Cynthia Lucas is a founding Partner at Lucas & Barba LLP in Los Angeles, handling a range of removal defense, special immigrant & family-based immigration law matters, including U visas, VAWA, Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) petitions, consular processing and waivers. Ms. Lucas a graduate of the University of San Francisco & the University of California Berkeley. She is a first-generation Latina whose parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico and Nicaragua. Her past experience includes extensive public interest work as a nonprofit attorney, including work for the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, and, as an Associate Attorney at a prominent private firm, handling family-based & employment-based immigration matters. In addition to her legal practice, she has served as Adjunct Faculty at the University of Southern California Price School of Public Policy where she has taught Immigration Policy. She is recognized as a Top Woman Lawyer by the Southern California Super Lawyers publication in the field of immigration law, is a 2014 recipient of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) Advocacy Award, and has been a speaker at various conferences and trainings for the Federal Bar Association, AILA, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the L.A. County Bar Association, the National Network of Hospital-based Violence Intervention Programs, as well as other community groups and school venues. She has been called upon as national expert on U nonimmigrant, VAWA, and SIJ matters by such agencies as the Office of the Federal Public Defender and various nonprofit organizations. She has served on the Executive Committee for the AILA SoCal Chapter, as an Elected Director on the AILA National Board of Governors, and has served and continues to serve on AILA National Committees. Ms. Lucas also currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Los Angeles Center for Law & Justice.