Antonio R. Villaraigosa is the 41st mayor of Los Angeles. He was elected on May 17, 2005 and sworn in to office on July 1, 2005.
Born Antonio Villar on January 23, 1953, in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles, he is the oldest of four children raised by a single mother, Natalia Delgado. Villaraigosa graduated from Theodore Roosevelt High School and attended UCLA, where he received a B.A. degree in history. He is a graduate of the People’s College of Law.
Perry currently serves as the Chair of the Energy and the Environment Committee; the Chair of the Ad Hoc Homeless Committee; Vice-Chair of the Arts, Parks, Health, and Aging Committee; the Vice-Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Recovering Energy, Natural Resources, and Economic Benefit from Waste for LA (RENEW LA) Committee, and as a member of the Housing, Community and Economic Development Committee, Ad Hoc Los Angeles River Committee, and Ad-Hoc Stadium Committee. She was appointed by the Mayor to represent the City of Los Angeles as a Governing Board Member of the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) and was recently re-elected in January of 2006 by the Western cities to serve another 4-year term. She also serves as the Assistant Pro Tempore for the Los Angeles City Council, making her the first African-American woman to hold this position in the history of the city.
Prior to being elected to serve as the representative of the Ninth District, Perry had a long history of public service with the City of Los Angeles. During the five years she spent as Chief of Staff for the Ninth District, she became intimately involved with the concerns of the community. In 1998, she was appointed by Mayor Richard Riordan as the Executive Director of the Census 2000 Outreach Project for the City of Los Angeles.
Perry made Los Angeles her home in 1974. She attended the University of Southern California earning a Bachelors Degree in Journalism, Cum Laude. She received her B.A. in 1977, followed by a Masters in Public Administration in 1981. In addition, she earned a Certificate in Litigation from the University of California, Los Angeles Extension in 1979.