 2001 at a special luncheon during the American Bar Association’s Annual Meeting in Chicago.

The Margaret Brent Award honors the accomplishments of women lawyers who have excelled in their field and paved the way to success for other women lawyers. The award was established in 1991 and named after Margaret Brent (1601-1671), the first woman lawyer in America.

Ms. Herrera was chosen as a recipient of the Margaret Brent Award for her unwavering commitment to the pursuit of social justice under the law for all women and people of color. Ms. Herrera began her legal career as a public interest lawyer at Evergreen Legal Services, representing Spanish-speaking migrant farm workers throughout Washington State. In 1980, Ms. Herrera joined Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund as a staff attorney and the director of education programs. In the mid-1980’s Ms. Herrera worked as a freelance journalist – investigating and reporting on legal and cultural issues. Her articles appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and Ms. Magazine. For a time, she taught Law and Social Justice at Colorado College, and Education Law at California State University Sacramento. Ms. Herrera also practiced law in San Francisco at the law firms of Nossaman, Gunther, Knox & Elliot and Severson, Werson, Berke & Melchior. In 1991, Ms. Herrera joined Multicultural Education and Training Advocacy, a non-profit legal advocacy firm that represents minority and poor children on education-related issues, as a staff attorney and development director.

Since 1995 Ms. Herrera has served as the executive director of Equal Rights Advocates, a civil rights organization dedicated to advancing equal opportunity for women and girls through litigation. Throughout the 6 years of her directorship, she has applied her extensive legal and nonprofit knowledge in guiding the organization’s programmatic direction, demonstrated her capacity for leadership under pressure as she navigated the organization through various transitions and unexpected challenges, and has used her fundraising finesse to secure the support of funders.

Ms. Herrera’s fellow 2001 Margaret Brent Award recipients are Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Mary Schroeder, the Honorable Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, Laurel Bellows and Marna Tucker. Past Bay Area recipients include ERA’s co-founder and former executive director Nancy L. Davis, Former Boalt Hall Dean Herma Hill Kay and Stanford Professor Barbara Allen Babcock. Other past recipients have included Drucilla Stender Ramey, Professor Lani Guinier, Professor Anita Hill, Congresswoman Pat Schroeder, and U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor.

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