Armando Gudiño

Armando Gudiño is California Policy Manager at the Drug Policy Alliance’s Los Angeles office, where he focuses on Latino outreach strategies and legislation. His portfolio includes issues of mass incarceration, taxation and regulation of marijuana, transnational criminal organizations, immigration and drug laws, and drug policy in the Latino community throughout the US and Latin America.

Gudiño is a political scientist who started his professional career as a human rights observer working in Latin America documenting human rights violations in armed conflict zones. For more than 20 years, he has worked in journalism and public policy, in places such as Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. In 2001 he joined the Pacifica Radio Network, where he rose to the position of Program Director at the Los Angeles station KPFK, becoming the first Latino Program Director in its 50-year history. Over the last several years Armando has worked on key California legislation including the historic marijuana legalization initiative Proposition 64, civil asset forfeiture reform, deferred entry of judgement (retroactive), equalization of penalties for crack and powder cocaine, Proposition 47, and the state’s 911 Good Samaritan Law.

Gudiño lives in Los Angeles and when not working on drug policy issues he enjoys spending time with his family, traveling, and working on issues of space policy.