Catherine Sandoval

Catherine Sandoval
Born	East Los Angeles, California, USA
Other names	Catherine Janet Kissee-Sandoval Catherine J.K. Sandoval Cathy Kissee-Sandoval
Education	Law degree, Master of Letters
Alma mater	Yale University, Oxford University, Stanford Law School
Occupation	Commissioner, law professor
Employer	Santa Clara University School of Law, California Public Utilities Commission

Catherine J.K. Sandoval is the first Hispanic commissioner of the California Public Utilities Commission. Sandoval is a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law. In 1984, she was the first Latina Rhodes scholar.

Sandoval was born in Los Angeles, California, to Vernon Kissee, a court reporter from Missouri, and Helen Sandoval; a woman born and raised in Arizona. Her maternal grandfather was born in Guanajuato, Mexico. Along with an older and a younger sister, Sandoval was brought up in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles.

In a Los Angeles Times opinion article, she recalled in 1991 that her elementary school, Dacotah Street School (now Christopher Dena Elementary School), was 95% Hispanic and that:

While I was in the first grade, the principal somehow determined that all the students were mentally retarded. Working with other parents, my mother and father fought the label and got the state to test us. The tests revealed that few, if any, of us were "retarded" and some were gifted. I shudder to think about how things would have turned out if our parents had not fought that "retarded" label.

Sandoval's family moved a few miles eastward to Montebello, where she attended Eastmont Intermediate School and Schurr High School.

Sandoval entered Yale University in 1978. She served on the Minority Admissions Advisory Committee where she noted that about 35% of the Hispanic students at Yale dropped out, compared to only 5% of the total student population. In 1984 she graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in Latin American Studies. Encouraged by her teachers and a Rhodes scholar, she applied for and received a Rhodes scholarship—the first female Latin-American recipient. Sandoval entered Oxford University in October 1984 on her scholarship and studied global politics, forming a thesis regarding U.S. and Western European policy toward Nicaragua and El Salvador. In 1983-84, she studied the record of Latinos enrolled in Ivy League schools. At Oxford, she rowed on the crew team and she lettered in varsity basketball. In 1987, she left Oxford for Stanford Law School. There, she served on the Stanford Law Review and the Stanford Journal of International Law. Sandoval co-chaired the Stanford Latino Law Students Association. In 1990 after three years at Stanford, she completed the thesis work she had started as a Rhodes scholar, and was awarded a Master of Letters in Politics from Oxford. The same year, she earned a law degree from Stanford Law School.

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