Catherine J.K. Sandoval is the first Hispanic commissioner of the California Public Utilities Commission.
The board oversees rates and rules for privately owned electric, gas, water, telecommunications, rail and passenger transportation utilities.
She and the California Public Utilities Commission have been tasked with beginning the process of increasing the ratio of renewable energy use in California to 33% of total energy consumption by 2020.
Sandoval has been involved with nonprofit organizations, including Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional, which was formed to help U.S. Latinas seeking higher education. Sandoval is currently an active member of the California Bar Association and was admitted to membership in 1991 after passing the bar in fall 1990.
In 2004, Sandoval joined the faculty of Santa Clara University School of Law as a tenure-track professor, teaching telecommunications law, antitrust law, and contract law. She researched and published studies examining minority and female ownership in media, antitrust, and communications law issues. During the school year 2012–2013, on a partial leave of absence from Santa Clara Law, Sandoval taught a course in telecommunications law at UC Berkeley School of Law.
Sandoval entered Yale University in 1978. She served on the Minority Admissions Advisory Committee where she noted that 35% of the Hispanic students at Yale dropped out, compared to only 5% of the total student population.
In 1984 she graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in Latin American Studies. Encouraged by her teachers and a Rhodes scholar, she applied for and received a Rhodes scholarship—the first female Latin-American recipient.
Sandoval entered Oxford University in October 1984 on her scholarship and studied global politics, forming a thesis regarding U.S. and Western European policy toward Nicaragua and El Salvador. From 1983-84, she studied the record of Latinos enrolled in Ivy League schools. At Oxford, she rowed on the crew team and she lettered in varsity basketball.
In 1987, she left Oxford for Stanford Law School. In 1990 after three years at Stanford, she completed the thesis work she had started as a Rhodes scholar and was awarded a Master of Letters in Politics from Oxford. The same year, she earned a law degree from Stanford Law School.
At the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Office of International Communications, she directed the FCC’s Office of Communications Business Opportunities as deputy director then as full director from August 1995 to March 1999. She helped small businesses, especially minority-owned communications firms, gain greater access to FCC licensing.
Sandoval worked in the private sector from 1999 to 2001, serving as vice president and general counsel for Z-Spanish Media Corporation, a conglomerate of Spanish-language radio stations, news outlets and outdoor advertising.
From 2001 to 2004, Sandoval was an undersecretary with the California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, serving as senior policy advisor for housing.
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