Maria Sandra Jimenez, Ph.D.
As a K-20 educational leader, Maria Sandra’s leadership experience involves working in university and community college settings, K-12 education, specifically Title I schools, bilingual education, and ABE/ESL education, as well as teaching and advising at the community college and university levels. Over the past 13 years, she has dedicated her time and efforts as a TRIO professional working with low-income, first-generation college-bound students and students with disabilities.
Due to her bilingual, bicultural, and bi-literate skills, she has been able to serve in many organizations and boards at the local, regional, and national levels. These include the Washoe County Juvenile Services Advisory Committee; Doctors without Borders; Western Association of Educational Opportunity Personnel (TRIO/Access Programs professionals); National Community College Hispanic Council (NCCHC) Leadership Fellows Program, and now, Northern Nevada HOPES.
Susan Fisher
Susan Fisher has more than three decades of government relations and public policy experience covering issues before local, state and federal bodies. Prior to joining the law firm of McDonald Carano as senior vice president of the Government Affairs and Advocacy Group, Susan served as executive vice president for a cooperative electric utility headquartered in southern Nevada. She has also owned and operated her own political consulting and public relations company, Fisher Consulting, based in Reno, Nevada.
Susan has enjoyed appointments to several state boards and commissions by former Governors Kenny Guinn, Jim Gibbons, and Brian Sandoval and is a recipient of the Patrick Henry Award from the National Guard Association of the United States. She is a proud graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno, Reynolds School of Journalism. She and her husband, Steven Oldham, have four grown children and seven grandchildren.
Katelyn Cantu
Katelyn Cantu is a native Nevadan and seasoned attorney with unwavering dedication to the rule of law and compassion for the people it serves. Katelyn’s international experience includes time in India, where she studied international law and civil liberties at Touro University’s Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center; in Switzerland, where she studied international humanitarian and human rights law at Santa Clara University School of Law; and in Paris, where she completed a UNESCO legal internship supporting UN initiatives related to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
In Nevada, Katelyn’s legal experience includes clerkships with the Moapa Band of Paiutes Tribal Court and the Nevada Court of Appeals, where she served as a Judicial Law Clerk to the Honorable Chief Judge Michael Gibbons. She is currently a criminal defense attorney for the Washoe County Public Defender’s Office, where she has served her community for over six years.
A lifelong adventurer, Katelyn has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Rainier, has made the trek to the high-altitude base camps of Mt. Everest and K2, and has traveled extensively throughout Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South, Central and North America.
Katelyn received her undergraduate degree, with honors, from the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV), and her Juris Doctorate (J.D.) from UNLV’s William S. Boyd School of Law, where she was a member of the Nevada Law Journal and the International Law Society.
Katelyn lives in South Reno with her fiancé and their three dogs, including her faithful Pug, Google.
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