When Lina Hidalgo was elected on November 6, 2018, at the age of 27, she was the first woman and first Latina to be elected County Judge and only the second to be elected to the Commissioners Court.
Lina Hidalgo was raised in an immigrant family. She was born in Colombia, when the drug war still raged and everyone knew someone who had been kidnapped. Her parents had two goals: to make sure she had a good education and to get the family to a safer place. Lina grew up in Peru and Mexico, where her parents were offered job opportunities, before emigrating to America in 2005. Lina is a proud product of Houston-area public schools and, as her parents dreamed, was the first in her family to attend college in the U.S. She graduated from Stanford University with a degree in political science the same year she became a U.S. citizen. Since arriving in Texas, Lina has been committed to giving back.
Before running for office, Lina dedicated hundreds of hours to our county’s most vulnerable communities—from her time at the Texas Civil Rights Project to serving as a Spanish-English medical interpreter at the Texas Medical Center and supporting immigrants in search of lost loved ones. While pursuing a joint degree in law and public policy at NYU and Harvard, Lina conducted research on criminal justice policies and coordinated with advocacy groups and governments to push for criminal justice reform. Before that, Lina worked throughout Southeast Asia to promote transparency and accountability by supporting journalists, bloggers and artists.
Judge Lina Hidalgo’s leadership has been recognized through numerous awards and national honors. She received the prestigious John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award for her swift response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and was recognized with the Jack Brooks Foundation Leadership Award for her work to protect voting rights and access to the ballot box. Judge Hidalgo has also been named to the TIME Magazine 100 Next list as well as Forbes 30 Under 30.
