About
Values-Driven and Community-Centered
morena strategies is a woman of color owned, collaborative community lawyering and consulting practice dedicated to catalyzing, amplifying, and fortifying the incredible power that lies within lower-income communities of color.
"Self-determination is not an endpoint but a way of being."
- Natsu Taylor Saito
Self Determination
"It's not about me, never was, never will be. It's about we."
- Las Cafeteras
Collaboration
"Nothing ever exists entirely alone. Everything is always in relation to everything else."
- Buddha
Interdependence
"When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."
- Audre Lorde
Courage
Origin Story
morena strategies was established in 2018 by Rémy De La Peza after over a decade of community-centered legal advocacy, coalition building, and nonprofit experience.
Grassroots movements, organizations and advocates frequently need additional capacity as well as technical support to both respond to immediate challenges and to proactively plan for sustainable futures. From firsthand experience, Rémy knew that the external resources available too often lack intimate understanding of the community – its history, politics, and assets. As a known and reputable member of local, state and national economic and racial justice advocacy communities, Rémy built morena strategies to be an alternative option: a trusted and grounded approach to legal and consulting solutions led by a woman of color.
Meet Rémy
Rémy De La Peza (she/her) has nearly 20 years of experience as a community lawyer working on issues of land use, affordable housing, equitable community development and gentrification at the local, state, and national level.
Before founding morena strategies, she was an Equal Justice Fellow and Staff Attorney in Public Counsel's Community Development Project, Director of Planning & Policy Counsel at Little Tokyo Service Center, and Manager of Land Advisory Services at Auckland Council (Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa). She was the first full-time attorney focused on land use and planning at Public Counsel, has led a number of successful community-driven public policy and site-fight campaigns, was a co-founder of ACT-LA, and secured a $3-million grant to spearhead LTSC's creative placekeeping arm, +lab.
Rémy currently serves on the Board of Directors of:
She is the Vice-Chair of the City of Pasadena's Reconnecting Communities 710 Advisory Group, and is also a member of the California Planning Roundtable.
Rémy has a B.A. from the University of San Diego and J.D. from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. She is licensed to practice law in the State of California.
Rémy De La Peza, Esq.
Founder & Principal