Paloma Perez

Associate

Paloma Perez is an associate and prides herself as a jack-of-all-trades led by a servant leader’s heart, joining Burness in February 2018. As a part of the domestic practice, she provides wide-ranging communications support for some of the most pressing issues facing U.S. children nationwide including: social-emotional and trauma-informed education integration, childhood obesity prevention and Culture of Health shaping initiatives spearheaded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and its grantees. Her main areas of focus are media relations, policy monitoring and support, Spanish and U.S. Latinx media strategy and editorial/digital content development.

As a fresh college graduate completing her first political campaign experience, Paloma left her beloved hometown to join, as a Running Start STAR fellow, the office of Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. Following her initial introduction to federal lawmaking, Paloma served as deputy communications director and legislative assistant for Texas Congressman Marc Veasey for three years where she advised the congressman on innovative digital and traditional print engagement strategies and managed his immigration and telecommunications portfolios.

Capitol Hill is where Paloma earned her unofficial M.P.P. and learned Press 101 on-the-job by cutting her teeth figuring out ways to make her principal standout among a class of 435 members of Congress. As part of the communications shop, she played a central role in elevating Congressman Veasey’s leadership on voting rights, blue-collar labor issues, reproductive rights and immigration with high profile print, digital and TV placements in Glamour.com, Teen Vogue, Dallas Morning News, CNN and MSNBC.

As a legislative assistant, she drafted bills that aimed to ease the challenges newly arrived immigrants and their children face when they make the brave choice to call the U.S. home. As a passionate advocate for migrant and refugee rights, she channeled her first-hand experience as the daughter of Peruvian and Mexican immigrants to produce an impressive portfolio of legislation. While serving as the #2 in her office’s press operations, she also guided the introduction of legislation that addressed the need for identification for undocumented residents, protected the constitutional rights of all U.S. residents regardless of status, expanded naturalization services for veterans and allocated additional resources to reunite families separated for decades due to the family visa backlog.

Additionally, Paloma served as part of the volunteer communications team for the Hispanic Caucus during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and worked as a grassroots organizer and in Hispanic media outreach for political campaigns in Virginia, Texas, California, Arizona and Colorado. Before working in politics, Paloma interned with the Texas Civil Rights Project, Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, and the Village Education Project, where she taught English in rural Ecuador. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science and educational studies at Swarthmore College, successfully setting the example for her younger brothers and cousins as the first college graduate in her entire family.

Paloma is a native of Dripping Springs, Texas where she cultivated a love of nature, Tex-Mex and an appreciation for the fusion of cultures that characterized her upbringing as the daughter of the Latin American diaspora. Despite the state of the world at any moment, she truly believes that the antidote to despair and hopelessness is action. Nothing more, nothing less.