Sara Hernandez has been a proud resident of California's 26th Senate District for over 20 years. Like so many people in the District, the 26th encompasses the communities where Sara has laid down roots, started her career, pursued an education, created a family and has been actively engaged in making the District more livable, safe and prosperous.
Sara began her career as an LAUSD middle school teacher where she founded the non-profit Helping Young People Excel, or HYPE. HYPE identifies low-income students and provides them with exceptional educational opportunity and resources throughout their high school years and beyond. In 2015, HYPE merged with Young Eisner Scholars, an organization that continues to change the lives of students across Los Angeles as well as in New York, Chicago and Appalachia. It was Sara’s work with students and their struggles with homelessness, lack of public transit options, housing and food insecurity, navigation of the foster care system, immigration issues, navigating the DACA process and general access of public resources that led Sara to pursue a career in public policy and local government.
After earning a law degree, Sara worked in Los Angeles City Hall, where she led community revitalization efforts through a mix of strategic economic development policies, innovative policy initiatives, and investments in housing, homelessness, transportation, infrastructure and green space.
In 2022, Sara was elected to the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees. In a District that is predominately Latino, she is the first Latina to serve on the board in over ten years. As a Trustee, Sara has worked to increase access to educational opportunity and improve enrollment numbers, identify housing resources for homeless and housing-insecure students and expand access to construction trades apprenticeship programs for District students.
In addition to serving on the LACCD Board of Trustees, Sara currently practices law as a housing and environmental attorney. She works regularly with organized labor, community and business leaders in connection with some of the most pressing environmental, land use and housing issues in the region. She has done extensive pro-bono work representing indigent immigrants in asylum proceedings due to the devastating violence in the Northern Triangle and government oppression in Nicaragua. Sara is involved with the Southern Immigrant Freedom Initiative which represents detained immigrants at detention centers throughout the deep South and has assisted immigrant students with the renewal of their DACA status.
Sara holds a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy from Duke University, a Master in Education from Loyola Marymount University and a Juris Doctor from Loyola Law School. In 2019 she was appointed by State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon to serve on the State of California Library Resources Board. She also serves on the non-profit boards of Young Eisner Scholars and the Loyola Immigrant Justice Clinic.
In her free time, Sara is active in her community both politically and on the grassroots level. She has served as an Assembly District Delegate for the 53rd District, a delegate for the Democratic National Committee and in 2015 Assemblymember Miguel Santiago named her Democrat of the Year for the 53rd Assembly District. She is currently an elected delegate to the Los Angeles County Democratic Party's Central Committee. In 2018, with her neighbors she started a group called DTLA Strong, a resident group focused on community organizing to build political power within the Downtown community. Through extensive organizing and outreach efforts, DTLA Strong increased voter turnout in the 2020 presidential election by 162% compared to 2016.
Sara currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband Keith and son Theodore.
