María Blanco is executive director of the University of California Immigrant Legal Services Center. Launched in November 2014, the center provides legal services to undocumented students on nine UC campuses. She was elected to PPIC’s Board of Directors in 2010 and also serves on the board of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission. Before she assumed her current position, she was vice president of civic engagement at the California Community Foundation. Previously, she served as executive director of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity at UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law, and before that as executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. She was counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (1998–2003). She served on President Barack Obama’s transition team. Her undergraduate and law degrees are both from the University of California, Berkeley.