Champions for Equity Transformative Partner Award Honoree: Sheila Kuehl
Meet Our Transformative Partner Award Honoree
We are proud to honor Supervisor Sheila James Kuehl in recognition of her three decades of devoted public service.
Representing Los Angeles County’s Third District, Supervisor Kuehl first assumed office in December 2014. She was re-elected to her second term in 2018 and is currently the Chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
Supervisor Kuehl has led the way and worked on many initiatives to improve people’s lives by reforming county systems. Some key wins include increasing the minimum wage, emphasizing and enhancing “second chance” and anti-recidivism programs, providing unprecedented funding and services for the unhoused community, creating a Sheriff’s Oversight Commission, and much more.
Prior to her service on the Board, Supervisor Kuehl served eight years in the California State Senate and six years in the State Assembly. She was the first woman in California history to be named Speaker Pro Tempore of the Assembly and the first openly gay or lesbian person to be elected to the California Legislature. She served as chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, Natural Resources and Water Committee, the Budget Subcommittee on Water, Energy, and Transportation, and the Assembly Judiciary Committee.
She successfully advanced single-payer health insurance through the Legislature twice and authored 171 bills that were signed into law, including legislation to establish paid family leave, establish nurse to patient ratios in hospitals, protect the Santa Monica Mountains, and prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender and disability in the workplace and sexual orientation in education.
Before her election to the Legislature, Supervisor Kuehl was a public-interest attorney who drafted and fought to get into California law more than 40 pieces of legislation relating to children, families, women, and domestic violence. She was a law professor at Loyola, UCLA, and USC Law Schools and co-founded and served as managing attorney of the California Women’s Law Center. She was also the Founding Director of the Public Policy Institute at Santa Monica College and a Regents’ Professor in Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.
Today, she is also Chair of the Board of Commissioners of First 5, LA, First Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of Metro, Vice Chair of the Board of the Clean Power Alliance, and Chair of the Countywide Criminal Justice Coordination Committee.
Supervisor Kuehl graduated from Harvard Law School in 1978. In her youth, she was known for portraying the irrepressible Zelda Gilroy in the television series, “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.”