Monica Lomeli
Dr. Monica Lomeli is the manager of the Hate Documentation and Data Analytics program with the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations. She leads the production of the annual L.A. County Hate Crime Report, one of the nation’s oldest and long-standing effort to document hate. Dr. Lomeli oversees the collection and data analysis of hate incident reports from law enforcement, community-based organizations, school districts, colleges, and universities. She leads the Network Against Hate Crime, a network consisting of law enforcement agencies, human relations organizations, educators, faith communities, and social service and advocacy groups, who convene to learn about emerging issues in the field of hate crime and to lean on one another to combat hate. Moreover, Dr. Lomeli was the lead staff author in developing a best practice report for law enforcement in their hate crime outreach and response with the community and author of the Commission motion to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day in L.A. County.
Dr. Lomeli is a sociologist who was inspired by her college students’ questions of “what can we do?” to pursue a career in government where she could work towards social justice and improve intergroup relations in L.A. County. She is a former college professor who taught courses on Race and Ethnicity, Sexuality, Crime and Delinquency, Gender, and more, for over a decade. Prior to this, she worked for educational non-profits in the L.A. region as a program manager and in communications.
Dr. Lomeli holds a Ph.D. in Sociology with an emphasis in Urban Sociology and Racial and Ethnic Relations and an M.A. in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She obtained bachelors’ degrees in Anthropology and Behavioral Science from California State University, Dominguez Hills. She is the daughter of Mexican immigrants from Zacatecas and was raised in South Central Los Angeles. She lives in the San Gabriel Valley with her husband, son, daughter, and their 90-pound Golden Retriever, who thinks she is a lap dog.