IP attorney to join Board of Trustees
By Amy Yarbrough
Staff Writer
A Sacramento-area intellectual property lawyer will
join the State Bar’s Board
of Trustees this fall after being deemed elected in District 3.
|
Mendoza |
Joanna
R. Mendoza, 49, of Granite Bay was the only candidate to run
in District
3,
comprised of 23 Northern California counties: Alpine,
Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, El Dorado, Glenn, Lassen, Modoc, Mono, Nevada,
Placer, Plumas, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Sutter,
Tehama, Trinity, Yolo and Yuba.
A sole practitioner who specializes in intellectual
property and general and complex business litigation, Mendoza has volunteered
with various State Bar groups for 10 years, including serving as chairwoman of
the Intellectual
Property Law Section and as co-chairman of the Council
of State Bar Sections. Mendoza said she saw running for the Board
of Trustees was a “natural progression” because she already understands the State
Bar and how to be effective within the organization.
“Having been involved in the State Bar for a while,
I know it takes a good year or two to understand how everything works,” she
said. “When you first start volunteering, you’re kind of lost. It’s a big
organization.”
Mendoza, who has two sons with her husband Joseph,
attributes her longtime interest in volunteering to having grown up in a family
that struggled to make ends meet. As a child, Mendoza lived in government housing,
and she and her mom received food stamps during a period when her mother was
unemployed. Mendoza earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, San
Diego and a law degree from UC Berkeley School of Law with the help of grants.
“I really feel that I have an obligation to give
back because of that,” she said.
In the other Board of Trustees election this year,
two attorneys have filed to run in District 1, comprising Alameda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Marin,
Mendocino, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Solano and Sonoma counties. They are Daniel Dean, a San Francisco trial attorney whose practice focuses on complex personal injury and public entity liability, and Omid
E. Talai, an assistant district attorney with
the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.
In his candidate statement, Talai, 30, wrote that he
sees serving on the Board of Trustees as “a unique opportunity to continue to
service his immediate and surrounding community.” Dean, 47, wrote of his
“strong commitment to community service.”
Ballots for District 1 were mailed on April 30. The
last day for voting is July 1. Mendoza and other new board members will take
office at the conclusion of the 2013
State Bar Annual Meeting, scheduled from Oct. 10 to 13 in
San Jose.