LOS ANGELES — Antonia Hernandez, president and CEO of California Community Foundation, announced Friday that she would be retiring from her position during a special recognition of her work by the Los Angeles City Council.
“Let’s celebrate all the wonderful things about L.A. while acknowledging the challenges,” Hernandez said. “I am not retiring. I’m reclaiming my time to do whatever I want to do with whomever I want to do it.”
Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez led the presentation and highlighted Hernandez’s life and career. The councilwoman described Hernandez as a “remarkable leader that has broken down barriers for decades.”
Rodriguez alongside her colleagues thanked Hernandez for her many years of contributions to the city and whose work has been “revolutionary in ensuring justice for communities of color.”
Hernandez, an attorney, activist and philanthropist, is the current president and CEO of the California Community Foundation, a nonprofit that provides funding for organizations throughout Southern California.
She graduated from Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, attended East Los Angeles Community College and eventually earned her bachelors in history from the University of California Los Angeles. Hernandez later earned her JD from UCLA School of Law.
“Antonia showed interest in civic engagement from a very young age, commencing her political activism during the Civil Rights and Chicano movement of the 1960s,” Rodriguez said.
“In her noteworthy legal career, she started as a staff attorney at the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice, where she prosecuted landmark cases such as the class action lawsuit Madrigal v. Quilligan in 1978.”
Hernandez fought against the alleged uncontested sterilization of Latina immigrant women in California. Though the case was not won, Rodriguez said Hernandez’s work “paved the way for medical reform in the state by requiring informed consent for non-English speaking…
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