Dr. Gabriela D. Lemus is the first woman to hold the position of Executive Director at the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA).

Lemus is the co-founder of the National Latino Coalition on Climate Change (NLCCC) and presently serves as its Vice-Chair. Dr. Lemus is also the Chair of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA)- a non-partisan national association of the nation's most prominent Latino organizations from throughout the United States and Puerto Rico, formed to present a platform on the major issues facing the Latino community and the nation as a whole.

Prior to her work with LCLAA, she was Director of Policy and Legislation at the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Prior to her work at LULAC, Dr. Lemus was an adjunct professor at the University of Memphis, San Diego State University, and the University of San Diego. While at LULAC, Dr. Lemus founded the LULAC Democracy Initiative Voter Project, a national Hispanic civic participation campaign focused on voter education, registration and get-out-the-vote.


Currently, in her work at LCLAA, Dr. Lemus advocates for Latino workers and families, with a specific focus on issues related to globalization, trade, and immigration; U.S.-Latin American relations, and ending border militarization and vigilantism among others. She is the founder of Latinos for a Secure Retirement - a campaign to fight the privatization of Social Security and has begun ground-breaking work on universal health care reform, climate change and job growth.


Under both the Clinton and Bush administrations, she was invited to travel to Nicaragua and Argentina to promote democracy and civil society participation.


Dr. Lemus is a Commissioner on the recently launched Commission to Engage African Americans on Climate Change (CEAC). She also serves on the Board of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the United States Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP).


Dr. Lemus has been an outspoken advocate for Latino issues appearing in both English and Spanish language media outlets, including CNN, CNN en Espanol, NBC's Hardball, Fox's Neil Cavuto, Univision and NBC-Telemundo among others.

She received her doctorate in International Relations from the University of Miami in 1998.


Hector Sanchez Hector E. Sanchez is the Director of Policy and Research for LCLAA (Labor Council for Latin American Advancement). He has worked in education and non-profit organizations, and has over 10 years of policy, research and community outreach experience. Prior to coming to LCLAA, Sanchez worked at Global Exchange as the DC-Mexico Policy Education Coordinator, the DC point person of a bi-national team doing policy education, research, media, community, and strategy work on the US-Mexico relationship. He was also the Policy and Community Liaison for the Education Trust, where he created the Latino initiative for the organization with the goal of improving public education for the immigrant and Latino community throughout the nation. He was also a professor of US-Mexico Relations at the Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez.

Working for the last decade in education, labor, human rights and immigration policy, Sanchez has been deeply engaged in the Latino community and the ongoing efforts to secure equal rights and opportunities for the largest minority group in the nation. Through research, lobbying, conducting data analysis, presenting and reaching out to the community through various media outlets, he has informed the public on the importance of equity for Latinos.

His opinions and letters have been published in the Washington Post, the Economist, Common Dreams, Open Left and several media outlets in Spanish. He holds a Bachelors and Masters degree in Political Science from the University of Texas.

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