Lourdes A. Rivera is the President of Pregnancy Justice where she leads a team to ensure that no one loses their rights because of pregnancy by advocating for and defending people charged with pregnancy-related crimes and other rights violations. This includes combating the escalating threats since the fall of Roe v. Wade, advocating for the rights and full personhood of all pregnant people, cultivating deeper partnerships, and ensuring that the powerful voices of those with most at stake are at the table.
She recently was a Senior Vice President at the Center for Reproductive Rights, where she led the Center’s legal and policy programs in the U.S. During her tenure, she oversaw implementation of multi-prong approaches for Supreme Court, lower federal court, and state court cases, as well as efforts to adopt federal and state legislation to ensure the rights and access to abortion, assisted reproduction, and maternal health. She was also an adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, where she guest lectured and taught a graduate level course in Health and Human Rights.
Prior to joining the Center in January 2017, Lourdes served as a Senior Program Officer at the Ford Foundation, where she designed and implemented their U.S. and global grantmaking strategy in sexual and reproductive health and rights, using an intersectional social justice and human rights approach. Before joining Ford, she was a Managing Attorney at the National Health Law Program and specialized in issues relating to low-income people’s access to health care in the Medicaid program, as well as in managed care and women’s and children’s health. Previously, she worked as a Senior Associate with the Children’s Defense Fund, Health Division, and a Georgetown Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow with the National Women’s Law Center, where she co-led a Women in Prison Project at the Lorton Virginia Minimum Security Annex.
Lourdes is a Fellow with the American Bar Foundation and has received a presidential committee appointment as a member of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Coalition on Racial and Ethnic Justice. She is a former Council Member of the ABA’s Civil Rights and Social Justice Section (formerly Individual Rights and Responsibilities) and former co-chair of the Section’s Health Rights and Bioethics Committee.
She is currently President of the Brush Foundation and a Board member of the National Health Law Program. Lourdes is a co-founder and former Board chair of California Latinas for Reproductive Justice; former member of the Management Circle of Sister Song Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective; former Board Chair of the National Women’s Health Network; and a co-founder and former Board Member of the Groundswell Fund.
Lourdes has a J.D. from Yale Law School and a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Yale University.
