Tino Cuéllar

Stanford law Professor Tino Cuellar was named this week to lead President-elect Barack Obama’s transition working group on immigration. The team is one of seven policy groups Obama has convened to develop priorities for the first months of his presidency on topics ranging from education to the economy to national security.

At 36, Cuellar already has an impressive resume. Raised on the U.S.-Mexico border in Calexico (Imperial County), he earned his bachelor’s degree at Harvard University before going to Yale Law School and finishing up with a doctorate in political science from Stanford, where he’s now a full professor specializing in administrative law. Along the way, he spent two years at the U.S. Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton, where he worked on fighting money-laundering operations.