Career Activist Brings Civil-Rights Passion to Community Fund

For more than 20 years, Antonia Hernández has been fighting to protect the rights of Mexican- Americans. Now she is about to leave behind the day-to-day legal and advocacy battles she waged as head of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and become head of the California Community Foundation, one of the largest community foundations in the country.

Although the Los Angeles community foundation is just seven blocks away from the national headquarters of the legal-defense fund, Ms. Hernández, 55, will take on very different responsibilities than she had at the fund, which she has led since 1985.

While at the legal-defense fund, Ms. Hernández, who was born in Mexico but moved to Los Angeles when she was 7, has waged campaigns to create city and state voting districts that fairly represent Mexican-Americans, battled the nomination of federal judges who are not seen as supporters of civil rights, and, most memorably, headed a successful legal campaign against Proposition 187, a California state measure that would have denied education and health benefits to undocumented immigrants.

The thought of no longer being involved in national and state advocacy campaigns was a hard one for Ms. Hernández to come to terms with, but she says it was balanced by the opportunity to have the financial power to help transform the city of Los Angeles.

“My current position allows me to participate in many national activities, but I am passionate about Los Angeles,” she says. “I’ve always loved L.A. I know some people cannot understand that, but I’ve been here since 1956. I’m really looking forward to getting to know more of it, its more diverse communities, and really deepen my roots here.”

Ms. Hernández, who will be paid $240,000 a year, already knows plenty about foundations. She is a board member of the Rockefeller Foundation, in New York, and she assumed a seat on the board of the California Community Foundation a year ago.

Jack Shakely, who is retiring as the foundation’s executive director, knew Ms. Hernández long before she came to sit on the community foundation’s board. The foundation had contributed to the legal-defense fund’s drive to finance a headquarters building in downtown Los Angeles and to the creation of its Fund for New Americans, which helped illegal immigrants gain U.S. citizenship in the mid-1980s.

Under Ms. Hernández, the fund not only established new headquarters, but also created offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Sacramento, and Washington.

Mr. Shakely, who led the foundation as it grew from managing $20-million in assets to more than $600-million, said he expects that Ms. Hernández will be able to take it past the $1-billion mark. He says he has already gotten a chance to see what kind of fund raiser she is because as soon as she joined the foundation’s board, she volunteered to sit on the development committee.

“My staff and I were looking at each other like, ‘Oh, boy, we’ve got a piece of gold here,’” Mr. Shakely says, adding that many people want to avoid the social awkwardness involved in asking other people for money.

Ms. Hernández does not have such concerns: “I don’t feel any shame in asking people for money when I know it’s going to do some good.”

The Chronicle spoke with Ms. Hernández about her new position.

Why are you leaving the defense fund?

It’s been a fabulous opportunity for me, to be in the forefront of a lot of civil-rights issues as an advocate, as a litigator. But the community foundation will allow me to continue to be a voice, only in a different way. I look at it as a way for me to get involved with many organizations, some that are like Maldef, that are working to improve things for people from a rights-based perspective, and others like housing groups, which are addressing another pressing need, and it will allow me to give those organizations the opportunity to do that. It’s true that it will be from a different perspective, from a local and regional perspective, and instead of litigating and advocating, I will be enabling organizations to continue their work.

What is your view of the foundation’s role?

I see the foundation as truly living up to its name — that is, its role is as a partner with community organizations that are trying to improve the life of the community. It’s an arm to reach out to those who have wealth and are charitable, and to turn around and distribute those resources. The CCF is very involved in the issue of building housing for low-income individuals. And they’re very interested in getting health care to the poor and uninsured, to job and neighborhood enrichment. Particularly in Los Angeles — because it’s so diverse, it’s the home of immigrants from all over the world — we need to think about how we integrate them into American society. And that’s something I deeply care about, and I’m glad the foundation supports those kinds of initiatives.

Are you going to miss the combat?

I wouldn’t be honest if I said no. Being involved in civil rights for over 30 years, it’s a big change. But it’s not a change in the sense that you’re dealing with the same universe of individuals, the ones who believe in philanthropy and community. I’ll run into them again, but it will just be from a different perspective.

Another thing I’m going to miss is that my current job involves a lot of writing for journals. I’m involved in the cutting-edge issues of my profession. That’s the nature of my position as a lawyer. It’s going to be different at the foundation. I’ll have to find out how writing fits into that new position, but I hope to be adding to the issues surrounding philanthropy.

How do you anticipate the transition from social activism to community builder will go?

It was the toughest question they asked me during interviews, but it was easy to respond to. A lot of my involvement in activities is not limited to Latino rights or civil rights. I’m on the Rockefeller Foundation board, a lot of corporate boards. I’ve been involved in a lot of activities that are very broad-based, that are not involved in civil rights or the rights of Latinos. It’s been a broad portfolio. That’s not to take away from the fact that I am the head of Maldef, but that’s not all that I am.

How will your experiences affect the way you distribute grants?

I will be much more attuned to the needs of the grant seekers because I have been a grant seeker. I’ll be attuned to some of the difficulties that small not-for-profits have with their infrastructure. I’ll be looking at what we demand of seekers. How do we approach them? Are our processes friendly and accessible? They function on a shoestring a lot of the time, and we tend to make applications complicated. Do we need that information? As a grant seeker, someone who has been on that side of the fence, I’ll continue to look at the world from their perspective.

It might be that we don’t have to change that much. But we all look at the world from our own lens. My lens is from 30 years as an activist, so I’m going to evaluate grant proposals from that perspective. I’m also going to learn a lot. Check with me three years from now, and I’ll tell you how much I’ve learned.

ABOUT ANTONIA HERNÁNDEZ, INCOMING PRESIDENT OF THE CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION:

Education: Earned a bachelor of arts and a law degree from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Previous work experience: Has served as head of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund since 1985. Has also worked as staff counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

What she reads: “My job requires such substantive reading that in my spare time I like light stuff. The stuff you buy at the airport, like mysteries.”