Lola Smallwood-Cuevas

Lola Smallwood-Cuevas is the incumbent State Senator for the 28th district, having assumed office in December 2022. Raised by a single mother who was a registered nurse, she graduated from California State University, Hayward with a degree in Communications. Her early career was in journalism, where she first became involved with a union, the Newspaper Guild. She then spent over two decades as a labor organizer and community advocate, working with SEIU Local 1877 and as a lead organizer for the Justice for Janitors campaign. Smallwood-Cuevas later worked at the UCLA Labor Center, where she founded the Center for the Advancement of Racial Equity at Work and co-founded the Los Angeles Black Worker Center, a model that gained national recognition. She has also served as the treasurer of the Los Angeles County Workforce Development Board.