Sonia Sotomayor

As the Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor is one of the most successful Hispanic women in America today. Born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents, Sotomayor studied at Princeton and Yale before being appointed as an appeals court judge by President Bill Clinton in 1998.

Sonia Sotomayor was raised in the Bronx by her mother after her father died when she was just nine years old. As a child, she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. At the age of 10, she decided to become a lawyer after watching the Perry Mason television series. Her mother put a great value on education and bought a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica for her children.

Sonia Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1976 and went on to receive her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. After graduating, she worked as an assistant district attorney in New York for five years before going into private practice.

As one of the most famous Hispanic women in law, Sotomayor was on the board of directors of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. In 1991, she was nominated by President George Bush to the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York and six years later, was nominated by President Clinton to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

In 2009, Sonia Sotomayor was nominated for the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama. On August 8, 2009, she was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts, making her the first Hispanic to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, and only the third woman to hold that post. Sonia Sotomayor is one of the most successful Hispanic women in the workplace.