Tia’s Story
Tia Katrina Taruc Canlas graduated from Berkeley Law, where she was awarded the Jim Fahey Safe Homes for Women Fellowship Award for providing legal representation to domestic violence survivors in immigration petitions and restraining order hearings. She also handled gender discrimination cases at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where she authored memos against corporations with discriminatory hiring policies. Now, she serves as the legal director of the Alipato Project, as a board member of Know Your IX, and as an advisory board member of FreeFrom. With a commitment to fighting all forms of oppression, she established the Alipato Project as a horizontally-run nonprofit organization dedicated to suing perpetrators of domestic violence. In her spare time, she reads radical picture books to a pre-school class, plays chess at the cooperatively run Alchemy Collective Cafe, and co-directs a campaign to bring participatory budgeting to Oakland.