Saniata Lachica Photo
  • Bio

Saniata Lachica

Paralegal

Saniata Lachica graduated from the University of the Philippines taking up Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and History. She obtained an excellent grade of 1.0 in her bachelor’s thesis. She was a consistent honor student in high school and graduated Valedictorian in elementary. As a young college graduate, she was attracted to pursue a career in the publishing industry as a Marketing Specialist in one of the top publishers in the country which main goal and objective is to improve the quality of education through its printed materials such as textbooks and learning enhancement materials or magazines for elementary and high school students.

For more than five years, she interacted with teachers, school administrators, principals, district and regional supervisors. She built a good rapport with them and helped them acquire additional training through her company's teacher development programs such as symposiums, seminars and conferences, managed by the organization's foundation which served as its social development arm.

During the same year, she held the position of Administrative Assistant to the Executive Director, who oversees six different companies of the organization, and later been assigned as Coordinator of the Corporate Communications Department and the Active Chess Center of Asia (ACCA) Inc. While all the three major tasks were very challenging, her organizational and leadership skills were enhanced at the ACCA which holds various chess events such as the monthly chess tournament for business executives and professionals, attended in by managers, engineers, professors, lawyers, a judge, and even His Excellency Paul Moe, the Ambassador of Norway.

In Los Angeles, Ms. Lachica worked and acquired more than 6 years of experience as a paralegal for a couple of law firms practicing in the areas of immigration law, family law, bankruptcy, personal injury, and civil litigation . Her exposure to the legal profession has inspired her to improve her craft even more and to uphold the firm's objective to provide satisfactory legal services to its clients

As far as other interests, Ms. Lachica was a deputy organizer of the Active Chess Center of Asia and production manager of Chess Asia. From time to time, she was given an assignment to interview individuals and write a story about them, with human interest.

The following articles she wrote from interviews were published at Chess Asia: Siti's Mom, about a Malaysian's junior chess champ whose mom was diagnosed with cancer; The Renaissance of Chess in Leyte which narrates the rise and fall of chess in the province and now its chess club being led by a doctor who was a neurosurgeon by profession; and In New York City: A Meeting with Gerry Albano, which tells us about a Filipino philanthropist, trial lawyer and legal counsel for immigration and divorce in the heart of New York City, who was also the organizer of tri-state chess competitions involving members from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

In 2002, she wrote an article about Nel Van de Graff, an 89 year old chess player in Australia and David Smerdon, chess champ during the 2002 Queensland Chess Open. She interviewed chess club organizers like Graeme Gardiner in Queensland, and in May 2005, attended the HB Global Chess Challenge, the biggest chess event in the history of the game with a $500,000 prize fund held in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She interviewed Victor Karl Ochoa, a 13-year old Filipino chess whiz who won first place in the 2200 category among a total of 165 players around the world. He received $20,000 cash prize. Ms. Lachica is fluent in Filipino, Tagalog, and Ilocano.

Contact Ms. Lachica – san@kenreyeslaw.com