Albuquerque, NM (WorkersCompensation.com) - Loretta Lopez has been appointed director of the New Mexico Workers' Compensation Administration (WCA). Lopez was most recently deputy director of the Risk Management at the state's General Services Department. She is the first woman appointed to head the WCA.

Lopez holds both nursing and legal degrees, earning a bachelor's degree in nursing from the University of New Mexico (UNM) in 1982, and her law degree, also from UNM, in 1989. She has worked professionally both as a nurse and as a lawyer, having provided critical care in the pediatric intensive care unit at UNM's Children's Hospital, caring for patients both in the peri- and post-operative setting, while supervising a unit of nurses and orderlies. Lopez has also been a nursing instructor at Central New Mexico Community College.

Lopez served as a Metropolitan Court Judge from 2003 to 2006. She has also been a domestic relations/violence hearing officer in New Mexico's First and Second Judicial District courts; has served as an administrative staff attorney for the Second Judicial District Court; and has been an assistant district attorney for Bernalillo County. Lopez has also been a solo practitioner, primarily focusing on family law and criminal defense, also serving as a settlement facilitator for the Second Judicial District Court, and as a contract attorney for the Community Justice for Survivors of Sexual Violence Project.

Her first day in the WCA's Albuquerque office will be Friday, Oct. 25, when she returns from attending the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions' 105th annual conference in Pittsburgh.

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