Chair of NHLA
Hector E. Sanchez is the Executive Director of LCLAA (Labor Council for Latin American Advancement) and the Chair of NHLA (National Hispanic Leadership Agenda). He is an indefatigable voice fighting systematic injustices against Latinos and the most vulnerable communities across the nation.
Throughout his career, Hector has worked in Labor, human and civil rights, education and non-profit organizations and has vast experience in policy, advocacy, organizing, research and community outreach. He has launched national campaigns to improve the conditions of working families and strengthen the Latino voice on critical issues such as labor rights, women’s rights (trabajadoras), immigration, civil rights, health care, education, underrepresentation in government, environment and hate crimes against Latinos. Sanchez is also a strong advocate for vigorous civic participation, having organized and participated in national campaigns to empower Latinos via voter registration drives, GOTV, voter education and efforts to combat voter suppression.
Sanchez plays a central role in the national Latino leadership: in 2012 he was elected Chair of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA), a coalition comprised of the 40 leading national Latino organizations, and he was re-elected in 2015. In 2012 the U.S. Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry appointed Sanchez as co-chair of the Hispanic Council on Federal Employment in the effort to remove barriers to recruiting, hiring, retaining, and advancing Hispanics in the Federal workforce; now he co-chairs the council with the new director of OPM Katherine Archuleta. In 2015 he was appointed by the AFL-CIO’s President Richard Trumka to the Executive Council Committee on Immigration. In 2014, Hector was appointed by the president of the American Bar Association (ABA) to the Commission on Hispanic Legal Rights and Responsibilities. He is a member of the Kennedy Center’s new Latino Advisory Council and also a board member of the Latino Victory Foundation.
He frequently appears as a commentator on national and international TV networks and his opinions have been widely published by NPR, The Washington Post, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Huffington Post and several Spanish-language media outlets. He is a regular speaker at conferences across the country.
Prior to joining LCLAA, Sanchez was the DC-Mexico Policy Education Director at Global Exchange, the Policy and Community Liaison for the Education Trust, and a professor of US-Mexico Relations at the Autonomous University of the City of Juarez, Mexico. Sanchez holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Texas at El Paso.