Professor Norma V. Cantú was named as one of the 2026 Impacto Award honorees. Honorees will be presented with the award at the Titans of Change Gala at the ABA Midyear Meeting in San Antonio, TX, on Saturday, February 7th.
The Impacto Awards are presented by the ABA Commission on Hispanic Legal Rights & Responsibilities, and the award honors the wide-ranging impact of efforts by individuals and organizations to remove the significant legal, socio-economic, linguistic, and other barriers to social justice and civic engagement facing Latinos in the United States.
Professor Cantú may be a familiar name, as the Fellows recognized her with the Outstanding Service Award during the 67th Annual Fellows Award Reception and Banquet in February 2023. She most recently taught at UT Austin, where she has been a department chair twice, along with chairing numerous dissertation committees.
She was nominated by President Clinton – and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate – as Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the Department of Education. In November 2020, she took a leave of absence from UT to serve on the Biden-Harris Transition Team. Cantú was invited back to serve as the first Latina Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from February 2021 to December 2022.
Read more about Professor Cantú and the Impacto Award here.