Effie Turnbull Sanders is a resident of the City of Los Angeles and has a long history of public service. Ms. Sanders currently serves as an Assistant General Counsel to the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) where she drafts, structures and negotiates complex real estate transactions pertaining to the development, use and construction of school facilities.
Prior to joining LAUSD, Ms. Sanders served as a Deputy City Attorney in the Office of the Los Angeles City Attorney, where she provided land use litigation services and legal advice to various City departments. In her work with the Office of the City Attorney, Ms. Sanders also served as a Neighborhood Prosecutor, where she used administrative and civil legal actions to resolve quality of life problems associated with nuisance properties, abandoned buildings, environmental hazards and blight in various Los Angeles neighborhoods.

Ms. Sanders developed a specialization in land use, real property, ethics, and constitutional law as an Associate with the municipal law firm of Richards, Watson and Gershon. As an Associate, Ms. Sanders served as Assistant City Attorney to the City of San Fernando and to the City of South El Monte.

During the Clinton Administration, Ms. Sanders served as a Presidential and Congressional appointee with the United States Commission on Civil Rights, serving as Special Assistant to Vice Chair Cruz Reynoso. Ms. Sanders conducted research and provided advice to the Commission on issues pertaining to economic development, civil rights, environmental justice, education, elections law and ethics.

While in law school, Ms. Sanders served as a legal intern to the National Association of Democratic Lawyers in Cape Town, South Africa, where she worked on legal issues related to the Restitution of Land Rights Act to assist with the return of real property to landowners who had been forcibly and unjustly removed from their lands during the inhumane apartheid era.

Ms. Sanders received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Communications from University of California, Los Angeles, her Juris Doctorate from UCLA School of Law and is a graduate of the University of Southern California Ross Program in Real Estate.

Ms. Sanders is currently co-chair of the Environmental Advisory Commission to the 47th California State Assembly District and volunteers as a board and committee member for a number of other organizations, including the Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters; the African American Voter Registration, Education and Participation Project; and the Big Homies Foundation of Mount Hebron Baptist Church.