Rising Stars
Rising Stars: Cynthia Alvarez, Chief of Staff to Sen. Lena Gonzalez
For Cynthia Alvarez, chief of staff to Sen. Lena Gonzalez, has had an affinity for helping people since her childhood growing up in Inglewood.
For Cynthia Alvarez, chief of staff to Sen. Lena Gonzalez, has had an affinity for helping people since her childhood growing up in Inglewood.
Growing up in San Ysidro, just this side of the California-Mexico border, Lucia Saldivar thought she was going to be a musician, like her father. “Music always helped me make sense of the world and my community,” she says. “Then in high school, I learned a new language to help make sense of the world around me, and that was politics and policy.”
Lim describes herself as a problem solver, a decision maker, and as someone who enjoys being intellectually challenged. She evaluates her career based on whether these attributes are encouraged and whether her opinions are respected. That, Allison said, is how she ended up working with Assemblymember Lee.
In just a few years out of college, Shubhangi Domokos became a chief of staff for first, a state assemblymember and then one of the largest labor federations in the country.
Nancy McFadden, who died late Thursday at 59 from ovarian cancer, was the perfect high-level staffer — discreet, smart, and possessed of a wide range of knowledge along with a keen political antenna. As unknown to the public as she was important in California’s government, McFadden literally ran the state’s mammoth bureaucracy day-to-day.