LAJTC AI Champion Network

Alegría De La Cruz

Alegría De La Cruz has spent her career in public interest and public service. She is currently the Director of Advancement & Development at the CRLA Foundation.

Prior to that, Alegría served in key leadership roles at the Dolores Huerta Foundation & Dolores Huerta Action Fund, the Disability Rights Legal Center, and with Sonoma County, where the Board of Supervisors appointed Alegría as the founding Director of the Sonoma County Office of Equity, where she worked to create systems and capacity to address unjust racialized outcomes throughout the County. She also served as a Chief Deputy in the Sonoma County Counsel’s Office and played a critical part in ensuring equitable responses to multiple disasters. Alegría has also served under Governor Jerry Brown as a lead prosecutor at the Agricultural Labor Relations Board and enforced farmworker labor rights. She began her career as a community lawyer at California Rural Legal Assistance and worked on behalf of farmworkers and farmworker communities on wage and hour issues, sexual harassment, pesticide and air quality regulation and enforcement, and environmental justice issues prevalent throughout rural, working class, and immigrant communities of color.

Alegría holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from Yale University and a Juris Doctor from the University of California Berkeley School of Law. Alegría identifies as Chicana and recognizes, embraces, and celebrates her responsibility to contribute meaningfully to public service, social justice, and equity.

Charmaine Lacsina

Charmaine Lacsina spent over a decade at the intersection of exponential technology, product, and mission-driven enterprise before bringing that experience to legal aid. She was part of the early team at General Assembly; helped build Startup Health, a healthcare venture firm that partnered with President Biden on the Cancer Moonshot initiative; and led the launch of Singularity University's Exponential Leadership program, equipping Fortune 500 executives to incorporate emerging technologies like AI and blockchain into their organizations. She also serves as a product-focused board member for AI companies — including TrustBound.ai, an AI trust and safety company building tokenization infrastructure for regulated industries like government, law, and finance, where she is a co-inventor on the company's foundational patents.

Today, Charmaine is the Director of Innovation and Strategy at Open Door Legal (ODL), where she leads the development of AI systems designed to expand access to civil legal representation. ODL sits at a unique inflection point in the legal aid field: as the first organization piloting universal access to civil legal services, it is positioned to orchestrate a mission that, if scaled, could dramatically reduce poverty across the country. Charmaine's work focuses on how exponential technologies can be responsibly deployed to solve problems that impact a billion people, starting with the communities ODL serves in San Francisco. She is the architect of Casey, ODL's Salesforce Agentforce-based intake agent, and leads ODL technology strategy.

Chriselle Raguro

Chriselle Raguro (she/her/siya) serves as the Director of Pro Bono and Strategic Partnerships at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area (LCCRSF). In this role, she drives the organization’s vision to grow and strengthen its pro bono program, mobilizing over 1,000 volunteers to challenge systems of oppression and foster a more equitable society.

Previously, Chriselle held leadership positions at the Tahirih Justice Center – SF Bay Area as Managing Attorney and Pro Bono Coordinating Attorney. There, she launched the Silicon Valley Pro Bono Immigration Network, co-led the Tech Access Project, and designed initiatives like the Border Project. She also served as Executive Director of the Filipino Community Development Corporation, advocating for affordable housing through community-driven efforts.

Her career includes extensive legal and advocacy work with organizations such as Oasis Legal Services, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Asylum Access Thailand, the Australia-Asia Program to Combat Trafficking in Persons, NEEDeed Foundation, and API Legal Outreach. Chriselle’s commitment to justice is rooted in a global and community-focused perspective.

Pablo Ramirez

Pablo Ramirez is an attorney and the Executive Director of the Legal Aid Society of San Bernardino, where he leads a team serving over 8,000 clients annually across San Bernardino and Riverside Counties — communities where demand for legal help vastly outpaces resources, with the housing hotline alone fielding more than 25,000 calls a year.

With a JD, a Masters in Organizational Leadership, and executive training in Design Thinking, Pablo brings a rare combination of legal expertise, operational leadership, and human-centered problem solving to the access-to-justice space. He previously served as Managing Attorney at Inland Counties Legal Services and holds leadership roles as a CalATJ Commissioner, Board Treasurer at LAAC and OneJustice, and member of the SB Superior Court Elimination of Bias Committee. A 2024 Mitchell Roth Award recipient, LawNext podcast guest, and Thomson Reuters published , Pablo is now spearheading Project A.C.C.E.S.S. — a groundbreaking AI initiative built with LawDroid and A2J Tech that deploys an AI-powered small claims demand letter tool, a court prep coach for housing tenants facing eviction, a 24/7 legal AI navigator on partner websites, and a community justice navigator connecting clients to wraparound services including housing, healthcare, food security, and benefits programs. He has collaborated with Stanford Legal Design Lab on reimagining AI-driven legal intake, is partnering with Thomson Reuters to develop trusted self-help legal materials that put reliable information directly into the hands of underserved communities, and is exploring LegalServer's AI capabilities alongside additional technology projects aimed at dismantling systemic barriers to justice.

Pablo believes access to legal help is a fundamental right — and that AI, deployed ethically and equitably, is one of the most powerful tools available for closing the justice gap without compromising the dignity, privacy, or autonomy of the people legal aid exists to serve.

Susan StVincent

As LAFLA’s first Chief Operating Officer, Susan StVincent supervises IT, Facilities, and Human Resources departments, with the goal of improving inter-departmental collaboration and making LAFLA a better place to work for all LAFLAns.

Susan joined LAFLA in 2019 as the Managing Attorney for Client Intake, supervising multi-channel intake across all of LAFLA’s offices. More recently, as LAFLA’s Managing Attorney for Data and Innovation, Susan has been responsible for LegalServer administration, conducting tech trainings, working with program staff to streamline business processes, creating reports and visualizations to encourage data-informed decision making, building grant tracking and reporting tools, and technology project management.

Prior to joining LAFLA, Susan served as the Director of Legal Programs at Christian Legal Aid of Los Angeles. They have also worked as a court-appointed mediator in the High Court of Uganda, advised the Supreme Court of Rwanda on case management and alternative dispute resolution, and volunteered as a mediator in the Los Angeles Small Claims courts. Susan received their Juris Doctor and Master of Dispute Resolution degrees from Pepperdine School of Law.