Commissioner Lesley Briones has appointed Afsheen Davis to the Harris Health Board and Luis Ruiz to the Harris County Public Defender Board. 

Davis, a 2006 graduate of the University of Houston Law Center, currently serves as the Vice President and General Counsel at Texas Children’s Hospital. She has a master’s degree in public health from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and has worked with prestigious health organizations such as MD Anderson Cancer Center. Among her areas of expertise are healthcare regulatory compliance, data and privacy matters, and large-scale deal negotiations. In 2020, Davis was recognized in the Houston Business Journal’s Women Who Mean Business awards as an outstanding woman in health care. 

Ruiz was born in Jalisco, Mexico but, in search of the “American Dream”, his family immigrated to the United States when he was only 2 years old. He grew up in Baytown as an undocumented person living in the shadows. Despite being undocumented, he continued his education and in 2010 he graduated from the University of Houston with a bachelor’s degree in political science, in 2014 Mr. Ruiz graduated from the University of Houston Law Center, and in November of 2014 he was licensed by The Supreme Court of Texas to practice law. Ruiz was undocumented until he was a sophomore in college. 

Ruiz practices immigration law exclusively, and focuses on family-based immigration cases (I-130’s, Adjustment of Status, Consular Process) such as parents, siblings, and children petitioning for each other, self-petitions (VAWA, U-VISA) such as domestic violence survivors and crime victims applying for legal status based on the abuse they have suffered, waivers (I-601’s, I-601A’s, I-212’s), citizenship (N-400’s, N-600’s), and removal defense cases.