Lissette Ortegon is a Staff Attorney at the Center for Disability & Elder Law (CDEL), where she leads the Power of Planning initiative in collaboration with the Illinois Department of Public Health and Illinois Legal Aid Online. Through this statewide program, she expands access to advance legal planning for individuals living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias through community education, volunteer attorney training, and free legal services.

Lissette is fluent in Spanish and is a court-certified Spanish interpreter, allowing her to better serve Spanish-speaking communities. She serves on two committees of the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Access to Justice: the Language Access Committee and the Disability Access to the Courts Committee. Lissette is also a Board Member of Solutions for Care, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting older adults and their caregivers.

During law school, she interned with Disability Rights Wisconsin, advocating for individuals with disabilities facing housing issues and discrimination in the prison system. She began her legal career volunteering with the Greater Chicago Legal Clinic, assisting individuals seeking expungement or sealing of criminal records.

She earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin Law School and B.S. in Communications from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.