Dolores Huerta

Panelist

Iconic labor leader and activist who cofounded the United Farm Workers with César Chávez and is the president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation.

Connect

  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Dolores Huerta

Women In Leadership

Dolores Huerta is a civil rights activist and community organizer. She has worked for labor rights and social justice for over 50 years.

In 1962, she and César Chávez founded the United Farm Workers union. She served as vice president and played a critical role in many of the union’s accomplishments for four decades. In 2002, she received the Puffin/Nation $100,000 prize for Creative Citizenship, which she used to establish the Dolores Huerta Foundation (DHF).

DHF is connecting groundbreaking community-based organizing to state and national movements to register and educate voters; advocate for education reform; bring about infrastructure improvements in low-income communities; advocate for greater equality for the LGBT community; and create strong leadership development.

Dolores has received numerous awards, among them the Eleanor Roosevelt Humans Rights Award from President Clinton in 1998. In 2012 President Obama bestowed on Dolores the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

print