Rep. Luz Rivas, (D-CA-29)
U.S. House of Representatives
What does it actually take to go from engineer to elected official, and would you ever have planned it that way?
She wasn’t planning to run for Congress. She was just trying to get more girls interested in engineering. In this episode, we sit down with Representative Luz Rivas, an electrical engineer-turned-educator-turned-Congresswoman and the only Latina in Congress with a STEM background.
Rep. Rivas represents California’s 29th Congressional District and is the Freshman Leadership Representative for the 119th Congress, a role she earned just weeks into her new job on Capitol Hill. Growing up in Paicoma in the San Fernando Valley, Rep. Rivas had her first encounter with coding in fifth grade and everything changed.
From San Fernando High School to MIT, from Motorola to Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, and ultimately to founding DIY Girls, a nonprofit dedicated to inspiring young women in STEM, her career has never followed a straight line, and that’s exactly what makes her extraordinary.
In this episode:
✦ What her day actually looks like between committee hearings, caucus meetings, and community visits
✦ How she built cross-aisle relationships (including dinner parties with Republicans)
✦ Why she believes people who didn’t plan for politics can make some of the best legislators
✦ The real financial realities of serving in Congress, managing homes in two of America’s most expensive cities
✦ What she would tell her younger self about risk, fear, and keeping going
This is a conversation about public service, resilience, representation, and what it means to say yes when the path ahead is uncertain.
MBTI vibe: ENFJ / ENTJ / ESFJ / ENFP / ESTP
Extraversion • Perception & social intelligence • Action orientation • Values-driven motivation • Comfort with visibility
Need to Know Facts*
Salary Range:
Entry-Level Education &
Additional Certification
Work Experience in Related
Occupation:
Type of organizations to
work for:
Job Outlook:
Resources:
Annual pay: $174,000 for
all members House, Senate
$193,400 – Majority &
Minority Leaders
$223,500 – Speaker of the House
No formal education required
House members with degrees:
96% hold Bachelor’s
66% hold Master’s (i.e. business,
public policy)
Professional degrees (JD, MD)
Must be at least 25 years old,
U.S. citizen for at least 7 years
Inhabitant of state they
represent
Key skills:
Consensus-building
Negotiation
Constituent Empathy
Strategic Time Management
Information Assimilation
Open
Fixed number of 435 members
in House, 100 members in
Senate
Permanent Apportionment
Act of 1929
What She Does Podcast 
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