Graciela Gil Olivarez Photographs

Graciela Gil (known commonly as Grace) was born to Damian Valero and Eloisa Solis Valero Gil in Phoenix, Arizona on March 9, 1928. She began working for KIFN (a Spanish language radio station in Phoenix) in 1952, where she served as a bilingual secretary, as a third-class radio engineer, as an announcer, and finally as the Women's Program Director. After leaving KIFN in 1962, Gil worked as a Staff Specialist at the Choate Foundation (1962-1965) and as the Director of the Arizona State Office of Economic Opportunity (1966-1968). She was also involved with volunteer work to help the poor and physically handicapped of Phoenix and considered both radio and television to be a means of informing the impoverished about the health, social, and educational services available to them. She was married briefly in the late 1950s and had one son, Victor Rene (1959-).

Although she had dropped out of Ray High School in 1944 in favor of completing a six-month course at a business school, Olivarez was admitted to the Law School at the University of Notre Dame in 1967. She became the first woman to earn her JD at this institution in 1970. She was also granted a number of honorary degrees, including an Honorary Doctor of Public Administration from the University of Albuquerque (1985), an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Amherst College (1972), and Honorary Doctorates of Law from Michigan State University (1975), the University of Notre Dame (1978), and St. Mary's-of-the-Woods (1980).

After earning her law degree, Olivarez worked as Director of Food For All (1970-1972), as Director of the Institute for Social Research and Development (1972-1975), and as the New Mexico State Planning Officer (1975-1977) before being appointed the Director of the Community Services Administration by President Jimmy Carter. Olivarez left this post in 1980 and returned to Albuquerque, where she founded Olivarez Television Company, Inc. Graciela Gil Olivarez died in Albuquerque on September 19, 1987.