Early in her career, Jacinta S. Ma was a legal fellow at the Asian American Justice Center and has returned to become deputy director. Prior to working at AAJC, Ms. Ma was senior advisor to Commissioner Stuart J. Ishimaru at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) where she advised the Commissioner on policy and litigation matters involving employment discrimination and administrative law. When Commissioner Ishimaru was appointed acting chairman of the EEOC, Ms. Ma coordinated the activities of several of EEOC’s headquarter offices.
Ms. Ma also served as senior policy advisor in the Office of First Lady Michelle Obama working on matters related to childhood obesity, mentoring and other priorities of the First Lady.
She has a wide-range of experience as a civil rights attorney through her work at The Civil Rights Project at Harvard Law School on issues as diverse as voluntary desegregation in schools and transportation equity; as an assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office where she litigated housing discrimination and bias-motivated threats or intimidation cases; and as special assistant to the executive director of President Clinton’s Initiative on Race which aimed to bridge racial divides and promote a constructive national dialogue to confront and work through challenging issues that surround race.
Ms. Ma was a law clerk to Judge Stewart Dalzell in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and received her J.D. from New York University School of Law and her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.
