Desiree Nguyen Orth

Director of the Consumer Justice Unit of the East Bay Community Law Center and Lecturer at Berkeley Law
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Desiree Nguyen Orth is the Director of the Consumer Justice Clinic (CJC) at East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC). EBCLC provides free direct legal services to underserved and underrepresented communities. Prior to joining, Desiree ran the Consumer Advocacy Project at the Justice & Diversity Center of the Bar Association of San Francisco and a private practice centered on working with women business owners in the creative industry. Desiree is passionate about consumer interests and strongly believes that financial education and literacy are fundamental stepping stones to racial equity. She also believes that robust consumer protections and innovative financial services are not mutually exclusive– the former should inform the latter. As a first-generation AAPI woman and a newish mother of two, Desiree has a special propensity for fighting for the advancement of women of color.

Desiree’s work as the director of CJC is multifaceted but is largely focused on creating a consumer protection policy that serves to dismantle and correct outdated laws that provide systemic barriers to access for low-income, monolingual, or underrepresented consumers. Desiree lectures at the Berkeley School of Law as an attorney clinician, and vigorously works with community organizers to build grassroots support for equitable consumer protection and justice policies.