The San Antonio Legal Services Association announced CEO and Executive Director Sarah Dingivan, who led SALSA’s founding efforts, is stepping down from the non-profit.
Robert Mihara, SALSA’s managing attorney, will serve as interim executive director while the board searches for Dingivan’s successor.
“As this professional chapter closes, I’m deeply grateful for the dedicated volunteers who power SALSA’s mission every day and for the steady leadership of Robert Mihara, whose vision continues to guide SALSA forward,” Dingivan said in a LinkedIn post sharing SALSA’s announcement. “Thank you for the honor of serving alongside you.”
Dingivan plans to spend more time with family and will “advance access to justice from a new position of service,” according to the announcement.
SALSA was the result of a re-launch from the Community Justice Program that had existed for two decades prior to expand and tailor pro bono services for the San Antonio community. SALSA’s founding partner, the San Antonio Bar Association, voted in 2019 to create an independent board of directors for the standalone entity.
To launch SALSA, Dingivan worked closely with Board President Robert Soza Jr., a partner in Jackson Walker’s San Antonio office, and federal Bankruptcy Judge Michael Parker, who at the time was a partner at Norton Rose Fulbright.
The young organization has had rocky beginnings. A launch party to introduce SALSA to the city in 2020 was scrapped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Its staff quickly got to work meeting people’s needs brought up from the pandemic, Dingivan previously told The Texas Lawbook. Attorneys worked with San Antonio hospitals to draft wills for frontline healthcare workers during the height of the pandemic, for example, Dingivan said.
SALSA also responded to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde in May 2022 by establishing trusts for donations that poured in for the victims and their families.
In March, SALSA faced a funding crisis. Facing closure at the end of the month, the organization made a public plea for donations. More than $250,000 and commitments poured in, Dingivan said at the time.
Preceding the call for help, grant and contract funding that had provided organizational stability was not renewed, Dingivan said. SALSA laid off three employees during the funding shortfall.
The organization realized it needed a broader pool of general operating support dollars to supplement revenue from grants and contracts, Dingivan said.
Dingivan, a graduate of Emory University School of Law, spent six years on active duty with the U.S. Air Force as a member of the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps. Her military career led her to San Antonio where she was stationed to multiple bases there.
Upon leaving active duty, Dingivan said she wanted to provide legal aid to veterans. Many of the people SALSA serves are military veterans.
“The regular legal needs that veterans face are just amplified by virtue of, not only their service to the country, but oftentimes a layer of trauma that was added because of their specific sacrifices,” Dingivan said.
Speaking to The Lawbook in April, Dingivan said she was most proud of SALSA’s work identifying the community’s needs and creating solutions tailored to those specifications.
“One of the main risks when you try and do good is that you create something that may not actually change anything,” she said. “In an attempt to do good, you may not meet the actual need … We’ve been incredibly intentional in the way that we’ve done that. I think that’s the thing that I’m most proud of about what we’ve been able to accomplish over the last five years.”