Connie Rice

Connie Rice is renowned for her unconventional approaches to tackling problems of inequity and exclusion. For example, she has teamed up with conservatives on education issues and the Los Angeles Police Department to support the Watts gang truce. Rice has received more than 50 major awards for her leadership of diverse coalitions, and her nontraditional approaches to litigating major cases involving police misconduct, employment discrimination and fair public resource allocation. She received the 2001 Peace Prize from the California Wellness Foundation and this year (2002) will receive the John Anson Ford Humanitarian Award from Los Angeles County. She successfully co-litigated class-action, civil rights cases winning more than $1.6 billion in policy changes and remedies during her nine-year tenure in the Los Angeles office of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF).

Rice is a graduate of Harvard College and the New York University School of Law. In 1998, the Los Angeles Times designated her one of 24 leaders considered the “most experienced, civic-minded and thoughtful people on the subject of Los Angeles.” In 1999, California Law Business named her one of California’s top 10 most influential lawyers. She serves on the boards of the Public Policy Institute of California and public radio station KPCC.