Luz M. Rivas was born in Los Angeles to an immigrant family and grew up in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. She attended LA Unified schools before earning a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT and a Master’s of Education from Harvard.

 

Luz has built her career at the intersection of engineering, education and public service. She worked as an electrical design engineer at Motorola before founding DIY Girls, a nonprofit that provides enrichment programs focused on encouraging young girls to pursue careers in science, engineering and technology.  While presiding over DIY Girls, she served as a Champions Board Member of the California Girls in STEM Collaborative; as a Senior Fellow at the USC Marshall Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab; on the Visiting Committee for the MIT Dean of Undergraduate Studies; and as a service learning instructor for engineering undergraduates at USC. She also collaborated with engineers, planners and environmentalists to develop environmental technology curricula for high school students, and worked to increase diversity at Caltech and on NASA- and NSF-funded projects that aimed to increase access to STEM in community-based organizations. In 2016, she was appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti to the Los Angeles Board of Public Works.

 

Luz was elected and sworn in to the California State Assembly in June of 2018. She is the Chair of the Assembly Committee on Natural Resources and currently serves on the Assembly Committees on Budget; Budget Subcommittee No. 3 on Resources and Transportation; Health; Local Government; Revenue and Taxation; and the Joint Legislative Committee on Emergency Management. She is also the Chair of the Select Committee on the Non-Profit Sector, and serves on the Select Committee on Latina Inequalities and Select Committee on Education. It is an honor for her to represent the community she grew up in.