Betty Balli Torres, executive director of the Texas Access to Justice Foundation, and civil rights attorney Danny Ortega are the 2025 recipients of the inaugural Impacto Award, sponsored by the American Bar Association Commission on Hispanic Legal Rights and Responsibilities.
The award will be presented January 31 at the Diversity Awards Reception during the ABA Midyear Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, according to a press release.
The Impacto Award honors an individual or organization that has impacted efforts to remove the significant legal, socio-economic, linguistic, and other barriers to social justice and civic engagement facing Latinos in the U.S.
As executive director of the TAJF, Torres has worked to remove barriers faced by the Hispanic community and other vulnerable populations in the state. Under her leadership, the foundation grants tens of millions of dollars each year to approximately 35 legal aid organizations across Texas to provide basic civil legal services to low-income families as well as crime victims, veterans, those experiencing homelessness, and sexual assault survivors. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Torres collaborated with the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs to secure more than $40 million in emergency funding to prevent evictions for Texans impacted by the crisis, according to a press release.
A national advocate for Hispanic legal rights, Torres served as past chair of the ABA Commission on Hispanic Legal Rights and Responsibilities and past chair of the Hispanic Issues Section of the State Bar of Texas. She received her JD from the University of Texas School of Law.
For more information about the ABA, go to americanbar.org. For more information about the TAJF, go to teajf.org.