| |
|
Alumna Pioneers Women's Rights
 Sonia Pressman Fuentes, LLB '57, born in Berlin, Germany, graduated first in her class from the University of Miami School of Law, but her numerous achievements do not end there. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell in 1950 and armed with her law degree, Fuentes went on to a remarkable 36-year career as an attorney, an executive, and a women's rights activist. As one of the founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW), the Women's Equity Action League (WEAL), and Federally Employed Women (FEW), she has been honored with multiple awards that speak to her many accomplishments, including her induction into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 2000.
After retiring in 1993, Fuentes has pursued an active career as a writer and public speaker. Her 1999 memoir, Eat First - You Don't Know What They'll Give You, The Adventures of an Immigrant Family and Their Feminist Daughter, tells how her family escaped Nazi Germany during the Holocaust when she was five years old and how she built her successful career as an attorney and women's rights advocate. Along with being a founder of NOW (with Betty Freidan and others), Fuentes says that her proudest accomplishment is being the first woman attorney in the Office of the General Counsel at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Most recently, Fuentes was honored by the Jewish Women's Archive (JW A) for her contribution to women's rights, part of the commemoration of the 350th anniversary of the Jewish community in the United States. Fuentes will be one of about 100 Jewish women, who contributed to women's rights in the U.S., that will be included in a JW A exhibit to go online in June 2005.
This article is from the Barrister, the University of Miami (FL) School of Law alumni magazine (Vol. LVIII, No. 1, Winter 2005), p. 33. |
|
