Hildegarde Aguinaldo
Lifting up Women in our Community
Hildegarde Aguinaldo currently serves as Senior Director and Assistant General Counsel for DaVita Inc., an international healthcare company with over 2,500 clinics and 200,000 patients, where she leads a talented team of litigators and legal professionals handling matters nationwide. Ms. Aguinaldo also serves as the Vice President of the Board of Governors (BOG) of the California Community Colleges, the largest system of higher education in the nation, with 116 colleges serving over 1.8 million students. In these corporate and governmental capacities, she has held key roles in equity efforts, including having developed transformational mission statements, served on interdisciplinary taskforces, and deployed equity training with enterprise and systemwide impact.
Prior to DaVita, Ms. Aguinaldo served as in-house counsel to a Fortune 10 healthcare
company, and also at a national law firm as outside counsel to tertiary care hospitals
and academic health centers. Her practice benefitted from the heightened understanding
of healthcare systems she gained from her post-graduate studies in public health and
her service as a board member of a community hospital within one of the largest not-for-profit
health systems in California, for whom she endeavored to establish the first pediatric
trauma center in the San Fernando Valley.
Concurrently with her appointment to the BOG by Governor Gavin Newsom, Ms. Aguinaldo
also serves as Vice President of the Board of Trustees of Calbright College, California’s
first fully online college leveraging technology to deliver strong outcomes for a
focused population of learners. Prior to the BOG, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. appointed
Ms. Aguinaldo to the California Acupuncture Board, where she was served as President
and Chair of its Enforcement Committee. At the local level, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas
appointed her to the Los Angeles County Hospitals and Healthcare Delivery Commission.
Los Angeles City Councilmember Richard Alarcon had also selected her as Deputy of
Health and Legal Affairs for Council District 7, after having served in his Senate
and Assembly offices.
In addition to health care and the law, Ms. Aguinaldo’s longest commitment has been
to advocate for the Asian American community. In 2014, following over a decade of
involvement in the organization, she served as President of the Philippine American
Bar Association (PABA), where she sharpened PABA’s efforts to advance judicial diversity
and promote civic engagement. In 2018, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association
(NAPABA) recognized Ms. Aguinaldo as one of its "Best Lawyers Under 40." She currently
serves on the Board of Governors of the Asian Pacific American Women Lawyers Alliance
(APAWLA), where she continues her long-standing work to celebrate the contributions
of the Asian American community and empowering students and attorneys to advance in
the legal profession.
Ms. Aguinaldo is a second-generation Filipina-American. She lives in the Santa Clarita Valley with her husband, son, and daughter.
