ADDITIONAL LINKS
What
excites you most about joining the University of California, Irvine
School of Law?
It is a rare and exciting opportunity to be part of building a new
institution. Most educational institutions have to overcome decades
of outmoded practices in order to innovate. In contrast, we get to
start fresh and define the culture and community of the law school
for the first time. This challenge alone ensures that we will attract
forward-looking and adventuresome intellectual leaders to our faculty
and to our student body. I think we’re in for a great ride.
Describe a favorite
pro bono project.
I was appointed to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Board
by Mayor Villaraigosa at a time when the agency was under fire for
poor management and there was tremendous public focus on Skid Row.
The biennial homeless persons count had just determined there were
more than 80,000 homeless people in the city and county of Los Angeles.
As I and my fellow commissioners worked to stabilize the agency, I
began to visit organizations that provide services to homeless people
in Skid Row. I thought hanging out in Skid Row would be depressing,
and it is, but to my surprise I also often left the Row feeling inspired.
It is a neighborhood where one can witness both wretchedness and kindness—people
in their worst state and people representing the very best of human
nature.
- University of Washington, MPA, 1986
- University of California, Santa Barbara, B.A., political science, international relations emphasis, 1983
- Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Association of Public Policy and Management Summer Institute, 1984
- Instituto Cultural, Oaxaca, Mexico, winter 1991
- University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication, senior associate dean, administration and finance
- Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, executive director
- Common Cause, Washington, D.C., associate director, grassroots lobbying
- Governor Booth Gardner, state of Washington, executive policy analyst
- Common Cause, Washington, D.C., press assistant
- At USC Annenberg, Ávila served as a senior administrative staff member in a school with a budget of approximately $50 million, 70 full-time faculty, 90 adjunct faculty and 110 staff members. As executive director of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, she helped found and build an innovative local government agency charged with administering and enforcing campaign finance, ethics and lobbying laws.
- Present:
- Southern California American Civil Liberties Union, board member
- Center for Governmental Studies, board member
- Democracy 21, board member
- Past:
- Common Cause, national governing board
- Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Commission, chair
- California Common Cause Board, chair
- Los Angeles Police Commission
- Los Angeles City League of Women Voters, board member
- United Way of Greater Los Angeles, Community Services Council
- Coalition of Minority Policy Professionals, Washington, D.C., co-founder
- California State University, Dominguez Hills, School of Public Administration, advisory board