:: Biography of Tequila Brooks, Esq.
Tequila grew up in the mountains of Northern New Mexico, spending her summers mowing lawns and cleaning houses in Taos Canyon and attending high school in Santa Fe. After graduating high school, she worked as a kitchen assistant in the famous Apple Tree Restaurant in Taos for a summer then took an Amtrak train to Annapolis, Maryland where she spent four years at St. John’s College, graduating with a B.A. in Liberal Arts in 1991. After a year living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where she wrote human interest stories for a weekly newspaper, worked for an executive outplacement service and worked for a law firm transcribing the board meetings of a savings and loan that went under, Tequila returned to New Mexico to pursue her law degree and a master’s degree in Latin American Studies as part of a dual degree program at the University of New Mexico School of Law. Tequila began her career representing low wage workers in workers’ compensation and unemployment cases, then moved to Dallas, Texas to work for the North American Commission for Labor Cooperation, the inter-governmental organization established under the labor side agreement to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In 2000, Tequila moved with the CLC to Washington, DC.
Tequila is a strong advocate for lifelong education. Troubled by the ineffectiveness of the NAFTA labor side agreement to address worker rights and sustainable development issues as well as the lack of institutional governance in the CLC, Ms. Brooks pursued advanced legal training at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC, graduating with an LL.M. in International and Comparative Law in January 2010. Her thesis was a comparison of several non-governmental and inter-governmental mechanisms utilized in response to suppression of workers and trade union rights in the State of Puebla, Mexico.
In addition, Tequila holds a Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate from Georgetown University’s Center for Public and Non-Profit Leadership (2006), attended the Society for Human Resource Management’s course in Global Human Resources Management (2007) and spent summers studying International Human Rights Law in Oxford, England, Comparative European Union Law at the University of Paris X as part of Golden Gate University’s Paris Summer Law Program and Mexican Law at the University of Guanajuato in Mexico. She is currently completing an LL.M. in International and European Labour Law from Tilburg University School of Law in Tilburg, Netherlands, believing that European examples of inter-governmental coordination of social security rights and social dialogue are germaine to labor, trade and sustainable development in the Americas.
Tequila served as Labor Law Advisor with the North American Commission for Labor Cooperation Secretariat, an inter-governmental organization created under the NAFTA labor side agreement for five and a half years. While with the CLC, Tequila co-authored a study comparing the laws impacting migrant agricultural workers in Canada, Mexico and the United States, was primary author and project coordinator of a tri-national clear language guide to labor and employment laws for migrant workers in North America and drafted Canadian and U.S. chapters of a study comparing employment discrimination and equal pay laws in North America. She also conducted and supervised research in the area of workers’ compensation and occupational safety and health laws in North America, and organized or co-organized specialized focus groups and meetings on migrant worker issues, comparative workplace discrimination and equal pay law, women workers’ issues and special issues involving women workers and long-term disabilities.
In 2002, she attended the Center for Creative Leadership’s Women’s Leadership course in Greensboro, North Carolina. Tequila’s publications include the 2001-2008 updates to Kluwer International’s monograph on the NAFTA and NAALC in the International Encyclopaedia of Labour Law (co-authored with Lance Compa), “An Introduction to Mexican Workers’ Compensation Law for the U.S. Workers’ Compensation Practitioner” (IAIABC Journal, Fall 2003) and “Cross-Border Workers’ Compensation and Social Security Policy in North America: An Analysis of the NAFTA Trucking Dispute through the eyes of a Workers’ Compensation Practitioner” (IAIABC Journal, Spring 2005). In 2005, she taught a short course on U.S., Canadian and North American Labor Law to lawyers at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa Law School in Culiacán, Mexico and in 2001 at the University of Guanajuato School of Law in Guanajuato, Mexico.