Alaina Moonves-Leb

Alaina Moonves-Leb (she/her) is Assistant Director of the Education Program and has spent her entire professional career advocating with youth to ensure they can access and benefit from an equitable and quality education.

Specializing in both direct services and local and statewide policy work, Alaina represents youth in enforcing their special and general education rights. She also consults and collaborates with, and trains school districts, as well as county and statewide bodies to develop and implement best practices, and address equity gaps for youth who are system-involved.

Prior to law school, Alaina taught special education, earned a masters degree in teaching, and was honored nationally as a special education teacher of the year. Despite the ultimate resilience and success of Alaina’s students, the inequities that she witnessed in the challenges that they faced in their effort to receive a quality education inspired her to embark on her legal career, and continue to inform her work today.

Since joining the Alliance in 2011, Alaina has been proud to partner with the education team in development of the Foster Youth Education Toolkit, as well as the Court Companion and Best Practices Guide, as well as many other tools that are used throughout the state to support the success of youth in school. She has also served for 3 years as the co-chair of the School Stability Subcommittee of the Foster Youth Education Task Force.

Alaina earned her law degree from New York University School of Law. She lives with her family in Los Angeles.