Team Leadership
Frank Fernández, Esq.
Founder
Pictured here in October 2019 at the LRCL offices, are Frank Fernández, Esq. and his wife, Carmen. Frank is one of our agency founders and remains a core supporter of our office today. Mr. Fernandez, together with fellow law student Al Borvice, Esq. and other Chicanx law students from the San Francisco Bay Area, founded La Raza Centro Legal in 1973.
Amanda Alvarado Ford, Esq.
Executive Director
Amanda Alvarado Ford, Esq. is an immigration attorney and Executive Director at La Raza Centro Legal, San Francisco. She received her undergraduate degree from Stanford University and holds a J.D. from Delaware Law School – Widener University. Admitted to the New Jersey State Bar in 1993, she was a litigator with the National Labor Relations Board until 2000. She has been practicing immigration law since 2005, and worked at La Raza Centro Legal as a pro bono attorney and on staff from 2011 to 2017. Amanda worked at SIREN in San Jose, before returning to La Raza in 2019 to take the helm of the agency. She is the 2019 Chapter Chair emeritus of the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. She is the proud daughter of immigrant Mexican farmworkers and her current practice focus is asylum and removal defense. Amanda is committed to working to create a more just and equitable society, and helping to mentor, train and prepare the next generation of aspiring legal advocates.
Stephen Rosenbaum, Esq., MPP, JD
Pro Bono Counsel
Stephen Rosenbaum, Esq., is a veteran social justice advocate and litigator whose experience includes federal and state litigation, policy advocacy, mediation and individual administrative claims on behalf of immigrants, students, workers, persons with disabilities and a host of other clients. He joined plaintiffs’ litigation team on behalf of La Raza Centro Legal in 2019, monitoring enforcement of the Flores v. Barr national class action settlement that provides protections for unaccompanied minors. Steve’s practice has been devoted to civil and human rights—with California Rural Legal Assistance and Centro Legal Campesino/Legal Aid of Western Oklahoma, as a senior attorney with two major disability rights public interest firms and with the Child Care Law Center and as an anti-discrimination lawyer with a small plaintiff-side San Francisco firm. He has also consulted on rule of law, access to justice and legal education in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Egypt, Iran, Qatar and Togo.
Steve is the Frank C. Newman Lecturer at Berkeley Law and Visiting Researcher Scholar at UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute. He has also taught courses in disability rights and justice, mental health policy and professional skills at Stanford, USF and Golden Gate. He co-piloted an international human rights and business clinic and taught a human rights advocacy seminar while a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Washington. He has contributed know-your-rights and other lay information to numerous bilingual manuals, handouts and websites. His scholarship includes articles and contributions to books on clinical legal education, lay advocacy, community legal education, disability, special education, immigration and international human rights.